Publishing Negative Results to Optimize the Biopharmaceutical Innovation

Abstract

Publishing negative results represents a debate among the scientists and researchers. Numerous studies in different countries have shown the importance and the positive impacts of publishing negative data to improve the healthcare and the biopharmaceutical innovation and prolong the lifetime expectance via spreading knowledge even the part of it considered as "negative data". Importantly, the biopharmaceutical innovation is still facing a variety of ethical challenges which gives birth to a lot of criticisms in the healthcare community and in the public. Indeed, nowadays publishing negative research data and clinical trial results disclosure still an ethical issue that requires a convincing rational answer. In this article, we give an ethical sight about the unpublished and undisclosed negative research results and the necessity of their publication. Moreover, the need of publishing trial failures reports remains an important question as well.