The Science and Technology Committee has decided to monitor reporting of clinical trials by universities, and will question those that don’t improve. Clinical trials are the best way to test whether a medicine is safe and effective. They can involve thousands of people, patients and healthy volunteers, and take years to complete. Results from around half of all clinical trials remain hidden. Trials with negative results are twice as likely to remain unreported as those with positive results. This means that people who make decisions about medicines do not have full information about the benefits and risks of treatments we use every day and can dramatically alter how a drug is perceived, leading to unnecessary spending in the NHS. See