I Registered a Fake Trial on ClinicalTrials.gov

Ever wondered how hard it really is to spin up a trial on ClinicalTrials.gov?

In this episode of Note to File, Brad and Denali walk through Brad's experiment:
he created and submitted a trial record on ClinicalTrials.gov just to see how far it would go. Spoiler: it got published… and the feedback was mostly about formatting, not scientific or ethical rigor.

We unpack:

🧾 How easy it is to create a ClinicalTrials.gov record using PRS
💻 Where AI "help" starts to blur the line between convenience and garbage data
🧪 What this means for patients who use ClinicalTrials.gov to find trials
🧨 How fake or low‑quality records could distort sponsor pipelines and vendor tools
⚖️ Recent cases of data falsification and fraud at research sites
🎰 A wild new angle: betting on clinical trial endpoints (Endpoint Arena)
What are people actually wagering on?
Could site staff or sponsors game the system?
Are we just importing sports-betting culture into clinical research?
Along the way we hit on:

The gap between what ClinicalTrials.gov was designed for vs. how patients actually use it
The tension between regulatory requirements, data integrity, and real-world behavior
How financial incentives, recruitment vendors, and "trial search" tools shape what patients ever see
If you care about trial transparency, site integrity, and the future of our ecosystem, this one's going to make you a little uncomfortable—in a good way.

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Note to File podcast – unfiltered clinical research commentary, interviews, and general nonsense for the research community.

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