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Comment by dolni | Hacker News Reader

What is preventing someone from having 200 participants, but saying they only had 100 participants, and then only providing evidence for 100 participants?

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You have to declare the study population before you request the next round of funding. Thereby fixing the problem.

The researchers will have to have gone through some kind of third party agency to get the partecipants. This agency should be queried to see the number they report

How does this agency determine who can meaningfully participate in the study? Are they going to have the expertise to make that determination for _every_ study that could possibly be conducted?

What is the difference (to a layperson) between cherry-picking participants and rejecting participants because they do not meet your study's criteria?

Who funds this agency?

Do the members of the reviewing agency have their own biases, and might those biases tarnish the reputation of a study that is actually well-conducted? (hint: this already happens in journals)

Nothing. Pfizer did this, albeit wasn't 50% of the enrollment.

You can see that here: https://kirschsubstack.com/p/pfizer-phase-3-clinical-trial-f...

No Pfizer did not do that.

Pfizer had a trial with 21823 people in the Expirement group and 21823 people in the Placebo group. In the results they excluded data for 1790 from the Expirement group and 1585 Placebo group. However, _crucially_ Pfizer never claimed there were only 100 people in the study after starting with 200; you know pfizer excluded 3375 people because _Pfizer told you_.

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