Translational medicine cannot approach its full potential if negative drug developments are unpublished or distorted in interpretation when published. As Reason’s (12) reviews of human reasoning and everyday experiences witness, human skills develop not de novo but by elimination of errors or mistakes through trial and error learning. If progress in psychiatric drug development depends on learning from errors, then lack of transparency into failed drug development efforts, a result of underreporting and distorted interpretation, will remain major impediments to progress (7, 23). To remove these impediments, as we and others have advocated, the standard in science and medicine should be that all human research and research with potential for human health benefits must be shared openly, publicly, completely, and in a timely manner (10).
