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https://www.google.com/amp/s/articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/02/13/amp/publication-bias.aspx

Half of all clinical trials ever completed on the medical treatments currently in use have never been published in the medical literature. Trials with positive results for the test treatment are about twice as likely to be published, and this applies to both academic research and industry studies

Does this throw out all the conclusions about vaccines, penicillin, and whatever else has been researched in this way?

Sklivvz
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    This site is about debunking or proving notable claims. You question is not one. Now, if you could find an source claiming *this throws out all the conclusions about vaccines, penicillin, and whatever else has been researched in this way* that would be something - although still too broad IMO. –  Sep 25 '17 at 07:17
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    Also, the implied statement is nonsensical -- when the clinical trial for a new medication produces negative results, the outcome isn't newsworthy to anyone except the company that now has to go back to the drawing board and figure out what went wrong. That's nothing sinister or unique to the pharma industry -- how many news articles have you read about the (probably hundreds of) failed design trials for new processor core architectures at Intel's R&D? How many crash test dummies Mercedes had to sacrifice until they finally had a new car design that satisfied safety standards? – Shadur Sep 25 '17 at 08:08
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    @Shadur I suggest you have a look at the work of Ben Goldacre and OpenTrials. The "hidden" trials do not concern only medications or drugs that don't get on the market, but also those that do, hiding possible side effects or overstating their effectiveness. – Federico Sep 25 '17 at 11:46
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    @shadur there are tons of reasons why failed experiments are super useful. Think about what happens when only marginally positive results for a molecule are published... it makes a perfectly ineffective medicine look as if it would be effective – Sklivvz Sep 25 '17 at 11:57
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    This almost seems like a conceptual question. I mean, yeah, tossing out scientific results obviously biases literature; repeat the [jelly bean experiment](https://xkcd.com/882/) enough, reporting only positive results, and the literature'll contain plenty of confirmation that jelly beans cause acne with ample replication. – Nat Sep 25 '17 at 12:25
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    The question would be much better if it didn't equate "publication bias" with "all the conclusions about vaccines, penicillin, and whatever else has been researched". Serious publication bias is a good thing to pose as a question (and is probably true) but it doesn't imply no useful results ever. – matt_black Sep 25 '17 at 18:47
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    I think most people in academia consider a positive (or negative) result better than no result. For example "I was able to prove/disprove the theorem" will be much more notable than "Here is what I tried but the result was inconclusive" paper (still valid research and thus publishable). Also this being a medical research and maybe for-profit medical research, there might indeed be a bias against inconclusive results. – ventsyv Sep 25 '17 at 21:00

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