This week the Home Office announced that it will implement two coalition promises on animal testing: to ban the testing of household products and to continue to reduce the use of animals in scientific research.

Since 1998 it has been illegal in the UK to test cosmetic products on animals and soon the same will be true for household items, but with only 24 procedures being performed in 2010, and only on rats, this is a small step for animal welfare.

Recent figures have shown that scientific procedures on animals rose 3% last year, with the total at 3,724,726. Of this figure, 81% were on rodents, mostly mice, and 18% fish, amphibians, reptiles or birds. Just 0.8% were small mammals (excluding rodents) like rabbits, 0.4% were large mammals like cows and 0.07% were primates, mostly marmoset and macaque monkeys. Despite a significant drop in the use of animals in scientific research since the 1970s the UK is still one of the highest users of animals in the world, a reflection of the pioneering position the UK enjoys on the global scientific stage. Estimates of the number of procedures conducted by other scientific behemoths such as the USA and Japan claim 20m and 5m are used in each, respectively.

Animal research is still a controversial and emotional subject, scientists shy away from the topic and I know many who would not want to do it themselves. I even know of one person who turned vegetarian to compensate for her experiments using rats! Although extremism has largely been extinguished in the UK it is not uncommon to see stalls in shopping centres campaigning: the debate is still very much alive and one that is important to the British public.

We are after all a nation of animal lovers. Victorian legislature to control animal cruelty was introduced before even the first children’s cruelty acts and today our scientific research is subject to the strictest regulation in the world. Indeed EU Directives come with caveats to prevent the downgrading of standards in countries such as ours where we are above the European standard. For the public to maintain faith in our scientific community it is imperative that we maintain and respect those high standards.

Government research has found that one in three (29%) British adults do not trust the regulatory system however, and only 54% trust scientists not to cause unnecessary harm or suffering. In the same report 76% of interviewees said that they can accept animal research as long as it is for medical purposes, and 54% were happy for animal use in any type of research, as long as there was no alternative.

I work on yeast and my research is not medical (although one day I hope it might contribute in a tiny way to medical understanding) but I still use the products of animals in my research, such as antibodies from mice, rabbits and goats and enzymes from cows. It is not easy to define what research will contribute to human health and which won’t and many members of the public do not understand the concepts of related biological systems and model organisms, which underpin basic research. It is important that these concepts are communicated to the public when discussing the use of animals in research.

The case for animal research is perhaps the most important public battle scientists face, and it is a shame that it is one that many shy away from. And clearly from the government figures, we still have some way to go to convince the public that we’re trustworthy. For those who are interested, Understanding Animal Research runs training for scientists who wish to run school workshops on the subject and closer to home Sheffield’s Fish For Science have excellent outreach activities on their website. Pro science campaign groups are doing a great job but I think it is time for more open and unashamed inclusion of animal research in science outreach. In my personal experience people are very supportive of science when you talk to them about it and, given the facts, I believe the public supports animal experiments.

Through more outreach to address people’s ligititmate concerns and further refinement of the way we use animals in research to gain more public trust, we can garner greater public support for research that is improving our understanding of biology and saving lives.

A report on the sexualisation of young girls and how the government intends to prevent it has been hitting the Headlines of all the major newspapers in recent days. The new rules that the Coalition have announced today are separate from the report by Reg Bailey but coincide with its publication, also today. They include tougher restrictions on the 9pm watershed, certification for music videos and a ban on inappropriate clothes sold to children.

The report was commissioned by David Cameron to be conducted by Reg Bailey of the Mother’s Union, a Christian charity. The approach taken by Mr Cameron in this instance is a good example of how politicians can missuse evidence to support policy. I’m not taking issue with the content of the report – it is probably quite valid – or the Mother’s Union, but more the reasons and method of the report’s instigation.

The purpose of the Mother’s Union is to promote traditional family values; it is a lobby group with a clear and obvious agenda. Is David Cameron therefore right to commission them to do research on behalf of the government when it is clear what the outcome will be? In other words, is this not just manufacturing “evidence” in support of his policy?

And it has worked very well. Every newspaper article cites the reasons stated in the report on why new policies are needed. And quite rightly, each article also states that the research was arranged by Mr Cameron so the motives should be clear, but do the public see it? Do they care?

In my opinion, it is a waste of money and it is a PR stunt. If David Cameron wants to improve the situation for young Children would he not be better off commissioning fair independent research to identify the problems and suggest solutions based on evidence, rather than religious ideology? Last year the Home Office commissioned a review by an academic that reached the same conclusions as Mr Bailey and the year before that Ed Balls as Education Secretary commissioned a review, again by a trusted academic, which was slightly less alarmist but nonetheless recommended changes. So why do it again? Because it’s something new (by which I do not mean original) that will help with the media coverage.

