Comment in 2020

The 2020 Covid-19 pandemic has forced science advisory institutions and processes into an unusually prominent role, and placed their decisions under intense public, political and media scrutiny. In the UK, much of the focus has been on whether the government was too late in implementing its lockdown policy, resulting in thousands of unnecessary deaths. Some experts have argued that this was the result of poor data being fed into epidemiological models in the early days of the pandemic, resulting in inaccurate estimates of the virus’s doubling rate. In this article, I argue that a fuller explanation is provided by an analysis of how the multiple uncertainties arising from poor quality data, a predictable characteristic of an emergency situation, were represented in the advice to decision makers. Epidemiological modelling showed a wide range of credible doubling rates, while the science advice based upon modelling presented a much narrower range of doubling rates. I explain this puzzle by showing how some science advisors were both knowledge producers (through epidemiological models) and knowledge users (through the development of advice), roles associated with different perceptions of scientific uncertainty. This conflation of experts’ roles gave rise to contradictions in the representation of uncertainty over the doubling rate. Role conflation presents a challenge to science advice, and highlights the need for a diversity of expertise, a structured process for selecting experts, and greater clarity regarding the methods by which expert consensus is achieved. The analysis indicates an urgent research agenda that can help strengthen the UK science advice system after Covid-19.

In 2018, the South African Minister of Health gazetted a material transfer agreement (SA MTA) that must be used as a framework whenever a researcher based in South Africa is involved in the transfer of human biological material. The SA MTA therefore impacts not only on the South African research community, but also its international research partners. The SA MTA has been portrayed in a positive light by Labuschaigne et al. in a recent article. By contrast, in this present article, the position taken is that the SA MTA is deeply problematic, and it is argued that Labuschaigne et al. have erred with regard to three key propositions of their account of the SA MTA. The first proposition, namely that a Health Research Ethics Committee should be a party to a material transfer agreement, as contemplated in the SA MTA, is shown to be unfeasible. Similarly, the second proposition, namely that under the SA MTA a research participant retains proprietary rights in donated human biological material, is shown to be legally untenable. The third proposition, namely that the arbitration option in the SA MTA (which allows parties to opt out of the jurisdiction of South African courts) is both necessary and adequate, is shown to be false. Not only is the claim that the arbitration option is required by international collaborators contradicted by Labuschaigne et al.’s own example, but the present SA MTA’s dispute resolution provisions are shown to be inadequate. In this light, a more appropriate solution in respect of dispute resolution is proposed. In the interest of both the South African research community and their international research partners, the South African Minister of Health is called upon to engage in open public consultation on the SA MTA and to fundamentally revise it as a matter of urgency.