While I respect the evidence-based conclusions of the ACMD regarding the dangers of Mephedrone, I remain extremely concerned at the way in which the Government – and the Home Office in particular – has acted in its treatment of the ACMD’s advice. Please see my letter to the Science Minister, Lord Drayson, copied below.

=========================

Lord Drayson
Science Minister
Dept of Business Innovation and Skills
1 Victoria Street
London

5th April 2010

Dear Paul,

I am writing to you to urge you to launch an inquiry into the Home Office’s breach of the new Principles of Scientific Advice on the Treatment of Scientific advice.

Following the sacking of David Nutt, on 10^th November the Home Secretary and ACMD reached a temporary holding agreement which they issued as joint statement available of the ACMD website which covered issues to do with the proper consideration of scientific advice. In particular, this said that:

The Home Secretary would continue to give careful consideration to all ACMD reports;

The ACMD would publish its advice concurrent with its presentation to the Home Secretary.

The Home Office gave assurance that it would give appropriate consideration of the advice before issuing its response.

This joint statement was superseded by the new Principles which, as you pointed out to the House of Commons S&T Select Committee, apply across all Government departments. In any event what took place was a breach of the joint statement also.

The Principles say:

The Principles apply to Ministers and Government departments, all members of Scientific Advisory Committees and Councils (the membership of which often includes statisticians, social researchers and lay members) and other independent scientific and engineering advice to Government.

• Government should respect and value the academic freedom, professional status and expertise of its independent scientific advisers.

• Scientific advisers should be free from political interference with their work.

• Scientific advisers are free to communicate publicly their advice to Government, subject to normal confidentiality restrictions, including when it appears to be inconsistent with Government policy.

• Scientific advisers have the right to engage with the media and public independently of the Government and should seek independent media advice on substantive pieces of work.

• The timing of the publication of independent scientific advice is a matter for the advisory body but should be discussed with the Government beforehand.

• Government should not prejudge the advice of independent advisers, nor should it criticise advice or reject it before its publication.

• The timing of the Government’s response to scientific advice should demonstrably allow for proper consideration of that advice.

You will be well aware of the strength of feeling in the scientific community about the new Principles. Many are still not happy with key parts of the Principles, particularly those referring to “trust”, but there was at least general support for the above undertakings given on consideration of advice. If these Principles are to command any authority or integrity then they must be strongly adhered to and breaches of them should be investigated seriously.

I believe that the Principles have been breached in at least five separate ways.

1) “The timing of the publication of independent scientific advice is a matter for the advisory body”

The ACMD were not allowed time to consider the matter carefully. Dr Les King, an expert chemist, was the chair of the cathinones working group. He resigned on the day Professor Nutt was sacked and was not replaced for 5 months. More data would have been available if the ACMD had been able to wait for:

• the latest statistics from the British Crime Survey

• the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) evidence gathering and evaluation process;

• the results of inquests and toxicology screens

These are not just incidental matters but crucial to a rational judgement of harms.

2) “Government should not prejudge the advice of independent advisers”

The Government made it clear in advance that it wanted a ban on mephedrone long before the ACMD reported.

3) “The timing of the Government’s response to scientific advice should demonstrably allow for proper consideration of that advice.”

The Government made its response to the main recommendation without demonstrably allowing for proper consideration of that advice. In fact the Government made its announcement without even seeing the report, and the report was not published until 3 days later. No one in the media or Parliament could see the report when the Government made their announcement and how its sections on alleged deaths, if not flatly contradicting ministerial statements, at least made significant caveats to the assertions of up to 25 mephedrone deaths[1].

The Home Secretary did not even act on the basis of a manuscript copy or draft report. He demanded a verbal briefing from the Chair on the day that the ACMD was meeting. No one else could hear the briefing to know what it said.

4) “Scientific advisers should be free from political interference with their work.”

The Home Secretary required the Chairman of the ACMD to leave the meeting while the report was being discussed and dash across London in a cab to brief him in time for a press conference prior not only to the publication of the report but to the agreement of the report. The source for this is Eric Carlin who said on the BBC

“I am extremely unhappy with the process to review mephedrone this week. We had papers which were tabled and we were expected to be making a decision with recommendations to go to Home Secretary by 3.30pm in the afternoon. These were papers I hadn’t seen before and actually the chair went off to meet with the Home Secretary before we had even discussed the whole set of papers.”

