Science in Government

It may have passed you by, but in among the nation’s April fools last week came the biggest shake-up in the British statistical system in half a century. The distinctly non-foolish UK Statistics Authority (UKSA) came into existence on 1 April – an independent body, with powers and the obligation to promote, improve, and safeguard official statistics across the UK. UKSA will follow a model close to that of the Food Standards Agency, being run by a multidisciplinary board, independent of Government Ministers.

Getting young people into science is a constant refrain in the media, yet retaining people who have chosen scientific careers is no less important. So I was really pleased to launch a pilot for a Continuing Professional Development (CPD) scheme for scientists in the Agency.  I encourage all scientists in the Agency to develop their scientific skills and expertise I believe this is a good opportunity for them as well as the organisation.

I am looking forward to working with the Institute of Food Science & Technology, which is going to run the pilot.  IFST are the professional body representing food scientists and bring experience of working on CPD schemes with other organisations.  The pilot will run for a year until April 2009 and then we hope to make this available to all scientists in the Agency. 

I often blog about evidence. One of the things that we are planning over the coming months is how to make our evidence more accessible.  We already publish all of our research findings in the Agency Information Centre and summarise them on our website, but we are planning to take this one step further in the autumn.

We are looking for an organisation to establish and host an open access repository on our behalf.  When this repository goes live you will be able to access all of our research final reports from your pc.  Whether your interest is nutrition or nanotechnology, you will be able to see the evidence and judge for yourself.

I called in on the review of our food allergy and intolerance research programme yesterday.  We carry out formal reviews of our research programmes every five years, where we ask a panel of independent experts help us evaluate the success of the programme against the stated aims and objectives.  I used to head the division that funded this work, so it was interesting for me to see how it's getting on.  I was impressed with the progress we have made on estimating the prevalence of food allergy and intolerance in the UK using different cohort groups.  Reported adverse reactions to foods are common, but diagnosed rates using skin prick tests and double blind placebo controlled methods are much lower (eg, about 1.5% for peanut allergy in young children), although in population terms this is a significant number.  The work done on gaining a better understanding of the immunological aspects of food allergy, such as the role of peanut-specific T cell responses and the role of IgG, was also impressive.

The media picked up on the difficult issue of advice on oily fish in the Associate Parliamentary Food and Health Forum report this week, but I was more pleased to see the large number of references to FSA nutrition research findings in the report. 

The Agency has always prided itself on being evidence-based in its decision making and continues to strive to achieve the highest standards in this area. 

As a scientist, I see some sources of evidence as being more powerful than others. For example, published evidence from a double blind, cross-over study, done to best practice and challenged through peer review carries more weight than anecdotal evidence. 

Nonetheless, all evidence is important and none is discounted when the Agency carries out a risk assessment, though it may be weighted according to its source. I have been interested to learn that the National Council of Women of Great Britain discussed the use of anecdotal evidence at its Annual Conference in October this year and adopted a motion to 'urge HMG to acknowledge the importance of anecdotal evidence in decision-making and put in place a system to seek, listen to, record, challenge and if proven act upon anecdotal evidence.
 
Having reproducible evidence and challenging through peer review are fundamental to the scientific process, but the Agency is not only about science.  When we develop advice and make policies -the risk management part of the business - the Agency takes into account a far wider evidence base (individual liberty, regulatory constraints, economic and social consequences and consumers’ appetite for risk).  This second stage is distinct from the scientific process of advocacy and challenge that generates the risk assessment; it's an iterative, consultative process which leads to our Board reaching and making a judgement accountably and in public.
 
I see anecdotal evidence as a trigger for more rigorous scientific studies which will provide reproducible evidence for an independent analysis of the risks.

Colleagues in the Agency recently held a workshop on the application of ‘omics technologies (examples are transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics) to food related research, bringing together scientists and policymakers from across the Agency, EU institutions and scientists in other government departments to discuss the use of these techniques.

Over the past few years these techniques have started to be developed to enhance the safety assessment of GM foods, and we are now seeing them being used in other areas of Agency research, such as food authenticity, chemical safety and nutrition.

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) is celebrating its fifth birthday and, as part of its celebration, hosted a Scientific Forum on 'From Safe Food to Healthy Diets’ in Brussels earlier this week. It was a great opportunity to meet many of Europe’s top food scientists and regulators.

Last night I was at the Royal Society of Chemistry to launch my first Annual Report as FSA Chief Scientist. I was pleased to see so many people from across the scientific community and I would like to extend my thanks to all of you who attended.

My aim is for the Annual Report to be an authoritative reference for our scientific work on food and health.  Examples of how science has influenced policies are included and I have given particular emphasis to our work to reduce foodborne illness and salt intakes.  In future years, the report will plot trends in food-related illness and feature in more detail some specific aspects of our work.

Last week one of my colleagues supported Sir David King at the BA (British Association for the Advancement of Science) Festival of Science in York when he spoke about the Universal Ethical Code for Scientists.  After an early round of radio interviews on this important initiative, Sir David led a series of presentations from scientific bodies and institutions, including the FSA, on how the use of the code impacts on the work that we do.
 
During his presentation, Sir David cited the case of the high profile fall from grace of the cell biologist Hwang Woo-Suk in South Korea last year.  Dr Hwang claimed to have created human embryonic stem cells by cloning, but it was later found that these claims were fraudulent and the scientific papers describing the work were retracted.