Evidence-based policy is important, and research to back up the claims and positions of politicians is fundamental to democracy, it ensures transparency. For us to be able to trust research we must trust who does it and know why they are doing it and that it was conducted fairly; this is why published scientific papers come with a disclosure of conflicts of interest.

If any government wants to be trusted and respected they should avoid cheap tricks and follow the wealth of academic research conducted by universities and other institutions. Politics is often polarised and debates passionate, but that is all the more reason to commission dispassionate research to identify the facts from the sensationalism designed to scare. By all means consult think tanks and lobby groups, I believe they are there for a good reason (albeit a biased one), but to commission research in such a bias manner cheapens your policy and is an insult to the public’s intelligence.

Well I don’t yet, but soon, hopefully soon, I will. But what will I do next? Therapy probably.

Today there has been an online chat forum on what to do with a Ph.D and yesterday the THE website ran an article about deluded young scientists thinking they’re going to become permanent academics. So what use is a Ph.D. and what should we expect to be able to do with it?

Ph.D.s can be done on all sorts of crazy things but for clarity, I’m talking about science doctorates here.

Only 30% of Ph.D. graduates get post doc positions, according to a report by the Royal Society. Now I know many students, including myself, who have been put off academic research but this figure is amazingly low and is set to get lower as funding dries up and jobs become scarcer.

Most students don’t realise what they’re getting themselves into when they sign up to a Ph.D. and most have dreams of becoming an eminent leading expert in their field. And on the face of it that’s all you need a Ph.D. for: it’s not a vocational qualification and very few jobs outside academia require one so why start if you’re not intent on getting to the top in research?

The reality is that in the long run 90% drop out of academia and move on. Now I don’t think that is because these people didn’t reach the top. Everybody wants career progression but I think it’s unreasonable to think you deserve to become a lecturer/Principal Investigator just because you’ve worked in research for many years – however horrible that experience has been. How many people in other professions get to the very top? Academia is a pyramid like almost all other workplaces.

The problem as I see it is that science is full of short contracts. Young scientists are expected to move around the world to experience different specialist areas of their field and master many different techniques in order to become a fully equipped research scientist. This creates instability which puts many people – especially women – off. It’s very hard to settle down, get a mortgage and start a family when your contract expires after three years.

Luckily Ph.D.s are valued in many areas outside academia: from the pharmaceutical industry through to teaching (the most popular destination for graduates) and even in government. Since the Roberts’ Report  universities have got a lot better at broadening the training that a Ph.D student receives so that the graduate leaves equipped with skills that are valued in the big bad world outside of academia. Amongst others I think it proves better than any other piece of paper that the individual is determined, a Ph.D. is long and not easy after all!

I’ve been looking at job advertisements and many state a post-graduate qualification as desirable and I know of lots of people who’s bosses have been very keen for them to get those two distinguished letters in front of their name asap. Because a Ph.D. impresses people, it’s relatively rare in the employment market and it sets you out from the crowd.

So what use is a Ph.D. and what should we expect to be able to do with it?

Everything and anything. But at the end of the day it’s just another qualification and it is you as a person who will get a job and become a success if you deserve it.

For my research into RNA metabolism I work on yeast, S. Cerivisiae; when I tell people this  I’m often asked why I’m not using human cells for my experiments which, my inquisitor believes, would be much more medically useful.

I think this is a common misconception, which stems from non-biologists not realising the connectedness of different life forms. Indeed, Sarah Palin enraged and amused the global scientific community in equal measure a few years back when she used the tale of Parisian geneticists studying fruitflies as an example of how scientists waste the public’s money.

But of course it’s important – as I have said many times – that the public understand why we scientists do the things we do with their money.  So with that in mind I’ve come up with a clever little analogy that you can use next time you’re round at your Nan’s house to explain why we use simple model organisms like yeast to gain an insight which will be useful to medical science.

Imagine you want to learn how a car works and you have access to two cars: a shiny new Mini made by BMW and one of those lovely old reliable classic Minis. You may have guessed that the new Mini represents the advanced human cell and the much loved old Mini the humble yeast.

Now to find out how the car works you are allowed to open the bonnet and tinker away, this is like a molecular biologist who deletes genes or pulls proteins out of the cell to see what they do.  So you open the new Mini up and see some shiny chrome and a lot of black plastic, it all looks a bit boring and you really can’t see how it might work or even how you might start taking it apart to figure out what it does. Now you look in the old Mini, it’s dirty but you can see wires, tubes and things that move when you turn the engine on.