Mr Carlin’s resignation letter says

Indeed, there was no time for questions on the [second] report due to the  haste with which we were being pushed to make a decision about classifying Mephedrone; this so that the Chair could come to meet with you later in the day and you could do a round of press announcements.

Re-Mephedrone; we had little or no discussion about how our recommendation to classify this drug would be likely to impact on young people’s behaviour. Our decision was unduly based on media and political pressure.  The report was tabled to the whole Council for the first time on Monday; the Chair came to brief you before the whole Council had even discussed all of the report. In fact, I still haven’t seen the final version.

5) “Scientific advisers have the right to engage with the media and public independently of the Government and should seek independent media advice on substantive pieces of work.”

The ACMD were offered the services of the Science Media Centre but the SMC were told that the Home Office would be handling all the media. This is a clear breach. There is no reason why the ACMD could not have published their report on Thursday with a press conference then, and have the Government respond after Easter.

***

The whole point of the Principles was to protect the independence of advisory committees like the ACMD and ensure that the Government properly considered the advice. But the Home Secretary has once again waded in and pre-empted not just scientific advice but the legal requirement of the Misuse of Drugs Act.

The ACMD, formerly a Committee packed with independent experts and top scientists, has been neutered and is now a wholly owned subsidiary of the Home Office. This is bad news for the quality of policy advice and therefore bad news for the public.

At the Science and Technology Committee’s “Science Question Time” on 24^th March I asked you whether the Principles would be embedded in the Ministerial Code. You said that “after the General Election… it is certainly our intention that that should be done”. I would appreciate it if you could confirm that this is still your intention, and additionally how any breaches of the Principles by Ministers would be dealt with in advance of their incorporation into the Ministerial Code.

Finally please let me know how this complaint will be dealt with and what inquiry is under way to investigate these serious breaches.

Dr Evan Harris MP
Liberal Democrat Science Spokesman

http://drugs.homeoffice.gov.uk/publication-search/acmd/ACMD-cathinones-report.pdf

“This document imposes a brand new and nebulous requirement on scientific advisers to “maintain the trust” of politicians, and they can sanctioned on this alone regardless of whether they have abided by their pre-existing detailed Code of Practice. This will be unacceptable to those in the science community who recognise the need to protect scientific advisers from the fickle whims of political prejudice.”

“The imposition of these principles by the Government is worse than the previous situation, where the Code of Practice governed the activities of advisers. Under these new principles another incident like the sacking of Professor David Nutt by the Home Secretary, which was criticised at the time by the Science Minister, will be entirely within the Government’s new rules.”

“The Science community must resist these principles and should refuse to serve under them.”

==================

1) Reference to academic freedom

“Government should respect and value the academic freedom…. of its independent scientific advisers”

While this is included, it is weaker than the original “The Government should protect or safeguard academic freedom”.

2) The Government document includes the principle that;

“Government and it scientific advisers should not act to undermine mutual trust”.

Breach of this will be grounds for sanction and the document makes very clear that this is independent any breach of Code of Practice for Scientific Advisory Committees (CoPSAC) (“Applying the principles: The matter will be examined against a clear set of criteria, which include a breach of the Principles or CoPSAC.”)

The problems are that

a) Trust by a minister in an adviser is a subjective, and inherently un-measurable, matter. This means Independent Scientific Advisers (ISAs) are immediately under pressure to be in favour with the minister otherwise they face sanction under the “trust” provisions.

b) There is no point in having an extensive Code of Practice agreed after consultation with ISAs if that is usurped by a new nebulous injunction, not to lose the trust of a politician. This essentially places the fate of the adviser in the hands of the media or political advisers to a minister.

3) There is a brand new principle

“Chairs of Scientific Advisory Committees and Councils have a particular responsibility to maintain open lines of communication with their sponsor department and its Ministers”.

· The duties of Chairs of Scientific Advisory Committees (SACs) are set out clearly in CoPSAC. This is not among them. So this represents a brand new revision to CoPSAC which has not been the subject of consultation.

· It is again nebulous, undefined and impossible to measure and will allow Chairs of SACs to be sanctioned without knowing that they are doing anything wrong.

· The spirit of the Phillips Report is that Chairs of SACs must be especially free from political pressure and be able to “speak truth to power”.

· This is a principle which applies exclusively to advisers even though the Principles was envisaged as a document that would apply to Government, and be a reciprocation of CoPSAC.

