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Dartmouth Researchers Develop New Tool to Identify Genetic Risk Factors

 

January 30, 2014 Lebanon, NH

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 Photo:  Four out of 11 modules identified by an algorithm to the filtered network. This classification shows relationships between diseases and traits based on shared etiology for certain phenotypes. The diseases and traits in these clusters have more connections to each other than to others in the network: the bolder the line, the stronger the connection

Dartmouth researchers developed a new biological pathway-based computational model, called the Pathway-based Human Phenotype Network (PHPN), to identify underlying genetic connections between different diseases as reported in BioDataMining; this week. The PHPN mines the data present in large publicly available disease datasets to find shared SNPs, genes, or pathways and expresses them in a visual form.

"The PHPN offers a bird's eye view of the diseases and phenotype's relationships at the systems level," said Christian Darabos, PhD, post-doctoral fellow, Institute for Quantitative Biomedical Sciences (iQBS), Dartmouth College.

The PHPN uses information in human disease networks in conjunction with network science tools to show clusters of related disorders sharing common genetic backgrounds. It does so without the typical clinical classification of disease, in which all heart disease or all cancers are grouped together, based on clinical presentation. Dartmouth geneticists instead rely on the information contained in the PHPN's topology to automatically classify traits and diseases by their shared genetic mechanisms, such as common genes or pathways. PHPN explores the connections between the layers of the networks to find patterns and relationships.

"The intuitive network representation of the knowledge mined from several large-scale datasets makes the information accessible to anyone. It lies at the crossroads of computational genetics, systems biology, information theory, and network science," Darabos said.

PHPN supports the integration of genomic and phenotypic data to uncover significant links between traits, attributes, and disease. This offer tremendous potential in identifying risk factors for certain diseases. At the same time, it can reveal important targets for therapeutic intervention.

"As a proof of concept, the PHPN has proven capable of identifying well documented interactions, and many novel links that remain to be explored in depth," said Darabos.

The PHPN reveals biological connections between seemingly disparate displays of genetic properties and offers a unique view of the architecture of disease.

This tool can help researchers identify areas for further investigation based on connections it uncovers. "The PHPN is a hypothesis-generating tool, potentially capable of identifying yet uncharacterized common drug targets," said Darabos.

As a next step, iQBS researchers will refine statistical methods, isolate networks for optimal results, and compare previous work on phenotype networks.

Authors of the paper, "The Multiscale Backbone of the Human Phenotype Network based on Biological Pathways," include: Jason Moore, PhD; Scott Williams, PhD; Christian Darabos, PhD, Marquitta White, Britney Graham, and Derek Leung.

http://www.biodatamining.org/content/pdf/1756-0381-7-1.pdf

The study was supported by NIH grants RO1 EY022300, LM009012, LM010098, AI59694, GM103506, and GM103534

Developing Knowledge: IQBS

Institute for Quantitative Biomedical Sciences (iQBS) at Dartmouth College develops, advances and supports interdisciplinary education, research and infrastructure in the quantitative biomedical sciences including bioengineering, bioinformatics, biophysics, biostatistics, computational biology, genomics, epidemiology, proteomics, structural biology, systems biology, and related areas.

Implementing Knowledge: Norris Cotton Cancer Center

Norris Cotton Cancer Center combines advanced cancer research at Dartmouth College and the Geisel School of Medicine with patient-centered cancer care provided at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, at Dartmouth-Hitchcock regional locations in Manchester, Nashua, and Keene, NH, and St. Johnsbury, VT, and at 12 partner hospitals throughout New Hampshire and Vermont. It is one of 41 centers nationwide to earn the National Cancer Institute's "Comprehensive Cancer Center" designation. Learn more about Norris Cotton Cancer Center research, programs, and clinical trials online at cancer.dartmouth.edu.

For more information contact Donna Dubuc at (603) 653-3615.