So it’s clear to see which one will be easiest to start mucking around with to find out what all those bits do. The refined Mini made by BMW doesn’t like being played with, its engine is too complicated and inaccessible and all the moving bits are hidden away. The old mini however can be bashed around and is simply built, meaning you can tell what each part does relatively easily. Equally, playing with the old Mini is cheaper and you have more tools at your disposal thanks to the scrap yard! 

Now you know how the old Mini works: what a carburettor looks like and what the transmission is for. Through tinkering with an easily manipulable model you not only know how an old Mini works but a lot of what you’ve learnt can be applied to any car.

What you’ve learnt about the old Mini now informs how you approach finding out how the new Mini works, you come across the carburettor, which you know it is because it looks like the carburettor in the old Mini, you don’t need to pull it out – which as we have said is very difficult in a modern car – to see what it does because you’re already done that in the old car.

So you can see how studying a simpler, more manipulable version of what you’re really interested in can be advantageous to the researcher. Of course this is all possible because the Mini’s are both cars and yeast and human cells are both eukaryotes (one of the three classes of life forms on earth) and therefore share huge similarities which allow us to make generalisations of function and mechanisms.

Two recent TV programmes have got me thinking about who is responsible for the public’s opinions of science and the important science policies that affect their lives.

On Monday night I watched with joy as Sir Paul Nurse charged on his Nobel steed (see what I did there?) at science’s harshest critics; targeting those who cherry pick facts, don’t give a balanced debate and favour shock and awe to entertain their readers – yes, he was talking about journalists and bloggers; those funny creatures who link the supercilious scientists and the fickle general public. But of course he also said that scientists have a responsibility to stand up for science and engage the public directly, perhaps missing out the middle man, as I have also argued in these very pages.

I have also been watching Hugh’s Fish Fight, in which the organic warrior picks a fight with the European Union’s fishing policies. Hugh is incensed by the blatant waste of fish that results from the strict fishing quotas imposed by the EU, which he illustrated for the audience by filling the programme with sad fishermen who were equally incensed at having to land cheap Whiting whilst throwing overboard all their expensive Cod catch. The waste was indeed upsetting and there was a lot of Cod being thrown overboard, but then I got annoyed for a different reason.  These clips were used to argue that there is in fact an abundance of Cod in the North Sea: queue a Fisherman’s rant about the scientists not knowing what they were talking about and that their observations were clearly more valid than those of the scientific establishment. Hugh then went to visit a scientist who studies fish populations. In the two minute interview did we hear about how the scientists measure fish populations or see any graphs for current data on stock levels? No. Maybe the scientist didn’t offer up said information to Hugh, but if Hugh and his production team had wanted to give a balanced and informative view to the programme’s audience would these things not have made sense to be included?

And so I wonder, what can scientists do in the face of campaigners with an agenda? Campaigners who have control of the media: the gateway to the public’s mind and soul. Is it fair to expect everyone to be balanced? Do scientists themselves give balanced thought to everything they do? Paul Nurse thinks so but I’m not so convinced. I certainly fall foul of being biased in these pages, keeping an audience entertained whilst being completely fair is very difficult to achieve in the few hundred words that most journalists have at their disposal.

A solution is beyond me. In an age of not only free and globally accessible media but of media that can be written by anyone, it’s no good for scientists to throw their rattle out of the pram and scream foul play; if someone wants to write something then they can and will. So more than ever, the responsibility lies with the reader to make up their own mind, the best we can do is give people as much information as we can. Some people are more willing than others to search for the information that they require so it’s the job of scientists and those in the know to get the information out there to the masses in ways that are accessible.

Britain was once called the factory of the World. Back in the mid 19^th Century she was the first country to go through an industrial revolution; technology of course drove this rapid change in the way things were produced, making everyday consumables cheaper and Britain the most economically competitive country on the planet. Mechanical looms, the steam engine and cast iron production are just three of the British inventions that were a result of the emphasis on science and technology in the Victorian age.

The world bought our products bringing huge wealth into the country, wealth that is more than evident in the surviving architecture of our large cities. However, they not only bought the products that we made with our new more-efficient machines, they also bought the machines themselves, to improve their own industries. So before long America and the rest of Europe had caught up technologically, thus reducing Britain’s competitive edge and by the end of the 19^th Century Britain was having to rely on her colonies to buy goods and support home industry (as they were under British rule colonies had no choice where to import from). So even though the greatest and most significant technological innovations of the industrial age came from this little island, we ourselves failed to keep up with them and utilise them to their full advantage. By the First World War Britain’s industry was lagging behind.

