The register of trials

In the medical world, a clinical trial is a plan long before it is a result. Such plans – detailing who is enrolled and what is measured – can be filed in public registries before the first participant is even seen, and the WHO maintains a portal that searches all the registries meeting its standard in one place.1source 1 The massive registry run by the US National Library of Medicine is the largest of these, but it is just one book, not the entire shelf.2source 2 Medical journal editors treat trial registration not merely as a courtesy, but as a foundational piece of the scientific record.3source 3 A trial that is never recorded in a public register, where one cannot walk back to see what initial question was asked, is far more likely to vanish in the dark.