The Science Media Centre is not restricted to reacting to the headlines, and has helped scientists to more proactively set the agenda by bringing new science or evidence to journalists. This comes from our regular briefings, which take a variety of forms and cover a wide range of topics. Many are background briefings introducing journalists to the best experts and science on controversial issues like nuclear waste, nanotechnology, emerging diseases, or animal research, for example. They may also be news briefings where the SMC works with scientists to give the national media a new story on developments within science, whether it’s a report on climate change, a paper on stem cells being published in a leading journal, or science funding cuts in the latest budget. In addition, the SMC encourages leading experts to ‘speak out’ to the media about developments they believe may pose a threat to scientific research – not something science has been renowned for.
In light of today’s announcement regarding the MHRA’s decision to grant a temporary authorisation to supply in response to public … read more
Proteins form the machinery that keep all animals, plants and bacteria alive and well. Inside each of the cells that … read more
This briefing covered the latest interim data from the largest community coronavirus testing programme, REACT. This batch of data is … read more
Journalists from around the world were invited to join a media briefing webinar on the positive high-level results from an … read more
We have heard a lot about vaccines for the elderly. But there are also prophylactic drugs being tested that could … read more
The REMAP-CAP trial, which began investigating treatments for COVID-19 in March, has been trialling potential treatments in hospitalised patients with … read more
The Oxford vaccine have published data from the phase 2 trial of their COVID-19 vaccine candidate, the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine. … read more
Government plans for mass testing for SARS-CoV-2 – sometimes referred to as Operation Moonshot – signal a major change in … read more
Today we heard an announcement from government about another phase 3 vaccine trial starting in the UK, the Janssen trial. … read more
We recently heard from the REACT-1 scientists with interim results from round 6 of their study looking at virus spread … read more
Two researchers from the Vaccine Confidence Project reported on their studies relating to public confidence in taking a future COVID-19 … read more
It has been well documented that people from ethnic minority groups are disproportionately affected by SARS-CoV-2. A meta-analysis into the … read more
The British Society for Immunology rapidly convened a taskforce on Immunology and COVID-19 to collate and review what is currently … read more
Researchers at the University of Oxford, Department of Psychiatry and NIHR Oxford Health Biomedical Research Centre reported on the findings … read more
OpenSAFELY is a platform which analyses existing NHS electronic health records to look for patterns in patients who are hospitalised … read more
Recent studies looking at the antibody response to SARS-CoV-2 have raised concerns that immune responses following natural infection may not … read more
This briefing covered the latest interim data from the largest community coronavirus testing programme, REACT. This batch of data is … read more
PRINCIPLE is a nationwide, randomised controlled trial run by scientists at the University of Oxford to evaluate potential COVID-19 treatments … read more
Researchers at UCL have developed a new data visualisation dashboard for COVID-19 – the i-sense COVID Response Evaluation Dashboard (COVID … read more
The REACT-2 study at Imperial College London aims to estimate the prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies across England, to estimate the … read more
