Georgina Day
Education Officer

Alan D B Malcolm
Chief Executive, Institute of Biology, Queensbury Place, London, UK

https://doi.org/10.36866/pn.57.29

There have been just too many occasions recently where the public has demanded to know how they can trust results. Regrettably, peer review prior to publication is not sufficient for many ‘experiments’ of interest, and is still not clearly relevant to the general traveller on the Clapham omnibus.

The BSE cow/sheep brain mix up was the straw that broke the camel’s back (to mix a metaphor), but there have been court cases that collapsed because the scientific evidence was not robust enough, genetic tests recalled because of lack of confidence in the results, food scares such as plasticisers in baby foods that weren’t, and toxins in cockles that may not have been there after all.

The announcement earlier this year regarding conditions for the award of research funding (grants, contracts, etc.) from BBSRC, DEFRA, NERC and FSA includes the following:

• managers have a responsibility to ensure a climate of good scientific practice;
• project plans must be developed in collaboration with the funding body, including risk assessment;
• the organisation must have processes in place to assure the quality of research;
• all samples and experimental materials must be comprehensively labelled and tracked;
• all research procedures and methods must be documented;
• the project leader must regularly review the records of each scientist.

Individually, some of the above are not too onerous and are probably already in place, but collectively they have the potential to increase bureaucracy considerably and place pressure on the project leader.

The funding bodies maintain that researchers have been given ample opportunity to air their grievances. The head of the UK Deans of Science Committee says that most universities remain completely unaware of the code and the deadline for complying with it!

At present neither MRC nor Wellcome Trust has yet made such a policy, but both organisations have fairly new Chief Executives. Watch this space.

It is unlikely that many potential recipients of Research Funding Body largesse have viewed the news with delight.

We all know that ‘good laboratory practice’, adherence to HSE codes, etc. does not guarantee the absence of mistakes. However, the climate of opinion has shifted such that the absence of relevant controls lays the research funder open to severe criticism should things go awry.

We therefore need to find a way forward that does not involve overworked scientists drowning in yet more (electronic) form filling.

There are two separate components to this. The first involves systems for laboratory practices such as ISO 9000 and its congeners. The second relates to the personnel rather than the methods. The usual approach to this (as used by the medical profession, lawyers, engineers and accountants) is a verifiable programme of Professional Development leading to Chartered status (or inclusion on the Medical Register). All worthy scientists are certain to be doing CPD anyway, and so what is required is appropriate external validation, with the lowest level of intrusion into the working life of the individual. Such a scheme needs to be flexible enough to meet the varying needs of biologists who may be working with dangerous pathogens (whether HIV, foot and mouth, or aspergillus), or assaying metabolites, monitoring cod populations, following butterfly migration, or even teaching (whether in school, higher or tertiary education) the results of such work.

The Institute of Biology (which was granted its Royal Charter 25 years ago) has been working with all these various aspects of the profession during the last few years to develop such a CPD scheme. It has now been adopted by the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory as its preferred scheme for its increasing number of biological scientists. Discussions with both DEFRA and the DTI are under way, and have been initiated with the FSA.

A pilot scheme to test CPD among more than 50 scientists from differing walks of life has been carried out, and the collected experience and wisdom is now incorporated into the final scheme.

The official launch is scheduled for January 2005.

Further information can be found on the IOB website: http://www.iob.org