Drug - TXM-CB3 lowers risk of Alzheimer's in Diabetics

Individuals with diabetes are at higher risk for developing Alzheimer's disease or other types of dementia, due to brain damage resulting from high blood sugars. Researchers at Hebrew University in Jerusalem found a drug that could prevent some of this brain damage from occurring in rats. Diabetic rats have high activity levels of enzymes known as MAPK kinases, which can lead to inflammation in the brain and damages tissue. The researchers worked to develop a drug that would turn down the activity of the MAPK kinases, which they called TXM-CB3 in a new study in Redox Biology. Rats that took this drug had decreased levels of neural cell death. As well, the researchers showed that injections of the sugar-lowering drug rosiglitazone lowered MAPK activity and decreased neuroinflammation. This study is the first to provide a functional link between high blood sugars and brain damage, as well as providing potential new ways to decrease the effects of high blood sugar.
Read more: http://bit.ly/1basQkx Journal article: Thioredoxin-Mimetic peptide CB3 Lowers MAPKinsase activity in the Zucker Rat Brain. Redox Biology, 2014. doi: 10.1016/j.redox.2013.12.018 Image credit:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Low levels of pro-inflammatory agent interleukin-6 help cognition in rats

                             
                               

Posted: Tuesday, January 28, 2014

                                                                 

Jennifer Donegan, graduate student at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio
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Contact: Will Sansom, (210) 567-2579

SAN ANTONIO (Jan. 28, 2014) — Although inflammation is frequently a cause of disease in the body, research from The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio indicates that low levels of a pro-inflammatory cytokine in the brain are important for cognition. Cytokines are proteins produced by the immune system.
Jennifer Donegan, graduate student, and David Morilak, Ph.D., professor of pharmacology in the School of Medicine, found that neutralizing the cytokine interleukin-6 in the brain impaired reversal learning in both stressed and nonstressed rats. Reversal learning is a form of cognitive flexibility that is diminished in psychiatric diseases such as depression, schizophrenia and post-traumatic stress disorder. Cognitive flexibility is the ability to change previously learned thoughts and behaviors in response to changes in the environment. 
“When we started the project, we thought cognitive flexibility would be impaired by stress-induced inflammation in a region of the brain called the prefrontal cortex,” Donegan said. “We decided to block interleukin-6 during stress to prevent the cognitive deficit, and to our surprise this made things worse. This suggested that it may actually be beneficial to maintain a low level of this pro-inflammatory cytokine in the brain.”
As a key next step, the scientists were then able to fix the cognitive deficit caused by stress by restoring a low level of the cytokine specifically in the prefrontal cortex. Both scientists caution, however, that there is still much to learn about interleukin-6’s role in cognition and in diseases like depression. “We’ve replicated just one piece of a very complex disease so we can understand the biology,” Dr. Morilak said. “We found that, in one brain region, one cytokine facilitates cognitive flexibility and is beneficial after chronic stress. But we delivered the cytokine specifically into that brain region using a virus, which we cannot do in people. And its role in inflammation may be very different than in normal conditions. There’s still a lot of work to do.”
Donegan is on track to receive her Ph.D. later this year. She is lead author and Dr. Morilak is senior author of the study, published this month in the Journal of Neuroscience. The research is funded by the National Institute of Mental Health and the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation.# # #For current news from the UT Health Science Center San Antonio, please visit our news release website, like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.# # #The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, one of the country’s leading health sciences universities, ranks in the top 3 percent of all institutions worldwide receiving National Institutes of Health funding. The university’s schools of medicine, nursing, dentistry, health professions and graduate biomedical sciences have produced more than 29,000 graduates. The $765 million operating budget supports eight campuses in San Antonio, Laredo, Harlingen and Edinburg. For more information on the many ways “We make lives better®,” visit www.uthscsa.edu

Hair regeneration: Converting adult human cells to hair-follicle-generating stem cells

 

Implications for hair regeneration

		IMAGE:   This shows hair shafts (arrows) formed by induced pluripotent stem cell-derived epithelial stem cells. Click here for more information.

PHILADELPHIA - If the content of many a situation comedy, not to mention late-night TV advertisements, is to be believed, there's an epidemic of balding men, and an intense desire to fix their follicular deficiencies.

