Scaling API-first – The story of a global engineering organization
Making Sense of Science and Evidence 2010 Annual Meeting
1. Making sense of science
and evidence
Tracey Brown
Sense About Science
16th
November 2010
2. New fears over additives
in children's food
The Guardian, 8th May 2007
GM vandals force
science firms to
reduce research
The Times, 16th Oct 2005
Fears over gender bender
Chemical in our food packaging
The Daily Express, 30th Jan 2007
Wi-Fi: Children at riskfrom 'electronic smog'The Independent 22nd
April 2007
Public debate
on hybrid
embryos
BBC Online, 11th January 2007
Chlorine in tap
water
‘nearly doubles
the risk of birth
defects’
Daily Mail 31st May 2008
Mouthwash
‘can
raise cancer
risk’
Metro 13th
January 2009
Bowel cancerdoubles amongthe under-30sDaily Mail 31st
March 2009
Cosmetics ‘expose
women to 175
chemicals in a day’
Daily Mail 4th
September 2006
3. ORBIT CLOSE
Woman ‘given bovine TB by garden badger’
Scientists create pigs with
cystic fibrosis in search
for life-saving new
treatments
Fish Oil enhances children’s
speech
How a ‘cocktail’ of food
additives could harm
young brains
4.
5.
6. News Media
Press Officers
Conference
Organisers
Higher Education
Teachers
Parliamentarians
Governments
NGOs
Medical
Charities
Health Service
Companies
Policy Groups
Community
Organisations
TV programming
Discussion
Forums
Museums
Libraries
Celebrities
Publishers
Lifestyle Sector
Websites
People interested in peer review
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21. What people ask about…
Help me get to grips with it
• Should we worry?
• Can I get something from
scientists?
• Is it a scare story?
• Is it science?
• Who says it’s safe?
How much do we know?
• What do scientists actually
know?
• What tests have been done?
• How sure are they?
Balance of scientific
opinion
• Is it majority opinion?
• How are scientists split?
Legitimacy
• Is it a proper study?
• How can I tell?
• Have they talked to
scientists?
• What kind of study is it?
22. Peer trouble
How fail safe is our current system at
ensuring the quality and integrity of
research? Not very, says John Crace
The Guardian, February 11 2003
Lies, all lies. But who do you tell?
The Times, May 14 2007
Can peer review police fraud?
Nature Neuroscience, February 1 2006
A question of ethics
Medical journals are an immoral
marketing tool for drug companies,
according to a former editor of theBMJ.The Guardian, June 30 2005
UK autism fracas fuels calls for peer review reform
Nature Medicine, 1 April 2004
Peer Review Under
StressScience, April 20 2007
Casualties of fraud
Don't believe all you read in medical journals
- their methods of assuring quality are often
less than reliable.
The Guardian, October 30 2006
25. Overall satisfaction with peer review
(n=4037)
8%
61%
22%
8% 1%
Very Satisfied
Satisfied
Neither satisfied nor
dissatisfied
Dissatisfied
Very Dissatisfied
26. Purpose of peer review
33
37
62
57
82
71
64
33
38
58
54
77
64
61
79
81
84
81
93
92
86
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
Detects fraud
Detects plagiarism
Determines the importance of findings
Ensures previous work is acknowledged
Improves the quality of the published paper
Determines the originality of the manuscript
That it selects the best manuscripts for the journal
Should be able
Is able
Currently
fulfils
n = 4037
% agree
27. Making sense of science
and evidence
Tracey Brown
Sense About Science
16th
November 2010
Editor's Notes
Not everyone will be in position to talk to media – whether because don’ t feel comfortable, or research too sensitive, or insitution not happy with it – often case with hospitals + NHS
Still things can do to stand up for science. You are more expert than public + know how science works – can look at study and see if makes sense, or sport bad science.
Give example of something VoYS worked on last year.
There goes the science bit project – a group of us decided to start challenging dodgy science claims last year.
We swapped examples of offending claims… from how Nestle’s ski yoghurts claimed to “optimise the release of energy” to Champney’s detox patches which claimed to draw out harmful toxins overnight and started to phone up the manufacturers of the products to hunt down the evidence for the claims.
What they found was that all the products they investigated the manufacturers seemed completely unprepared to be questioned and no-one was able to provide solid evidence.
Found scientists reluctanct to talk about peer review because
False promises fear of being seen as whitewashing system that is not fault proof
Fraud and error when scientists , journal editors and publishers do talk about peer review it’s focussed on the challenges/ problems the system faces – especially around cases of ethics and fraud… Hwang Woo Suk
Caught up in process – think it is boring.
No public eye-view
It is recommended that systematic attempts are made to develop effective explanations of peer review and to communicate these to a wider public.”
Scientists thought we were mad when we said there was a public interest but even we didn’t expect to get press interest in this! So it was great to receive news coverage of the WK party report and to discussion about this – particularly amongst scientists, publishers and journal editors