STOCKWATCH: How to hide the meaning of clinical data

Investors like to be informed. So it is more than a little frustrating when public companies' clinical trial announcements omit important details; the way the trial was conducted, for instance, or the type of statistical analysis or the nature of the control with which a treatment was compared (scripintelligence.com, 16 July 2013).

Take just two examples, both released in the week of 12 August. One concerned Eli Lilly's anti-EGFR antibody necitumumab; the other, a stem cell product from a small company called...