The Society of Biology is pleased to announce its support for clinical trials reporting and the aims of AllTrials.

Laura Bellingan, director of policy at the Society of Biology said, ‘The Society strongly supports evidence-based decision-making and access to information is a key pre-requisite of this.'

'Our decision reflects our support for transparency in clinical trials and we consider that all trials should be registered, with information on the trial protocol and sponsor, and the full methods and results, reported. We would encourage the development of accessible lay summaries to accompany reports to support public engagement and facilitate interpretation.’

The Society’s statement points out that,  ‘We recognise the complexity of attempts to ensure greater transparency for all data underlying past clinical trials, and that the feasibility of its release cannot be assured.'

'However, we look forward to successful and equitable outcomes of all efforts to address the broad issues of access to clinical trial data, including historic data, in order to ensure that full and correct value is gained and implications for future trials can be appropriately realised, for the benefit of patients, researchers, and the public.’

The latest issue of the Society of Biology’s magazine, The Biologist, includes an opinion piece on the need for clinical trial transparency by Ian Bushfield from Sense About Science, a cofounding organisation of AllTrials.

The AllTrials campaign calls for clinical trials to be registered and their results reported. The AllTrials petition has been signed by 80984 people and 520 organisations so far.

AllTrials is an initiative of Bad Science, BMJ, Centre for Evidence-based Medicine, Cochrane Collaboration, James Lind Initiative, PLOS and Sense About Science and is being led in the US by Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine and the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy & Clinical Practice.