One potential approach to reversing hair loss uses stem cells to regenerate the missing or dying hair follicles. But it hasn't been possible to generate sufficient number of hair-follicle-generating stem cells – until now.

Xiaowei "George" Xu, MD, PhD, associate professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and Dermatology at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, and colleagues published in Nature Communications a method for converting adult cells into epithelial stem cells (EpSCs), the first time anyone has achieved this in either humans or mice.

The epithelial stem cells, when implanted into immunocompromised mice, regenerated the different cell types of human skin and hair follicles, and even produced structurally recognizable hair shaft, raising the possibility that they may eventually enable hair regeneration in people.

Xu and his team, which includes researchers from Penn's departments of Dermatology and Biology, as well as the New Jersey Institute of Technology, started with human skin cells called dermal fibroblasts. By adding three genes, they converted those cells into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), which have the capability to differentiate into any cell types in the body. They then converted the iPS cells into epithelial stem cells, normally found at the bulge of hair follicles.

Starting with procedures other research teams had previously worked out to convert iPSCs into keratinocytes, Xu's team demonstrated that by carefully controlling the timing of the growth factors the cells received, they could force the iPSCs to generate large numbers of epithelial stem cells. In the Xu study, the team's protocol succeeded in turning over 25% of the iPSCs into epithelial stem cells in 18 days. Those cells were then purified using the proteins they expressed on their surfaces. 

Comparison of the gene expression patterns of the human iPSC-derived epithelial stem cells with epithelial stem cells obtained from human hair follicles showed that the team had succeeded in producing the cells they set out to make in the first place. When they mixed those cells with mouse follicular inductive dermal cells and grafted them onto the skin of immunodeficient mice, they produced functional human epidermis (the outermost layers of skin cells) and follicles structurally similar to human hair follicles.

"This is the first time anyone has made scalable amounts of epithelial stem cells that are capable of generating the epithelial component of hair follicles," Xu says. And those cells have many potential applications, he adds, including wound healing, cosmetics, and hair regeneration. 

That said, iPSC-derived epithelial stem cells are not yet ready for use in human subjects, Xu adds. First, a hair follicle contains epithelial cells -- a cell type that lines the body's vessels and cavities – as well as a specific kind of adult stem cell called dermal papillae. Xu and his team mixed iPSC-derived EpSCs and mouse dermal cells to generate hair follicles to achieve the growth of the follicles.

"When a person loses hair, they lose both types of cells." Xu explains. "We have solved one major problem, the epithelial component of the hair follicle. We need to figure out a way to also make new dermal papillae cells, and no one has figured that part out yet."

What's more, the process Xu used to create iPSCs involves genetic modification of human cells with genes encoding oncogenic proteins and so needs more refinement. Still, he notes that stem-cell researchers are developing more workarounds, including strategies using only chemical agents.

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The study was funded by the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (R01-AR054593, P30-AR05721).

Penn Medicine is one of the world's leading academic medical centers, dedicated to the related missions of medical education, biomedical research, and excellence in patient care. Penn Medicine consists of the Raymond and Ruth Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania (founded in 1765 as the nation's first medical school) and the University of Pennsylvania Health System, which together form a $4.3 billion enterprise.

The Perelman School of Medicine has been ranked among the top five medical schools in the United States for the past 16 years, according to U.S. News & World Report's survey of research-oriented medical schools. The School is consistently among the nation's top recipients of funding from the National Institutes of Health, with $398 million awarded in the 2012 fiscal year.

The University of Pennsylvania Health System's patient care facilities include: The Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania -- recognized as one of the nation's top "Honor Roll" hospitals by U.S. News & World Report; Penn Presbyterian Medical Center; Chester County Hospital; Penn Wissahickon Hospice; and Pennsylvania Hospital -- the nation's first hospital, founded in 1751. Additional affiliated inpatient care facilities and services throughout the Philadelphia region include Chestnut Hill Hospital and Good Shepherd Penn Partners, a partnership between Good Shepherd Rehabilitation Network and Penn Medicine.

