Medical research on animals may often lead to false hopes about new drugs – simply because unsuccessful studies are not reported, experts warned today.
Bias in research caused by failure to publish all work has caused concern for some time.
The latest analysis, to be published in the journal PLoS Biology, claims that as many as one in six studies involving animals is never published.
They say it is quite common for drugs that seem to do well in these studies to be unsuccessful with humans.
The effectiveness of drugs may be exaggerated by as much as 30 per cent – and further unnecessary studies conducted because other scientists do not know drugs are ineffective.
Researcher Dr Malcolm McLeod, of Edinburgh University, Scotland, UK, conducted the analysis using studies of drugs for stroke.
He said: "For the first time, these important findings allow us to estimate the scale of the problem of publication bias in animal studies. While our results relates only to animal studies of stroke, we believe it is highly likely that it is a similar issue in other fields."
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