4) The section “Applying the Principles” includes

“Government departments and their independent scientific advisers should raise issues of concern over the application of the Principles, or other guidance, with the relevant departmental Chief Scientific Adviser (CSA). If the matter of concern cannot be effectively resolved or is especially serious CSAs should approach the Government Chief Scientific Adviser (GCSA) and Ministers should approach the GCSA and the Minister for Science.”

So ISAs themselves can not approach the GCSA even if they are complaining about the CSA.

5) The section “Applying the Principles” includes

“the matter will be examined against a clear set of criteria, which include a breach of the Principles or CoPSAC”.

This makes clear that sanctions can be applied for an alleged breach of the principles even when there has been no breach of the Code of Practice. There is little point of having a Code of Practice if it is not exhaustive. The Principles – in the matter of not acting to undermine trust – are not a clear set of criteria, nor is the requirement on Chairs to maintain open lines of communication with Government.

6) The Government appears to have reneged on their promise to enshrine the ministerial duties and responsibilities within these Principles into the Ministerial Code.

This was a recommendation of the Science and Technology Select Committee, appeared to have been accepted by the Government but is not mentioned in the Principles or the accompanying description

Originally posted on the Guardian’s Comment is free

On Thursday of last week, Sir Thomas Legg reported that more than half of MPs needed to pay back money they’d claimed in the previous five years, amounting to over £1m. That is an indictment of parliament – even before any proper consideration has been given to the practice of flipping second home designations and/or capital gains tax avoidance on the sale of second homes, which amounts, on the lowest estimate, to tens of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money.

Even on that day, MPs were still complaining about the judgments made in their cases, as if they were the victims, rather than the taxpayer. It is no surprise that the public’s view of their parliamentary representatives is that they are paid too well for doing too little.

It is therefore a missed opportunity of huge proportions that Harriet Harman, the leader of the House of Commons, has confirmed that reform of parliament itself would be dealt with in a way that could not have been designed better to demonstrate a collective unwillingness by MPs to reform the way in which they (fail to) perform their role.

Despite it being the primary role of the people’s representatives to scrutinise the executive and keep it in check, MPs are lousy at holding the government to account. It’s outrageous that important bills curtailing the freedoms of the British people, or governing the way our life and economy is shaped, can go through the Commons with many of the contentious matters never even being debated, let alone voted on.

It’s astonishing, too, that the Commons is not in charge of its own business. It cannot even decide what it debates and when: only the government can. The government can arrange, or rather fix, the report stage of bills (the only time at which the house as a whole gets to vote on specific issues and amendments) to ensure that the contentious parts are not debated and that any rebellions are avoided by putting the issue so far down the order paper that it’s never reached.

The recent Coroners and Justice Act – to mention just one of many – contained significant amendments to the law on murder, mercy killing, manslaughter and assisted suicide. While the media debates these matters and the public expects its MPs to, these weren’t even discussed in two days of debate because of the way the government organised the guillotines, as I protested, with no consultation and without regard to the lack of propriety involved in seeing the elected house passing laws “on the nod”. No other self-respecting democracy would tolerate this control of the agenda by the government.

When Gordon Brown was first elected to – I mean, appointed to – I mean, inherited – the prime ministership, he said he wanted to reform parliament. So far, we have seen nothing really change. Even the few measures that are included in the constitutional renewal and governance bill have little chance of getting through, if they are opposed by the Conservatives at this late stage in the parliament.

In an apparent response to the expenses scandal, the prime minister agreed to set up the reform of the house select committee under the chairmanship of the estimable Tony Wright. As if to prove the need for the Commons to have control of the agenda, the government failed – or refused – for seven weeks, to put the motion, setting it up on that part of the order paper that enables the measure to be debated – rather than simply fall if only one MP objects. In response to pressure from the house, the government kindly agreed to allow the committee to look into the management of so-called “government business”, as well as the important but less-contentious matters of “non-government business”, select committee reform and public engagement.

The Wright committee was finally debated and established on the very last day of parliament before the summer recess, but still managed to complete all its work by the end of the session in November. The reform committee was – uniquely – elected by each party, and thus has more legitimacy than any other select committee or any front bench team. Its final report was agreed overwhelmingly and recommended better public engagement, cross-house secret ballot elections of select committee chairs, intraparty secret ballot elections of select committee members and back bench control over so-called “non-government business”.

It also recommended that there should be a business committee of the house to ensure that the house decides what parts of government bills need debate and decision on the floor of the house while guaranteeing, of course, that the government gets its business in and out of the Commons at a prearranged time of the government’s preference, just as now.

