Australian governments — federal, state and territory — often mislead the public about important health issues by suppressing the results of research.
That’s the conclusion of what is thought to be the first formal study of government suppression of information in the health sector.
When University of Western Australia researchers asked 302 public health academics in 17 institutions whether they had seen research findings suppressed by governments, they were told of 142 such incidents occurring between 2001 and 2006.
Twenty-one per cent of academics had personally experienced such a problem over that period.
Governments most commonly suppressed research through sanitising reports, or delaying or prohibiting publication.
The effect of the suppression was, not surprisingly, to protect the interests of government by, for example, keeping potentially damaging information about health services under wraps.
The researchers found that 87% of attempts to suppress information succeeded “and, consequently, the public was left uninformed or given a false impression”.
They concluded that systematic interventions involving researchers, scientific journals, governments, and the media are needed to preserve the integrity of public health research being done with government involvement.
“Our findings confirm that the practice is widespread in Australia and is not a problem restricted to isolated aberrations on the part of atypical government officials,” they said. “Rather the problem is endemic on a system-wide basis.”
The study was published in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health some months ago but, according to the researchers, has received little coverage outside of WA.
It deserves a wider airing now that we have a Federal Government chanting the mantra of “evidence-based policy”.
Next time a Rudd Minister sprouts such a phrase, someone should ask what systematic efforts the Government is making to ensure that:
- government programs and initiatives are being independently and rigourously evaluated;
- the results of these evaluations are published fully and frankly, so that the evidence base can continue developing and be shared.
These are also good questions for state and territory ministers. It always struck me as a tad unfair that the Howard Government copped so much flak for suppressing information when state Labor governments have made an artform of it.
Within days of Labor taking power, Julia Gillard lifted the curtain that stifled criticism and urged academics and NGOs to tell the government where things were going wrong. This was a tsunami of fresh air blowing away the depleted oxygen atmosphere from Howard’s intellectual nuclear winter. There is palpable relief throughout the health sector that is translating into optimism, cooperation and creativity. I have not seen anything like it for a decade.
I think that the study has been misrepresented (certainly in the SA press).
a. Although results are presented by State – it does not imply that the research was conducted for a State instrumentality. Melissa Sweet’s piece implies this is the case.
b. Much of the work that is alluded to is completed under contract. Sometimes the suppression involves delay – often while the work is waiting for sign off. Such delay can result in work being unpublishable (especially with systematic reviews). Thus the “suppression” is a consequence of normal government procedures.
c. Contract research generally implies that the sponsor of the work owns the product. I suspect that there would need to be an enormous shift for government contracts give researchers complete freedom to publish as soon as the work is completed. I have discussed these issues with UK sponsors of contract research – within health there appears to be stronger support for publication than is apparent in Australia.
Oh God – I thought Tony Papafilis might fade away once the great Howard had been finally consigned to history. I find it sad that an obvious immigrant (with a name like Papafilis) should be so bigoted. I’m sure people sent letters to papers in the past about your immigrant family – i.e. too many wogs arriving from Greece bringing their filthy habits and diseases to this good Anglo country. Obviously they were right in some respects – we could have done with fewer brainless peasants. Maybe an IQ test along with the TB test.
Whether we participate actively in a study or trial, or answer questionnaires, or participate by paying taxes that fund it, we should have an expectation that results will be publicly available irrespective of what the results show. I agree with a previous comment that there should be a registry of government funded studies which is made freely available to the public.
How many of those studies were funded with public resources such as ARC grants? Those that were should, by definition, be public property…