Study shows drugs that prove ineffective go unreported

NEW YORK Situations where medicines are shown to be ineffective often don’t make it to the pages of medical journals, a new study has found.

The study, published Monday in PLoS Medicine, a journal by the Public Library of Science, analyzed all of the studies that pharmaceutical companies submitted to the Food and Drug Administration to get approval for drugs between 1998 and 2000. By 2005, studies finding drugs ineffective had mostly not been published.

The researchers said articles that don’t balance the good and bad results of drug studies can influence doctors’ opinions.