Throughout the process and since, the government has tried to argue that when the Commons passes laws proposed by the government, that is somehow not “house business” but simply a rubber stamp of government business and the house has no right to decide what bits of bills it debates and votes on. This is despite Gordon Brown saying only last week: “I believe that the proper role of parliament is, indeed, to scrutinise the executive and it should be given all the necessary tools to do so.”

Although the Wright committee’s reforms have been welcomed on all sides, until now there has been no sign of the government’s willingness to provide time to debate and decide all the recommendations. The obvious thing to do would be for the government to table the resolution proposed by the Wright committee itself in an amendable form for a free vote of the house, with or without government-sponsored amendments. Then the house itself could decide how it wanted to perform its functions.

Instead, the executive appears to have decided that the house is not to be allowed to make these decisions, which again demonstrates exactly why it’s important that the government of the day should concentrate on running the country while the House of Commons should decide how it scrutinises the government in doing that.

The latest government wheeze, as of this week, is for the house to debate the issue on the first day back after recess, on a neutral motion merely noting the Wright committee’s report. At 10pm, a series of unamendable resolutions of the government’s choosing – leaving out many of the important provisions intended to give the house real power to scrutinise the executive – will be put before the house. If a single member shouts “object”, the resolution will fall. No parliamentary reform can be expected to be approved unanimously, so the process is designed purely to make the house appear to be resistant to change and to allow the government to somehow claim that it has given the house the opportunity to reform itself.

At the liaison select committee last week, the prime minister half-hinted that there might be an opportunity to have a proper vote on the proposals (but only the ones the government tolerates), but no day has been mentioned. He said: “If we have to go through line by line, dot and comma on each of these proposals then we will not have the parliamentary time to be able to do that.”

This is nonsense. All that is needed is an agreement of the house in principle to the clear proposals of the Wright committee. Harriet Harman denies that this is a devious plan to prevent reform, but has no answer but a suggestion that the government simply table the full resolution of the Wright committee for amendment, debate and decision, just like any normal parliament – which did not have a control-freak government – could.

Bizarrely, in his speech on reform to the IPPR last week, the PM said: “I am happy to confirm that we will give parliament itself more control over its business and the elections of its committees.” Hold on a minute, Gordon. “We”? It is not for the government to tell the house what reforms it is permitted to make! This is a free-vote issue for the house itself and should be a matter for neither gracious gift or venal veto by the executive.

Is it unfair not to trust the government on constitutional reform? The 1997 Labour manifesto promised a referendum on electoral reform between the current first past the post system and a proportional one proposed by Roy Jenkins. That never happened. Twelve years on, democratic House of Lords reform seems as remote as ever and real decentralisation to local authorities is a distant dream. As reported in this newspaper, this week the Wright committee is summoning Harriet Harman to explain herself.

This gives her the perfect opportunity to say that the government understands the need to get out of the way, that it will put a proper voteable resolution down on 22 February or another named day, and that the house can seize the moment to get off its knees and seize control of the parliamentary timetable to deliver more effective scrutiny, more topical debating and, as a result, better government.

With 200 new MPs – pure, poor creatures of the whips – arriving in a few months’ time, this really is parliament’s last chance.

Responding to the announcement from the Editors of the Lancet that they are retracting the Wakefield Paper entirely, Dr Evan Harris, Lib Dem science spokesman who helped expose the ethical and methodological problems with the paper back in 2004, said,

“I welcome this, but it could and should have been done six years ago when Dr Wakefield was shown to have failed to declare conflicts of interest, was shown not to have proper ethical approval fro their study, and when it was shown that the scientific rationale of the study was entirely flawed.”

Dr Harris called for full retraction at the time and raised the matter in Parliament.

“I explained the non-scientific basis for the paper in person at the Lancet Offices before the scandal broke six years ago and was very disappointed that the Lancet did not retract the paper at the time instead settling for a partial retraction of part of the paper. Journals don’t need to wait for court or GMC findings of fact to retract obviously flawed or unethical papers. Lessons must now be learned. “

“The hospital ethics committee failed to protect the best interests of the children, and Royal Free failed them again when their peremptory investigation unbelievably found no ethical faults – in fact, they defended the ethics of the study and the Lancet paper.”

“There must now be an investigation of the Royal Free Hospital’s ethical oversight.”