We may have lost much of our industry and we are certainly no longer the factory of the World, but we haven’t lost innovation, we are still world leaders in many hi-tech industries such as satellite manufacturing and our research institutions are some of the most respected globally.  A report a few days ago by PricewaterhouseCooper (PwC) said that Britain must break into the new emerging markets of Asia and South America if it doesn’t want to slip further and further down the economic league tables in the next 50 years. We can’t use China’s model of economic growth – by once again being the factory of the world – so we must look to our strengths.

Education and technology are, in my view, our strongest assets. Investment is key to maintaining our competitive edge and not making the same mistake we made over a hundred years ago by letting the world beat us at our own game.

This blog post was going to be a report on how the Science is Vital protest outside the treasury went on Saturday – it went very well. In preparation to write it, I went out and bought all the papers to see if and how the event was covered; as I flicked through the large flimsey pages of the Sunday Times I was disheartened to find the editors had decided that their learned readers were not interested in the plight of British science – they would however love to know Simon Cowell’s next career move and that that charming Prince Charles is worried about “Manchines”¹ – and so there was no mention of the rally.

What I did find in the Sunday Times made me so angry that I decided I would write a post rebutting the preposterous statements of Dr Terence Kealey, vice-chancellor of the University of Buckingham², instead. In a segment the newspaper calls “Think Tank” – which in itself is amusing since real think tanks are almost invariably better described as lobby groups – the man who recently said that female students were a perk of the job tells us how cutting the government funding for science will actually result in better science (I’d link to the article but then I’d be encouraging you to give Rupert Murdoch money to read his drivel, which is something I wouldn’t want to do). Here’s my reply.

He begins by praising UK science for all that it has achieved on a shoestring of a budget (my words not his): twice as many Nobel prizes as France and ten more than Germany, but then goes on to state that, happily, there is plenty of room to further shorten the length of our shoestrings.

First he says we should stop giving businesses money for research. I wasn’t aware we did that so I can’t comment on whether it’s a good idea or not. But it seems it might be. Though I would also point out that this is a two-way street and that universities do very well out of industrial collaborations.

He then suggests raising tuition fees, allowing universities to free up money to fund research; in this he’s not alone. Apparently at the moment universities are using their own reserves to top up the miserly funds given to them by the government to educate students, so by making the students pay instead the treasury wouldn’t have to give the universities money for research because the universities would have their own spare cash. The flaw in this plan is that the treasury wants to make quick savings, but students can’t afford to pay £7,000 upfront so the treasury has to loan it to them, meaning all this little plan achieves is diverting money from one recipient to another. The treasury makes no savings.

His next idea, should these two marvellous ideas not placate George, is for the research councils to shut their own units, ones that are separate from universities and therefore, Terence argues, less productive due to a lack of competition for resources. Whilst this idea does avoid some of the pitfalls of cutting university funding it does make some unreasonable assumptions about the value of these institutions and slightly contradicts his previous assertion that freeing up money within universities would help research. Research institutes are very desirable places to work due to their greater resources, this attracts the brightest scientists making them incredibly productive. Take the MRC laboratories in Cambridge for example, where monoclonal antibodies were developed; this brilliant discovery created a tool used by molecular biology laboratories across the world and is also the basis of a new generation of drugs, it’s therefore not surprising that the institute is exceedingly wealthy as a result. These units are not independent from the rest of the UKs research centres, they still have to prove their worth to keep funding and to keep the talented scientists that could easily be poached by ambitious institutes abroad – not all leading scientists want to be shackled by the teaching responsibilities associated with jobs in universities. They are valuable and not to be lost.

He then invokes the laughable but oh so loved Tory myth that when you withdrawal public funding for something the private sector steps in to save the day. He cites IVF which was developed with private money. IVF, I think, is something that has obvious financial benefits and so it would be easy to see why someone keen on making millions would fund such a thing, unfortunately this generosity quickly vanishes when the business man can’t see where the profits are going to come from. And incidentally, the MRC didn’t fund IVF research on ethical grounds. Cuts would result in huge swathes of culturally valuable blue-skies research losing out, meaning that the next graphene would more than likely be found abroad.

You can’t rely on charities like Cancer Research to step into the breach either. Does Dr Kealey think that they’ve been quietly hiding money away, not funding research just because the government give us the bare minimum to function? Of course not, together the charities currently channel over a billion pounds into UK research, I don’t think they are going to find it easy to raise that higher in these straightened times.

