Too much research data goes unreported, leading to a serious distortion of the evidence base that clinicians need to make intelligent medical decisions. The authors of this paper in BMJ argue that if you can document that a study has been abandoned before publication, and if you formally requestthe researchers to publish the data, and if they fail to act within a certain amount of time,then the data should be considered public access so that you or anyone else could publish those results. It’s an interesting proposal and one that will generate a lot of controversy.

Doshi P, Dickersin K, Healy D, Vedula SS, Jefferson T. Restoring invisible and abandoned trials: a call for people to publish the findings. BMJ. 2013;346:f2865. doi:10.1136/bmj.f2865. Available at: http://www.bmj.com/content/346/bmj.f2865