Resource Type: Publication

Institutions as an ethical locus of research prioritization

Publication

Released on: April 6, 2017

Published in: Journal of Medical Ethics

Ensuring that clinical trials, once launched, successfully complete and generate useful knowledge is an important and indeed ethically imperative goal, given the risks and burdens borne by research participants. Since there are insufficient willing research participants to power all the trials that are currently undertaken,1 addressing underenrolment will require prioritisation decisions that reduce the number of trials competing for participants. While there are multiple levels at which research priority-setting can and does take place, competition between trials often plays out in real time at the institutional or site level, where complex decisions must be made about how to manage overlapping trials in ways that balance different considerations, including the risk of non-completion. We sought to explore what research institutions in particular might ethically do to mitigate the risk that competition between trials will contribute to recruitment shortfalls.

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Completeness of clinical evidence citation in trial protocols: A cross-sectional analysis, published in Clinical and Translational Report

Publication

Published on: April 8, 2022

Published in: Clinical and Translational Report

Deborah Zarin, MRCT Center Program Director, co-authored “Completeness of clinical evidence citation in trial protocols: A cross-sectional analysis,” published in Clinical and Translational Report. The authors conclude that “clinical trial protocols undercite accessible, relevant trials and do not document systematic searches for relevant clinical trials. Consequently, ethics review committees often receive an incomplete picture of the research landscape if they review protocols similar to those deposited on ClinicalTrials.gov.”

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