The La Trobe Vice-Chancelor has an op-ed in the Australian this morning defending the research that underpins the Safe Schools program.
The research however does not, in itself, indicate a policy solution. Universities are not policymakers. However our work does provide the evidence base that has, in this case, driven policy decisions that seek to create positive change in young people’s lives.
It is, of course, entirely appropriate that public policy be subject to criticism and commentary, just as research conclusions should be subjected to detailed scrutiny by the research community. However, it is not helpful that a disagreement about public policy should prompt attacks on the independent research that triggered the policy intervention. Don’t shoot the messenger.
He is almost right – research does not indicate a policy solution. Remember that the next time we’re being told that tax x is good idea because scientists have identified problem y. But he is wrong on almost every other score.
- The research he refers to is not independent. It was funded by the Australian federal government for a specific purpose.
- More importantly it is not just the research community that should get to debate the research. The notion that only the “research community” gets to debate the research is pure arrogance at an astonishing level.
- I have learned over the years that when dealing with government research and government funded research that you should always check the data yourself. I have caught them fabricating conclusions, if not actual evidence, so often that we simply cannot place any credence in the reassurance:
Universities follow the federal government’s Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research.
When reading this piece I was immediately reminded of an op-ed I read in yesterdays WSJ:
I’ve known Mr. Wakefield since the late 1990s, when his (later retracted) paper suggesting a link between the MMR vaccine and autism appeared in the Lancet medical journal. He studied British children with developmental disorders and reported that they began to show signs of autism within weeks after receiving the vaccine. In subsequent papers, Mr. Wakefield, a former gastroenterologist, continued his quest to associate autism with the vaccine by reporting that children with autism had measles virus sequences in the gut, blood and cerebrospinal fluid.
… In 2010, after concerns arose about his research, the U.K.’s General Medical Council revoked Mr. Wakefield’s medical license based on cross-examination of physicians and evidence from 36 witnesses. The council found that he had done invasive research on children without ethical approval, acted against the clinical interests of each child, failed to disclose financial conflicts of interest, and misappropriated funds. In 2010 the Lancet retracted the 1998 paper based on ethical irregularities and other misrepresentations. In 2004, 10 of the 12 authors who joined Mr. Wakefield on that paper explicitly disavowed any link between MMR and autism.
Should we not have questioned the publication in the Lancet – was it not internationally peer-reviewed? It took 12 years before that error was “rectified”. So-called peer review might be the gold standard, but it is not a particularly good standard.