ENDS

Notes:

1) Dr Harris called for a full retraction in February 2004 and repeated his criticism of the Royal Free “Investigation” in the House of Commons -
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2004-03-15.128.0
2) In that debate Dr Harris described the Humphrey Hodgson from the Royal free statement -http://press.thelancet.com/wakefieldfootnote.pdf – was a whitewash.
3) Dr Harris was for many years a member of the BMA medical Ethics Committee and of the Central Oxford Research Ethics Committee.

Bad Science

Dr Ben ‘Bad Science‘ Goldacre and myself will be at the Oxford Union tonight, for an event on “AIDS denialists, MMR, Homeopaths, Gillian Mckeith, libel laws and the rest of the Daily Mail”.

We’re there from 8pm on Monday 1st February, and it’s a free event, so do come along – particularly if you’re never seen Ben speak before. It will be entertaining and informative at the very least.

If you’re not in Oxford, but know people who are, do pass along the invite. Union membership not required.

In the interview, I make a claim that Halvorsen personally profits from mistrust in the MMR vaccine – the reference for this is the price list of the company which Halvorsen runs, here; http://www.babyjabs.co.uk/baby_vaccines_prices.htm

In terms of the background of my involvement with all this, I attended the ‘showdown meeting’ at The Lancet with the investigative journalist Brian Deer the week before original allegations of conflict of interest were officially made. We identified the serious problems of medical and research ethics raised by the intrusive and burdensome procedures carried out.

I wrote about the ethical concerns in the Sunday Times at the time and raised the matter in Parliament, demanding an inquiry.

Just before the findings were announced at the GMC yesterday, I made a press statement, saying; “If the GMC finds against Dr Wakefield on the major issues of research ethics involving children, I will be calling for the strongest sanctions to be imposed.

As well as being an MP interested in science, health, and evidence-based policy-making, I’ve been a long-standing member of the BMA’s Medical Ethics Committee, and at the time of Dr Wakefield’s research was a member of a leading Research Ethics Committee in Oxford, responsible for deciding whether or not to approve similar intrusive medical studies on children.

Principled stand

This week, the Government published its version of the principles for the treatment of scientific advice (http://nds.coi.gov.uk/content/detail.aspx?NewsAreaId=2&ReleaseID=409612). Given that the purpose of the project is to try to fix the broken relationship between the Government and independent science advisers, it is remarkable and frankly depressing that the current proposals look set to make things even worse.

The original principles (http://bit.ly/scienceadvice) were drafted by senior members of the science community and Sense about Science (who I, with others, advised directly on the matter), in the wake of the sacking of David Nutt by the Home Secretary, Alan Johnson. They were born as a response to the crisis of confidence caused by the Nutt affair and the Government’s treatment of both scientific advisers and their advice.

The unfair attacks in Parliament (http://www.drevanharrismp.wordpress.com) on Nutt, a distinguished scientist and scholar, by Johnson and his predecessor, Jacqui Smith – neither of whom can be regarded as the Roy Jenkins of their own professions – were a further provocation to the science community.

Leading researchers felt they had better things to do than run the risk of being unpaid scapegoats for evidence-free tabloid-chasing government policies on drugs and knife crime.

The original principles had very sensible and specific headings such as “academic freedom”, “independence of operation” and “proper consideration of advice” – concepts that are key to a good relationship between advisers and ministers. The principles amounted to a short and cogent code of practice for ministers to complement the 110-paragraph Code of Practice for Scientific Advisory Committees (CoPSAC) (http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file42780.pdf).

The principles recognised that governments do not have to take the advice they are given but that ministers have a responsibility not to “shoot the messenger” and to secure the best possible quality of advice. They were a sincere attempt to offer the Government a constructive way forward and persuaded me that it was more sensible to seek to promote a new understanding that secured academic freedom and proper independence than to urge more advisers to resign in protest or disgust, or to call for a boycott of advisory committees.

Stung by the two immediate resignations from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) in protest at Nutt’s treatment, the Government realised it had a problem. The resignation of three more scientists from the ACMD after a meeting with the Home Secretary that he described as “friendly and constructive”, albeit after Johnson had said publicly that he had no regrets over how he had treated Nutt, must surely have served to focus the rational minds within the Government even more sharply on the urgent need to restore the confidence of advisers.

Riding to the rescue (if the Government only knew it) came Lord Rees, president of the Royal Society, who sent the principles – endorsed by 70 leading science advisers – to the Prime Minister. The Government seemed relieved to have the chance to announce it would consider them.

