In the US, where numbers are easily available, just over a third of registered medical trials in recent years were funded by the pharmaceutical industry.85 To what extent does this funding, from companies who plan to market the drug if it works, influence the results? The consensus of meta-scientific research on clinical trials is that industry-funded drug trials are indeed more likely to report positive results. In a recent review, for every positive trial funded by a government or non-profit source, there were 1.27 positive trials by drug companies.86
