The Cochrane Collaboration, an international body which evaluates published medical trials, has interesting insights into the nature of the results of compilations of study data in trials done all over the world. A brand new Cochrane review upholds the clinical suspicions which physicians and healthcare lobbyists know only too well: that studies with positive results are more likely to see the light of publication, reach publication sooner, saturate the media easier, and influence healthcare policy more effortlessly.

So-called negative studies (those which conclude results which may refute established medical dogma or anecdotal belief) were seriously hampered by what the researchers/evaluators termed as “publication bias”. Many involved in shaping healthcare delivery policy in this country know how important a trial with a positive result is as it applies to high powered Washington lobbying; this issue will become much more important as the Obama administration has pledged “transparency” (a word it uses front and center on its official White House blog, describing it as one of its innate characteristics) with respect to all policy matters.

Just as many have cried out that healthcare policy was over politicized and favored Pharma and Big Insurance in the Bush administration, time will tell if Barack Obama is pressured by those same critics to renounce policies which have their genesis in findings like those provided by Cochrane. | LINK

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