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- Campaigning on the Physical Agents Directive
- Cancer sniffing dogs
- Voice of Young Science USA, in London
- Asking for Evidence at the British Science Festival and beyond...
- Standing up for science in South Africa
- Thanks for the wheelie big effort...
- Let's always ask for evidence
- Making sense of the screening debate
- International science writers call for 'kick ass' journalism
- New Year
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Campaigning on the Physical Agents Directive
Posted by on 12 December 2011
Dr Stephen Keevil is President Elect of the Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine and has worked with us on several projects including Making Sense of Radiation and our Physical Agents Directive (PAD) campaign. Here, Steve talks about how we started working together and where the PAD campaign is now:
I well remember the day back in 2005 when I faced the cameras for the first time. The medical imaging community’s attempts to draw attention to the potential impact of the EU Physical Agents (EMF) Directive on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) had fallen on deaf ears. With the help and encouragement of Sense About Science, then a relative newcomer on the science policy scene, we were staging a press conference to highlight the issue. Frankly, I was terrified!
There are details of the issue and campaign on the Sense About Science website. Essentially, in a well-intentioned effort to protect workers from ill effects of electromagnetic fields (EMF), European legislators had adopted overly-cautious restrictions that threatened to curtail the clinical use and further development of MRI severely. Yet MRI equipment is constructed to international standards, and combined with safe working practices this ensures that scanners are already safe for patients and workers. Additional exposure limits were unnecessary, and ironically threatened to lead to increased use of x-ray imaging to replace prohibited MRI procedures, with a negative overall impact on patient and worker safety. It was a classic example of policy being made without proper consideration of the scientific evidence and broader impact. I was sceptical about the effect that our press conference would have, but it led directly to ministerial engagement and a damning select committee report, providing a platform for further lobbying at European level by the Alliance for MRI and eventually to postponement of the Directive in 2008. We breathed a sigh of relief: a feather in the cap for Sense About Science and an apparent reprieve for one of the most powerful diagnostic techniques available to medicine.
And yet, six years on from the press conference, final resolution of this problem seems about to slip through our fingers. Earlier this year, in a move fully supported by the MRI community, the European Commission introduced a proposal to exclude MRI from the exposure limits in the Directive and instead address MRI safety through harmonised European guidelines. Such legislative proposals require the agreement of EU member states, making up the Council of the EU, and of the European Parliament. The Commission proposal has met with strong and unexpected resistance in the Council. It is a frustrating case of déjà vu for those of us who spent years convincing the British authorities and the European Commission that the scientific evidence is on our side, only to find the same misunderstandings voiced again in Council. This time, poor grasp of the science is overlaid by a complex web of political positioning and national interests. For example, there is a move to replace EU-wide exemption of MRI with a provision for individual member states to allow exemptions for particular industrial sectors on a national basis: a move that fits well with the present UK government’s aim to ‘repatriate’ powers from Brussels, and one imagines would play well on the Tory backbenches. It also, of course, defeats the purpose of the Directive to harmonise standards across the EU, and the Commission will not accept this. Deadlock seems inevitable.
Under the terms of the postponement in 2008, a solution must be found by the end of April 2012: time is definitely not on our side. Yet all is not lost: we have strong support from patient groups across Europe, who have benefited from MRI and appreciate what its curtailment would mean (see from p10 of Science And Society), and with their help have won over a number of key MEPs (for example Marina Yannakoudakis). Next month Denmark takes over the rotating presidency of the Council from Poland, which we hope will bring a fresh approach there too. With such strong support, there’s still hope that a sensible solution will be found to this long-standing problem.
Cancer sniffing dogs
Posted by on 18 November 2011
Dr Shaun Treweek is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Dundee and Assistant Director of the Tayside Clinical Trials Unit, and leading a project to improve the way research information from clinical guidelines is presented to the public. Here he takes a closer look at a trial which suggested that dogs may have the ability to detect signals of cancer, and explains what can be learnt from this about the process of blinding in clinical trials.
