Standing up for evidence-based science

05 July 2010

By Blanka Sengerová

In the past, I have written on this forum about the activities of Sense About Science and Voice of Young Science, in the context of the libel law reform campaign (http://www.vitae.ac.uk/researchers/156431-213711/English-libel-laws-and-science.html). I have continued my occasional involvement with the network, and a couple of weeks ago, I attended the Sense About Science annual lecture.

In it, Dr Fiona Godlee, the editor of the British Medical Journal discussed the inherent problems that come with conflict of interest and the publication of medical information. I was intrigued to hear, for instance, how many of the WHO panel that recommended when and in what way the swine flu pandemic should be declared, had financial interests in the pharmaceutical companies who were developing vaccines for the swine flu. She also discussed the problems inherent in the fact that pharmaceutical companies evaluate their own products, which inevitably results in the bias in the publication of positive trial results and the ‘sweeping under the table’ of negative results. She proposed that truly independent trials and advisory panels should be set up (with financial support of the pharmaceutical companies) to ensure that a fairer representation of the trial data reaches the public domain, in addition to a return to investigative journalism by academic journals.

Of course there were issues with some of the things she said, that were brought up in the Q&A session, but I think her message remains important and was pleased to hear that the Guardian have made the lecture available as a podcast and wanted to pass on the details to any of you that are interested on this forum. The lecture can be found here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/audio/2010/jun/24/sense-about-science-lecture-2010

and the slides can be accessed from this webpage:

http://www.senseaboutscience.org.uk/index.php/site/other/297/

As for myself, I was also greatly enjoying the reception following the lecture. With an interest in bringing sensible (evidence-based) science to the general public, I always enjoy chatting to the people who do this in the matter of their day to day work. Elsewhere, Andy said he found it hard to do networking. To me, this sort of event seems like effortless networking, and although I don’t go in there thinking “I need to corner that person, they’re going to be able to get me a job later in life”, I do think that having some of these contacts can’t harm me. I generally just have an enjoyable time talking to people, and am pleased that they appear genuinely interested in what I have been doing with Voice of Young Science (or within my research, depending on the person). As a result of this, I was chatting to some lady who turned out to be one of the scientists who resigned from the government advisory committee following the firing of David Nutt, then I got to put a name to a face when chatting to David Greene who also goes by the blogger name Jack of Kent, and amusingly I chatted to the new MP for Cambridge whom I last saw at a nucleic acids conference discussing G quadruplexes!

If you’re interested in the work that Voice of Young Science do, then get in touch or look some of it up here -  http://www.senseaboutscience.org.uk/index.php/site/about/11/