I agree, and this is actually the point I'm trying to make. A lot of the data that doesn't get published winds up this way because it's not that exciting, not because of a conspiracy to suppress it. This is especially true for negative data. That's why I think it would be helpful for the FDA to set up a medium for the publication of all major clinical trial data. It doesn't even have to be a print version. It could just be an on-line clearing house for clinical trial results. They could set it up in such a way that wouldn't preclude data from being published elsewhere first, if done in a specific time frame (maybe within 3 years after the trial ends). It would be required that when you receive an IND from the FDA and approval to go forward with a drug trial you agree to submit the full data set to the FDA for publication/public distribution.
This is the “clearinghouse” to which you refer:
http://clinicaltrials.gov/
And yes, I know for a fact that pharma submits negative data (data that does not reflect well on the study drug, for those of you in Rio Linda) to journals in good-faith transparency, but many journals will not publish due to the data not being “novel.”