Can we trust science if it is not published?
Exploring solutions that keep health research from going unpublished and unused.
Welcome to Foundation Dam's research seminar 2026:
- Title: Can we trust science if it is not published?
- Place: Saga Cinema, Stortingsgata 28, 0161 Oslo
- Date: September 21st 2026, 12.00 - 15.30 (12 PM - 3.30 PM)
Program
12.00 - 12.10
Welcome
Hans Christian Lillehagen, Secretary General/CEO, Foundation Dam (NO)
12.10 - 12.25
Eileen Fugelsnes, Minister of Research and Higher Education (NO)
12.25 - 12.45
How to achieve more open/reproducible research
Jan-Ole Hesselberg, Chief Program Officer, Foundation Dam (NO)
12.45 - 13.25
A Decade of TrialsTracking: Where do we stand after ten years?
dr Nicholas DeVito, Postdoc in Policy, Research Integrity, and Open Science, University of Oxford/AllTrials (UK)
13.25–13.40 BREAK
13.40–13.55
Why is Open Science still the key to move forward
Benedicte Løseth, Executive Director - Research System and Internationalisation, The Research Council of Norway (NO)
13.55–14.15
From Policy to Practice: How a Funder Enforces Trial Transparency
Dorota Goble, Senior Research Manager, The National Institute for Health and Care Research (UK)
14.15–14.45
Conversation
Ingvil Sæterdal, Head of unit, Norwegian Medical Products Agency (NO)
14.45–15.00
What should be the main focus, going forward?
Jan-Ole Hesselberg, Chief Program Officer, Foundation Dam (NO)
Video of the seminar
Video: Stiftelsen Dam
Unpublished clinical trials are, in Ben Goldacre's words, «a cancer at the core of evidence-based medicine».
A decade after Stiftelsen Dam first convened Norwegian health researchers around this challenge at the 2016 seminar Få forskningen fram (Get the Research Out), 28 per cent of clinical trials launched in Norway still fail to share their results.
Thousands of patients have taken part in research that never see the light of day.
Norwegian law requires trial results to be shared. Thirty-one Norwegian organisations and institutions signed the AllTrials petition in 2016, which was delivered to the Norwegian parliament. All stakeholders in the research society agrees the problem must be solved. But still, we tolerate legal breaches and unethical conduct related to publishing, while patients pay the price.
Ten years later, it is time to take stock and chart the way forward. This seminar shifts the focus from the problem to the solutions: what is already working, what funders, institutions, and researchers can do differently, and what it will take to close the gap between intention and practice.
The seminar gathers an international audience of around 200 health researchers, research institutions, funders, and patient organisations involved in projects supported by Foundation Dam.
It is held in connection with the annual meeting of EViR (Ensuring Value in Research), an international network of major research funders from Canada, the United Kingdom and several other European countries, working together to make health research more valuable to society. Previous EViR meetings have been hosted in London, Washington, Dublin and Stockholm. This year, Foundation Dam is the host in Oslo.
The conversation builds on the 2024 report Medical research waste in Nordic countries, co-published by Foundation Dam, which set out the scale of the problem across the region.
Why aren't good intentions enough — and what will it take to get there?