Penn Medicine is committed to improving lives and health through a variety of community-based programs and activities. In fiscal year 2012, Penn Medicine provided $827 million to benefit our community.

in case of Martial LAW in UKRAINE

If Ukraine declares Martial Law they may shut down the ISP and  internet but for no more then a day or two because it will cut off ATMS and all banking transactions, so the Oligarchs wil scream,just as they learned in Egypt. They may block off Facebook so use START PAGE as your anon browser or TOR Project.org   https://www.torproject.org/ to get to FB.

PASS on to Contacts in Ukraine.

Detecting Chemicals, Measuring Strain with a Pencil and Paper

 

Classroom project evolves into journal paper about surprising applications for everyday objects

Sometimes solving a problem doesn’t require a high-tech solution. Sometimes, you have to look no farther than your desktop.

Three students from Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering —an undergraduate, a master’s student, and their teaching assistant — have proven that pencils and regular office paper can be used to create functional devices that can measure strain and detect hazardous chemical vapors.

Jiaxing Huang

A paper describing their findings, “Pencil Drawn Strain Gauges and Chemiresistors on Paper,” was published January 22 in Scientific Reports, an open-access journal from the Nature Publishing Group. 

 

The project originated in fall 2011 in McCormick’s Introduction to Conducting Polymers course (MSE 337) during a discussion about the conductive properties of graphene, a one-atom thick layer of carbon that can be parsed from regular pencil lead. (A misnomer, pencil “lead” actually comprises graphite in a clay binder.)

“When you draw a line on a piece of paper, the graphite may shed numerous graphene sheets,” said Jiaxing Huang, associate professor of materials science and engineering. “A student asked, ‘Can we use that graphene for something?’ That started an exploration of what pencil traces can do.”

One team of students — including lead authors Cheng-Wei Lin (MS materials science ’13) and Zhibo Zhao (BS materials science ’13) — started by measuring the conductivity of a pencil trace on paper, then used the traces to create a rudimentary electrode. They learned that curling the paper in one direction increased the trace’s conductivity by compressing the conductive graphene particles. Curling the paper in the other direction loosened the graphene network and decreased conductivity.

A strain gauge made of pencil and paper is deformed to compress the graphene network.

The students then turned to the traces of a bendable toy pencil. (These novelty pencils are flexible because the graphite is mixed not with clay, but with a polymer binder.) Again, conductivity could be increased and decreased by manipulating the paper, but the students found it also was affected by the presence of volatile chemical vapors, such as those from toxic industrial solvents.

 

When the chemical is present, the polymer binder absorbs the vapors and expands, pushing the graphene network apart and decreasing conductivity. The conductivity decreased the most in the presence of vapors that are more readily absorbed by the polymer binder.

These types of chemical sensor — also called “chemiresistors” — are key elements in “electronic noses” for detecting toxic chemical vapors. In creating chemiresistors, researchers often use more expensive materials, such as networks of carbon nanotubes or metal nanoparticles, and need to disperse them in polymer matrix to form a network. 

A pencil-drawn chemiresistor can detect the presence of hazardous gases.

“Now our students showed that this can be done simply with a pencil and paper — and it works,” Huang said. “This is a great example showing how curiosity leads to innovative work.” 

 

Other applications of the pencil-and-paper technology could be more unconventional. “It could help to inspire some new form of art,” Huang said. “Perhaps one can make ‘smart’ and interactive drawings, in which the art itself is the circuitry and can respond to the environment.” 

In addition to Lin, Zhao, and Huang, Jaemyung Kim (PhD materials science ’13), who served as teaching assistant for the course, co-authored the paper.

Icy technique improves robotic kidney transplants

 

DETROIT – A collaboration of surgeons at Henry Ford Hospital and Medanta Hospital in India successfully transplanted kidneys into 50 recipients using an innovative robot-assisted procedure in which the organ is cooled with sterile ice during the operation. 

The research project – published online ahead of print in European Urology, the journal of the European Association of Urology – advances minimally invasive robotic surgery as a safe alternative to traditional open surgery.