A Daily Mail article on the 16 November 2011 reported that dogs can detect cancer. Since the alternative is a biopsy, it’s easy to conclude that this is just one more reason to like Labradors. And as Samuel L. Jackson’s character in Pulp Fiction pointed out; a dog’s got personality. Personality goes a long way.
Daisy, the dog featured in the article, correctly picked a vial of urine from a cancer patient from a selection of samples of healthy individuals five times. But did she pick the right vial because she can sniff cancer or because she picked up a sign from the trainer as to which vial was the one to pick? This is a problem common to many clinical trials: If participants know they are on the new treatment they might be more inclined to say they feel better, or have less pain. If clinicians know a patient is taking a new treatment, they might care for the patient differently to those receiving the comparison treatment.
Blinding, where a participant doesn’t know which treatment he or she is receiving, or double-blinding, where the clinicians don’t know either, help to fix this problem. In Daisy’s sniff test, the trainer knows which vial Daisy should pick - in other words, the trainer was unblinded. Daisy doesn’t know so she is blind. It’s easy to imagine a more effective, double-blind test where the trainer doesn’t know either; the 12 vials could just have been numbered and given to him. In this case, if Daisy picked vial 6 each time we might begin to think that vial 6 was from a cancer patient, but we wouldn’t know this until we were ‘unblinded’ after the tests were complete and once the opportunity to influence the result has past. Crucially in a trial, that gives us more confidence in the result.
In the double blinded sniff test, Daisy misses out on treats because noone knows whether she’s right or wrong until the end. Maybe she’d settle for one really big biscuit?
Voice of Young Science USA, in London
Posted by Volunteer on 14 November 2011
Morgan Thompson is a graduate student at Harvard University and is outreach director of the graduate student organization, Science in the News, which promotes engagement of early career researchers in science education and communication. She is currently visiting the Sense About Science office with another USA researcher, Dr. Joanna Christodoulou from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to find out more about Sense About Science and Voice of Young Science (VoYS) before returning to the USA to help with plans to set up VoYS USA.
From arriving in London on Guy Fawkes Night to attending a parliamentary event, my first week in London with the Sense About Science team has been jam packed with once-in-a-lifetime experiences. Joanna and I have been invited into the Sense About Science team for two weeks in order to get a sense of how the office functions and experience a VoYS workshop. While we’re here we’ll prepare a workshop guide that can be used by others to run ‘Standing up for Science’ media workshops, as part of ‘train the trainer’ initiatives.
Last Tuesday, I attended the Sense About Science Annual Reception at the Royal Pharmaceutical Society. This year’s Standing up for Science award winner was comedian, Robin Ince. Robin himself represented the theme of the evening – stepping into new territory – having really taken a leap into the world of science and scientists in order to make the wonder of the natural world come alive and be more accessible to a broader public, as well as generally promote curiosity and critical thought. If you aren’t familiar with Robin’s work check out his Radio 4 show with Brian Cox ‘The Infinite Monkey Cage’. Besides meeting Robin and hearing about his plans for an upcoming USA tour, I was able to discuss the plans for starting up VoYS USA with many Sense About Science supporters and VoYS members, new and old. Everyone was immensely excited about the idea of creating a VoYS USA network that can unite existing efforts and the enthusiasm of early career researchers in the States, overcoming unique challenges of vast geographic area and differences in political structures.
Then on Wednesday we were off to Parliament to attend a Libel Reform Campaign event. The Libel Reform Campaign is run by Sense About Science, English PEN, and Index on Censorship and the meeting was hosted by Dr Julian Huppert MP. The event, chaired by Dr Evan Harris, brought together the voices of many supporters of the campaign including, libel defendants Dr Simon Singh and Dr Peter Wilmshurst, Which?, Global Witness, Citizens Advice, Mumsnet, Nature, Facebook, AOL, the Publishers Association and Liberty. The message of the day was a rallying cry to redouble libel reform efforts to get the issue on the parliament’s legislative agenda for next year and many interested parties turned out to hear it. A huge influx of parliamentarians entered the room as the event began, blocking up the door since the room was already full to capacity. A great turnout for an interdisciplinary effort that has already had tremendous success raising government awareness of the issue and influencing the outcome of the Joint Scrutiny Committee’s report on a proposed defamation bill. Read more about libel reform and how Sense About Science is supporting the cause.
