BY ANISH KOKA

Reanalysis of a trial used to approve a commonly used injectable cholesterol-lowering drug confirms the original analysis by accident.

The open-data movement seeks to liberate the massive amount of data generated in running clinical trials from the grasp of the academic medical-pharmaceutical industrial complex that mostly runs the most important trials responsible for bringing novel therapeutics to market.

There are only a few elite academic trialist groups capable of running large trials and there’s ample reason to be suspicious about the nexus that has developed between academia and the pharmaceutical companies that shower them with cash to hopefully get a positive study result and pay off the pharmaceutical research investment manifold. The FDA is the major regulator of the whole process, but the expertise required for regulation means that the FDA is frequently comprised of ex-pharma employees or ex-academics.