"Minimally invasive surgery reduces post-operative pain and minimizes complications in comparison to conventional surgery," says Mani Menon, M.D., chair of Henry Ford's Vattikuti Urology Institute and co-author of the study.

"The benefits of minimally invasive surgery in removing donor kidneys has been well established in earlier studies, but the use of robot-assisted surgery in transplanting those kidneys is comparatively a frontier," Dr. Menon adds.

The Henry Ford researchers and their counterparts in Gurgaon, India, reasoned that since minimally invasive robotic surgery has proven to be a great benefit to healthy kidney donors, it might also be a boon to the ill and weakened transplant recipients who are at greater risk of complications. But they noted British research from 1971 that showed that kidney function was partially impaired in recipients if blood flow was interrupted for longer than 30 minutes during transplant.

So they decided to chill both the donor kidney and the transplant site with sterile ice slush in hopes of increasing the amount of time in which they could safely learn and perfect the robot-assisted surgery.

"To our knowledge, ours is the first study to use renal cooling during robotic kidney transplant," Dr. Menon says. "It had already proved useful during minimally invasive prostate surgeries."

After three years of planning and simulated surgeries at Henry Ford, 50 consecutive transplant patients who had volunteered for the minimally invasive procedure underwent robotic kidney transplant at Medanta Hospital between January and October 2013.

In all, Medanta Hospital has performed 54 operations and International Kidney and Renal Diseases at Ahmedabad, India, has done 56 operations, for a total of 110 transplants in one year. The surgeons in charge of the two programs are Dr. Rajesh Ahlawat and Dr. Pranjal Modi.

In each case, surgeons filled the kidney cavity with ice slush through a specially designed port in the patient's abdomen before transplanting the donor kidney, which was also chilled with ice slurry held in place by gauze wrapping. 

Blood vessels were attached to the transplanted kidney using suturing techniques refined in other types of minimally invasive procedures. Immediately after transplant, all of the grafted kidneys functioned normally and patient levels of creatinine – used to measure kidney function – were well within normal range.

None of the patients developed blood or urine leaks, infections or other complications from their surgical wounds. None required dialysis after surgery. 

When given follow-up exams six months after surgery, nearly all of the first 25 patients who underwent the procedure developed no complications, although two required exploratory surgery and one died of acute congestive heart failure.

Dr. Menon attributed the success of the study in part to "the seamless collaboration" between surgeons experienced in conventional "open surgery" kidney transplants and surgeons skilled in using robotic techniques.

By the time they began the study, the teams from Henry Ford and Medanta hospitals had performed more than 10,000 robotic procedures and 2,500 conventional kidney transplants.

"The individual surgeons involved had built an atmosphere of trust and mutual respect over 30 years of collaborative work," Dr. Menon says. "While this benefit can't be precisely measured, it clearly contributed to the success of this endeavor."

The researchers noted that further studies will be needed before robotic kidney transplant is widely accepted as a "reasonable" alternative to conventional transplantation.

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Funding: Vattikuti Foundation

For a copy of the study, please email [email protected]++++++

Versatile gut bacterium helps us get our daily dietary fiber

 

		IMAGE:   This image shows Bacteroides ovatus, wild strain. Click here for more information.

University of British Columbia researchers have discovered the genetic machinery that turns a common gut bacterium into the Swiss Army knife of the digestive tract – helping us metabolize a main component of dietary fibre from the cell walls of fruits and vegetables.

The findings illuminate the specialized roles played by key members of the vast microbial community living in the human gut, and could inform the development of tailored microbiota transplants to improve intestinal health after antibiotic use or illness. The research is published today in the journal Nature.

"While they are vital to our diet, the long chains of natural polymeric carbohydrates that make up dietary fibre are impossible for humans to digest without the aid of our resident bacteria," says UBC professor Harry Brumer, with UBC's Michael Smith Laboratories and Department of Chemistry, and senior author of the study.

"This newly discovered sequence of genes enables Bacteroides ovatus to chop up xyloglucan, a major type of dietary fibre found in many vegetables – from lettuce leaves to tomato fruits. B. ovatus and its complex system of enzymes provide a crucial part of our digestive toolkit."

