Chart assignment

Charts to read and discuss

Read each chart, then answer its questions. Every chart shows its source and date; open it for a table of the numbers and the data to download.

  1. What share of clinical trials do companies run?

Chart 1 of 1 · Clinical trials

What share of clinical trials do companies run?

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Companies led 19% of the clinical trials that started in 2025, against a high of 39.0% in 2002. Universities, hospitals and nonprofits lead almost all the rest. The 2000 figure is low partly because few trials were registered before 2005, when medical journals began requiring it.

Questions to discuss

  1. In one sentence of your own, what does this chart show?
  2. Find the biggest change or difference in the chart. What might explain it?
  3. Who collected these numbers, and how recent are they? What else would you want to know before drawing a conclusion?

Source: ClinicalTrials.gov (U.S. National Library of Medicine), counted with its API v2 (Public domain (U.S. government work); source National Library of Medicine) · Data as of Nov 3, 2026

Open the chart and its numbers

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