He then made me decorate my coffee table with a mouthful of tea: “government funding of research seems to have no economic benefit”, he claims. He cites a 2003 OECD paper for this, well here are a few more recent reports that you may have missed Terence: a 2009 one from OECD, some BIS SET statistics and something the guys at Brunel put together. So no need to use out-of-date reports now is there? How you can claim that no economic gains are made from funding that has resulted in medical breakthroughs, nanotechnology and the internet I have no idea!

I gave up on my cup of tea as the author then decided to use Japan as an example of the futility of governments funding science, thus proving his utter ignorance for the subject on which he was writing. He notes that many of Japan’s Nobel prizes have come after their economy faltered – there are two glaring problems with this. Firstly, Nobel prizes are often awarded many years after the research was carried out – Ernst Ruska only won his physics prize in 1986, half a century after he was involved in the development of the electron microscope. Secondly, Japan leads the world in it’s commitment to science dedicating almost 4% of it’s GDP, this compares to our government’s paltry effort which is just above 0.5%. Along with many other nations including Germany and America, Japan has long recognised the importance of investing in R&D to get out of economic slumps.

Contrary to Dr Terence Kealey’s malformed thesis, British science does not contain excess fat that can be trimmed; it is already a lean mean beast, running on a budget that makes other countries scratch their heads when they see the myriad awards for the quality of our research. There is not a chance that the £6bn we currently invest can be matched by charities and industry, no-one will step into the void. This is particularly true for the more avant garde research that holds no immediate financial returns but nevertheless enriches our lives and creates eureka moments. We should be following other technology based economies and increasing, not decreasing, our investment, the country’s future depends on it.

¹ Prince Charles has written in a new book that he is very concerned about new technology which enables us the link human brains with computers, he believes that the next generation is going to “lose the experience of existence”.

² The UK’s only privately funded university

This weekend myself and a few Brainwavers are heading down to London to protest against the looming cuts to science funding. For a country that already spends less, in terms of GDP, than almost all of it’s technological rivals we really can’t afford to cut funding further. In the words of Sir Patrick Moore, “if we cut funds for science we’ll be shooting ourselves in the foot”. This isn’t just about the jobs of thousands of scientists – most of whom will be able to move abroad – but about a concern for the UK economy, which is so deeply entwined and dependent on technology and knowledge based industries.

Hundreds, or hopefully thousands, of people will be gathering on King Charles Street at 2pm outside the Treasury to demonstrate, we hope you can join us. Please also sign the petition, write to your MP and blog or tweet about this very important issue.

I’ll update this blog after the rally to let you know how it went.

Recently circulated newspaper claims that the common Bed Bug may be able to cure AIDs are false and plainly ridiculous.

In a stunning and systemic display of poor science reporting, on September 2^nd The Independent ran a brief article making these spurious claims. Within just hours, other newspapers around the world were running the same flawed story.

Over the last three weeks there has been a storm of news reporting on the international resurgence of the once-common human bed bug. That this should be considered news is baffling in itself, since pest controllers and entomologists have noted this insectan insurrection for a decade. The general circulation of inaccuracy and misinformation on bed bugs is impressive (see entomologist Richard Naylor’s excellent blog for more details), but the recent AIDs ‘story’ surely tops the lot.

The paper trail leading to this story is convoluted enough that it would be difficult for it to have not missed the mark so very widely, providing what ought to be a textbook example to would-be science reporters in how to not research a story.

The Independent’s article was based on a blog,  which despite it’s title was largely concerned with the problem of bed bug pesticide resistance. The HIV story therein was in turn based upon a recent New York Times article, which referred to a study carried out in 1986. A twenty-four year old study is hardly news.

Even ignoring that the route to the story is worryingly convoluted, it is concerning that such a story can be published when ten seconds’ thought demolishes the scientific basis of the article. AIDs is caused by the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), and cannot survive long outside of a human host. It is therefore intuitively obvious that it should not survive inside an insect such as the Bed Bug, just as it cannot survive in biros, lampshades or clothes hangers. It was because of this that the 1986 study found that they do not transmit HIV, however this doesn’t mean that Bed Bugs have found a successful way of combating the disease. HIV is as relevant to Bed Bugs as are bath towels to the orbit of Jupiter.

By the same logic employed by The Independent’s article, one could claim that tea cups, lampshades and the Turin Shroud are potential cures for AIDs. Obviously, they are not.

The fact that a respectable newspaper, reputed to pride itself on it’s accuracy, has published a sensationalist article with a clear lack of any recourse to research literature is in itself a worrying indictment of scientific journalism. That it has done so in such patently daft fashion is both hilarious and dangerous for public faith in and understanding of science.

This is a guest blog written by Adam Dobson, a Ph.D. student at the University of Sheffield researching the evolutionary basis of pathogen resistance in insects.