About 92 per cent of the population harbours bacteria with a variant of the gene sequence, according to the researchers' survey of public genome data from 250 adult humans.

"The next question is whether other groups in the consortium of gut bacteria work in concert with, or in competition with, Bacteroides ovatus to target these, and other, complex carbohydrates," says Brumer.

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Background

The bacterial communities living in the human gut – roughly 100 trillion microorganisms – account for 50 per cent of the weight of the contents of the lower digestive tract in humans. Up to 10 per cent of our daily caloric intake can come from the breakdown of dietary fibre by our gut bacteria.

Researchers from the University of Michigan, the University of York, and the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology were also involved in the study.

Poison-breathing bacteria may be boon to industry, environment

Athens, Ga. - Buried deep in the mud along the banks of a remote salt lake near Yosemite National Park are colonies of bacteria with an unusual property: they breathe a toxic metal to survive. Researchers from the University of Georgia discovered the bacteria on a recent field expedition to Mono Lake in California, and their experiments with this unusual organism show that it may one day become a useful tool for industry and environmental protection.

The bacteria use elements that are notoriously poisonous to humans, such as antimony and arsenic, in place of oxygen, an ability that lets them survive buried in the mud of a hot spring in this unique saline soda basin.

"Just like humans breathe oxygen, these bacteria respire poisonous elements to survive," said Chris Abin, author of a paper describing the research published recently in the journal Environmental Science & Technology and a doctoral candidate in microbiology.  "It is particularly fond of arsenic, but it uses other related elements as well, and we think it may be possible to harness these natural abilities to make useful products out of different elements."

Antimony, for example, is a naturally occurring silver-colored metal that is widely used by numerous industries to make plastics, vulcanized rubber, flame retardants and a host of electronic components including solar cells and LEDs. To make these products, antimony must be converted into antimony trioxide, and this bacterium is capable of producing two very pure kinds of crystalline antimony trioxide perfectly suited for industry.

Traditional chemical methods used to convert antimony ore into antimony trioxide can be expensive, time-consuming and they often create harmful byproducts. But the bacteria discovered by UGA researchers make antimony trioxide naturally as a consequence of respiration, creating a useful industrial product without creating noxious byproducts or requiring legions of specialized equipment.

"The antimony trioxide crystals produced by this bacterium are far superior to those that are currently produced using chemical methods," said James Hollibaugh, UGA Franklin College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Research Professor of Marine Sciences and principal investigator for the project. "We tested the crystals we made alongside commercially available products that are 99 percent pure, and ours is either of identical or superior quality."

Hollibaugh and Abin think it might be possible for industry to maintain large cultures of their bacteria in simple holding tanks, feed it oxidized antimony and collect the antimony trioxide crystals as they form naturally. After harvesting the crystals, manufacturers would need only to feed more oxidized antimony into the tanks to keep the predominantly self-sustaining process going.

But the bacteria's usefulness is not restricted to refining antimony. It possesses a number of different enzymes that allow it to use other dangerous elements that accumulate in wastewaters near mines or refineries and pose serious threats to humans and animals. For example, the bacteria are capable of reducing other contaminants including selenium and tellurium.

Preliminary tests suggest that the bacteria could be used to remove these pollutants from the wastewater and protect the surrounding ecosystems.

"It might be used in one of two ways," said Hollibaugh. "The bacteria could be used simply to clean up the water, but it might also be possible for the bacteria to help humans recover and recycle the valuable elements in the water."

This way, says Hollibaugh, the water stays clean and industry doesn't waste a valuable strategic resource.

Both Abin and Hollibaugh caution that more research must be done before any of these applications are ready to deploy. UGA has applied for patents to protect these unique processes as well as the bacterium itself, and they are currently testing the bacteria's efficacy in different environments and conditions to discover how the bacteria react when they are exposed to a variety of metals simultaneously.

