CLINICAL RESEARCH INTEGRITY INTEREST GROUP MEETING

Rational medical decision making requires high quality, unbiased evidence about benefits and harms of clinical interventions. The Clinical Research Integrity Interest Group is focused on defending the integrity of the clinical evidence data base. There is increasing evidence that clinical research and its dissemination may be subject to manipulation or outright suppression. Furthermore, people attempting to blow the whistle on these practices have been subject to intimidation and coercion. Those responsible often are protecting their vested economic, political or ideologic interests. The Clinical Research Integrity Interest Group will attempt to better define these problems through research and better disseminate information about threats to clinical research integrity. Finally, we hope to develop tools to detect manipulated or suppressed research, educational programs about the problem and policy approaches to discourage further manipulation or suppression.