Yet after five weeks of deliberation, it ditched some of the key protections – such as the guarantee of immunity of proper academic activity from attack, sanction or dismissal, and the freedom to repeat rejected advice publicly – and inserted instead more nebulous concepts such as “trust” and “respect”. Out of ten mentions of “scientific advisers”, the adjective “independent” appears only twice in the Government’s paper.

Here is the ugliest part of its offering: “The Government and its scientific advisers should work together to reach a shared position, and neither should act to undermine mutual trust.”

In 2000, the report into the bovine spongiform encephalopathy disaster led by Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers set down what was required to get the best scientific advice: avoiding collusion and the appearance of it was fundamental. So the proposition that those asked to assess the evidence base and give independent scientific advice without fear or favour should be required to work with politicians to reach a “shared position” is an absurd contradiction of the whole concept.

To publish a statement that so utterly contradicts Lord Phillips’ golden rule – that there must be a clear distinction between expert assessment of evidence and the production of policy based on it (or not) – either the very sane and sensible Science Minister Lord Drayson must have taken leave of his senses, or his hand must have been forced by more malign or Neanderthal forces lurking in the corridors of power.

The proposal that neither the Government nor the adviser “should act to undermine mutual trust” presupposes that all potential advisers respect and trust their politicians. I venture to suggest that at a time when the Government needs all the independent advisers it can get, to restrict its recruits to the subset who respect and trust the Home Secretary of the day is tantamount to casting the fishing net into a friendly puddle and ignoring the heaving seas.

In any event, respect for a minister is not a requirement for expertise in a scientific discipline and – until we have the George W. Bush approach to policymaking – it should form no part of the recruitment process for membership of advisory committees.

The other problem with a universal test of whether conduct or communication “undermines trust” is that it is wholly subjective and undefined. In stark contrast to the science community’s original proposal guaranteeing academic freedom and allowing advisory committee members to speak freely about the advice they have given even if rejected, this clause allows sanctions and the threat of sanctions to be wielded against advisers in an arbitrary way without a breach of CoPSAC.

The harm stems not only from the victimisation of advisers prepared, in the words of Sense about Science’s managing director Tracey Brown, “to speak the truth to power”, but also from the chilling effect on all the others.

On the question of how to get out of the hole it is in regarding scientists’ confidence in the way they are treated, my independent free advice to the Government would be to stop digging. Yet every public intervention it has so far made on this issue seems designed to deepen the chasm of mistrust and cynicism that now exists.

The Commons Science and Technology Committee, on which I sit, this week announced that it was endorsing the original principles. On the same day, I asked Johnson at the dispatch box whether, despite the resignations he had previously provoked, he would do the same thing again. “Absolutely, yes,” he said, while looking nervously across at the Conservative Shadow Home Secretary, Chris Grayling, who has said he should have sacked Nutt even earlier – presumably for giving the wrong advice in the first place.

Well, absolutely yes, you can bully one scientist here and sack another one there, but do not expect to fill six vacancies on the main statutory Home Office Advisory Committee, which is currently moribund. Drug policy is thus likewise suspended since ACMD advice is a prerequisite to drug classifications.

It’s not too late for sense to prevail: the consultation on these principles is now open (http://www.berr.gov.uk/consultations/page53603.html). We should all hope that the Government wakes up to the damage it is doing.

The original principles can be publicly endorsed at http://bit.ly/scienceadvice.

Ultimately we will all suffer if politicians ignore expert advice and policy is evidence-free. Leading scientists would rather research and publish freely than have the “privilege” of advising ministers for free but losing their credibility and academic freedom in the process. The Government needs the service of scientists more than scientists need to serve the Government: ministers would do well to remember that.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Dr-Evan-Harris-MP/29265518599

The latest resignations represent a deepening in the crisis of confidence of scientists in the Government – in particular, in the Home Secretary. That they come after Alan Johnson met the ACMD demonstrates that he just doesn’t get it when it comes to the importance of respecting the academic freedom and integrity of independent, unpaid, science advisers.

Ministers are entitled to their own opinions, but not to their own facts. The cost of the failure of the Home Secretary to understand the lessons of the BSE Inquiry will be poor policy – unless the Prime Minister acts decisively to bring the Home Office and rest of Government into line with established good practice.

By clumsily and unfairly sacking David Nutt, Alan Johnson has been rewarded with five resignations in protest. That takes a certain kind of ineptitude.