We have another whole week here in the UK! This week, I will head off to Glasgow with Julia and Victoria for a VoYS ‘Standing up for Science’ workshop (the first Sense About Science workshop to ever be held in Glasgow!). Check out more about the workshop here.
Asking for Evidence at the British Science Festival and beyond...
Posted by Victoria Murphy on 20 September 2011
I started at Sense About Science on Monday 12th September as the new Events and Campaigns Officer, and it’s been a baptism of fire. Síle Lane and I went to Bradford on Tuesday to launch the Ask for Evidence campaign and run some events. I helped run the press briefing Síle delivered – she encouraged them to ask for the evidence behind claims, introduced them to all the wonderful campaign supporters, and reminded them of our past evidence hunting adventures.
Then we ran a session called ‘“Scientists say…” – But how do they know?’ with a really lively audience, and had fantastic contributions from the panel. Síle chaired the session while I took calls from press and supporters, and photographed the session. The audience quizzed the panel on how to ask for evidence, ensure quality peer review, and why doing this is important.
Chatting afterwards with people from the session’s audience, we heard some great stories about evidence hunting, and on the cusp of the launch of the campaign met many new supporters.
Síle and I felt like hot property throughout the day, being pulled from place to place to talk about the campaign. Síle squeezed in an interview for the Guardian Science Podcast, then spoke in a dynamic and passionate debate for the motion that ‘ this house believes the same level of evidence should be applied to CAM as to conventional medicine’ – and won! Meanwhile, Professor Hardaker and I were excited to be asked to be part of the Festival’s xchange podcast (day 3), talking about why evidence matters and the nature of science and evidence. It was a fun end to an exciting day, and an excellent way to spend the eve of the launch of Ask for Evidence.
Back in the office as part of an amazing first week I was involved in drumming up support for ‘Ask for Evidence’, writing a ‘For the Record’ piece, and getting to know an amazing team of passionate and energetic people. I think is a perfect introduction to campaigning for critical thinking about scientific evidence, and celebrating this progress with a series of events.
Standing up for science in South Africa
Posted by Julia Wilson on 09 September 2011
I’ve just got back from a trip to South Africa. For a while now, we’ve been getting requests to run workshops there, as researchers really want to set up a VoYS network. I spent a few days working with them and sharing my experiences.
In South Africa 24% of 15 year olds are illiterate, life expectancy is just 52 years and 1 in 5 people aged 15 – 49 yrs old is HIV positive. When Thandi Mgwebi, National Research Foundation, outlined these challenges in her talk at the Witwatersrand Post doc symposium in Johannesburg, I was really taken a back. I’d also never realised just how few researchers there are in South Africa – there are just 13 post-docs at the University of Witwatersrand.
Talking to members of the scientific community in Pretoria, it was clear that with so few people in research, there is a lot of pressure on them to make a difference and engage with the public. They also stressed to me how they need to be careful not to march in all-knowing and discredit traditional healing practices that are not evidence based, without considering how the community would react. Scientists are carrying out research on many of the traditional plant-based remedies in South Africa, to try and bridge this gap between medicine and myth.
I helped run a workshop for early career researchers at Wits and they got to hear from scientists and journalists with a wealth of media experience. What struck me was how similar their messages were to those that are raised at our UK workshops. But there were obviously also some South African specific examples – HIV specialist Professor Glenda Gray described difficult dealings with an AIDS denialist journalist and the importance of getting vital health information to the public.
I was taken by the researchers’ enthusiasm and determinism to stand up for science and set up a VoYS network in South Africa. I’ll be keeping an eye on how they get on. Maybe next time, they can come to the UK to tell us what they’ve been up to?
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