"UGA is currently seeking partners interested in licensing this technology and also partnering with professor Hollibaugh toward the development of additional industrial uses for the invention," said Gennaro Gama, senior technology licensing manager at UGA. "We believe this technology represents a feasible solution to many kinds of environmental contamination, but it also is useful for producing important commodities such as antimony trioxide, elemental selenium and tellurium."

For licensing information, please contact Gennaro Gama, [email protected], 706-583-8088.

 

Writer:

James  Hataway     

James  Hataway

Public Relations Specialist

Recent and archived articles by James  Hataway

OVPR                                         Research, Office of the Vice President for (OVPR)                                                                                                     

Work: 706/542-5222                                         Email: [email protected]               

 

Contact:

James T. Hollibaugh     

James Hollibaugh

Professor

Department of Marine Sciences                     Marine Science Building 325 Sanford Dr. Athens, GA                                                                                                                       

                                                            Email: [email protected]               

 

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Photography

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  James Hollibaugh is a Distinguished Research Professor of Marine Sciences in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences.

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  Mountain ranges surround Mono Lake in California.

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  Tufa towers made of limestone adorn the shores of Mono Lake in California.

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  Chris Abin, doctoral candidate in microbiology, taking samples at Mono Lake in California.

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Related Sites

• Marine Sciences, Department of
• Franklin College of Arts and Sciences

'Politically useful' science is no use for democracy

Researchers are being pressured by government into publishing 'politically useful reports'. Democracy needs independent scrutiny

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/10576362/Politically-useful-science-is-no-use-for-democracy.html

 

By Prateek Buch

11:20AM GMT 16 Jan 2014

 

Just how independent is independent research into government policy? It emerged last week that the Home Office may have pressured researchers at the University of Sheffield to delay publication of a study on the effects of minimum alcohol pricing. Dr Sarah Wollaston MP isn’t amused that the academics agreed to the Home Office request, suggesting it hindered discussion of the evidence.

This is not the first time government has sought to interfere with academic research to suit its own agenda, and sometimes they do so in more damaging ways than simply delaying publication. Last year, Edward Page, the London School of Economics professor of public policy, surveyed policy researchers, who gave dozens of examples of government pressing for “politically useful reports.”

Page found “sufficient evidence… to suggest that governments do lean on researchers” at the planning and reporting stages of research. While this interference does not appear to directly affect the overall conclusions reached, half of the respondents to Page’s survey agreed when asked if they were pressed to make "substantial… changes that affect the interpretation of your findings or the weight that you might give them." Where researchers bow to this pressure, we lose confidence in the reports as accurate, independent evaluations of policy.

Should this – and the agreement of the Sheffield alcohol researchers to “align our publication with the Government's response to the Alcohol Strategy” – alarm researchers investigating public policy? While Page himself says “If an academic says they can make the report less astringent in terms of some of the comments included, is that necessarily a bad thing? I don’t think so,” not everyone would share his laid-back attitude.

If government exerts pressure on researchers to produce convenient results, or to only publish when it suits them, it devalues the independent scrutiny upon which democracy relies. The pressure to alter reports before they’re published was presented by some academics in Page’s survey as a dialogue with government “to ensure [the reports] did not look bad”. But it would be far more appropriate for researchers to conduct their investigations independently, and to present their findings, and for any "dialogue" to happen transparently and in public, after the results are known. Anything less subverts the scientific process and undermines the analysis of whether a policy is effective.

 

Not everyone sees it that way – some, like Prof Ian Boyd, the chief scientific adviser at Defra, want to restrict the role of research and researchers in the policy process. This threatens the independence of scientific advice and evaluation, which is why the principles of scientific advice to government are so important. These principles were drafted by scientists after Prof David Nutt was sacked as chief drugs advisor in 2008, and integrated into the Ministerial code to emphasise respect for academic freedom and independence. They clearly state that reasons for rejecting scientific advice should be made transparently known, not fudged by altering or delaying reports.

Government operatives – whether civil servants, party figures or ministers – should tread carefully when delaying and interfering with the research process. If the independence of scientific advice and evaluation continues to be ignored, those of us who see evidence as a vital ingredient of effective public policy will need to be more vocal.