Does the scientific method no longer apply to medicine?

It seems that the scientific method no longer applies to medical research. We say this because for most scientific disciplines the raw data used by the paper’s authors can be obtained to re-run the analysis and check any areas of concern or doubt.

While Loder writes that some medical journals, including The BMJ, “now require research authors to share their data or publish a statement about the availability of the study’s data,”1 in medicine, obtaining data is now very difficult. It seems “patient confidentiality,” even for completely anonymised data, trumps all else, and corresponding authors feel able to simply ignore requests for the data they used.

In the past two years we have twice requested the original data from the corresponding author of papers published in The BMJ. The first time, the corresponding author directed us to the UK Biobank. This was unhelpful: even though we were only asking for the same dataset used by the original authors, we were unable to obtain the data. On the more recent occasion we have twice emailed the corresponding author and received no reply at all.

In both cases we thought there may be a flaw in the analysis, particularly in the most recent of the two papers.

As retired doctors, we have both the time and the interest to run further analysis on data from papers which we think may have either a flaw in the analysis or which may have further information in the data which has not been brought out.

Perhaps it is time for a re-evaluation of the balance between patient confidentiality and the rigour expected in the scientific method of evaluating what is published.