March 9, 2017

expert reaction to letter about science funding, efficiency and waste

A letter published in the Lancet asks what funders are doing to minimise waste in research.

Dr Frances Rawle, Head of Corporate Governance and Policy at the Medical Research Council, said:

“The questions the researchers were asking are good ones – though they admit that the answers mostly came down to their own interpretation and judgement of what appears on an organisation’s website.

“Many of the observations relate to medical research involving people where it is particularly useful to involve patients or the public in identifying which research questions need to be answered  as well as in deciding some of the practical details of how the research should be done.

“But we fund research across the whole spectrum of health and medicine – not just research involving patients, such as clinical trials – but also ‘basic research’ which looks at how chemical and biological processes work in a living organism. The authors say that a lack of lay public on grant committees may be ‘problematic’ because the ‘priorities of patients and clinicians can differ from those of researchers’.  This doesn’t amount to evidence that a failure to include them on such panels results in poor quality or pointless science. As research becomes increasingly specialised, it becomes more difficult to find even other scientists who feel sufficiently qualified to peer review many areas of fundamental science, let alone to engage lay people who would feel qualified to give useful feedback.poli

“Another important aspect of preventing waste is to make sure the published results of biomedical and health research are reliable and reproducible. In 2015 we jointly sponsored a symposium which identified some causes of irreproducibility and possible measures for improvement. We have subsequently reviewed our policies and processes and have introduced a number of changes aimed at further promoting rigorous research and improving reproducibility.

“We strongly promote the principles of research transparency in order to make the research process and findings as open, understandable and reproducible as possible. We support data sharing initiatives to increase the availability of study data for re-use to avoid duplication of research effort and to stimulate new discoveries.

”We stipulate that all results of MRC-funded studies (whether positive or negative) must be published without unreasonable delay (generally within 12 months of completion).”

* The letter ‘What are funders doing to minimise waste in research?’ by Mona Nasser et al. published in the Lancet on Thursday 9 March 2017.

Declared interests

None received.