Remember the food-and-drink-industry funded Social Issues Research Centre, with whom Krebs and the Royal Society, amongst others, collaborated over guidelines for the media on how they reported issues like the GM debate?
You may also remember that, despite the emphasis on “health” in the SIRC’s media code, there was nobody on the SIRC’s Forum of “leading scientists” from the British Medical Association or from any UK medical journal, most obviously: The Lancet or the British Medical Journal. The BMJ and the Lancet have of course been highly outspoken on the general issue of researchers’conflicts of interest and the often corrosive effect of the material charms of industry.
In fact, it turns out, as we reported recently, the SIRC media initiative came under fire from the British Medical Journal as far back as Sept. 1999 (see second item below) with the BMJ highlighting the SIRC's links to industry and asking, "how seriously should journalists take an attack from an organisation that is so closely linked to the drinks industry?"
Very seriously, would seem to be the answer for a number of media organisations that have signed up to the SIRC guidelines, including the BBC who were even represented on the Forum.
As a result of the conspicuous absence of such notable voices as the BMA, the BMJ etc., the SIRC had to make do, on what was billed as a “Forum of leading scientists”, with some fairly obscure clinicians, eg Dr Roger Fiskin, for example, who, despite being a little-known hospital consultant without a single research publication to his name, authoritatively dismissed Pusztai's GM experiments as "a pile of steaming horse-shit”. [Private Eye, 24 March 2000 (p14)] This rather suggests it was attitude that was the SIRC's over-riding criterion of selection.
Interestingly, several members of the SIRC Forum, like pop zoologist Desmond Morris, are truly part of the media SIRCus, being well known for their paid appearances on radio, TV and in print -- writing books for industry in collaboration with the SIRC being another of Dr Morris's little earners.
Another media-friendly SIRC Forum member, who was obviously considered to be of the "right stuff" to pontificate on the media's need for greater integrity, is Professor Sheila McLean, Director of the Institute of Law and Ethics in Medicine at Glasgow University. Interestingly, Prof McLean's "extracurricular activities" have just made the front page of Glasgow's Daily Record (first item below) in less than creditable circumstances. In short, this tabloid considers this "ethics girl" to lacks ethics and to have been ramming her snout too far into the public trough!!
We titled our report on Krebs et al's collusion with the SIRC media initiative 'BAD COMPANY' after a remark of Cervantes, "Tell me what company thou keepst and I'll tell thee what thou art".
see: BAD COMPANY - reporting the business of science: http://members.tripod.com/~ngin/scisale.htm
* * *
ETHICS GIRL IN EXPENSES SCANDAL
She wanted pounds 300 for going to party
Daily Record
Monday, January 22, 2001
A LEADING expert on ethics wanted to charge taxpayers more than pounds 300 for turning up to her own quango's Christmas party.
Professor Sheila McLean asked if she was entitled to the expenses handout for attending the bash thrown by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission.
Officials at the Scottish Executive fear other quango chiefs are making such demands. One said: "This is a shameful example of what goes wrong with quangos.
"It will give fuel to those in the Executive who want to see a real bonfire of them."
McLean can claim pounds 360 per day for her work as chair of the commission, which looks at claims that people have been unjustly jailed.
She decides when she works, and how often.
McLean gets more than pounds 30,000 in fees and expenses and even charges for the time it takes her to fill in expenses forms.
She also earns around pounds 40,000 as a professor at Glasgow University, where she specialises in problems of medical ethics.
And on top of all this, she is paid for her regular appearances on radio and TV, where she is often interviewed as an expert on a range of issues
Tackled by the Daily Record, she admitted asking if she could claim for time spent at the six-hour party funded by the taxpayer.
But she insisted she never formally requested the cash.
First Minister Henry McLeish has ordered a major review of all Scotland's 187 quangos - unelected public bodies.
Finance Minister Angus MacKay unveiled plans for the review last week. All the quangos have been given 100 days to justify their existences or face abolition.
The Executive insider said: "Quangos should be staffed by people who are qualified for the job and who are interested in serving the public, not making money.
"They have to be transparent in how they operate."
McLean's critics will also point to McLeish's recent vow to end the "jobs for the boys" culture at some quangos.
When her commission started up, it received dozens of applications for three jobs as researchers.
One of the successful hopefuls turned out to be a postgraduate student of McLean's who isn't qualified to be a criminal lawyer - just like the boss.
McLean was given her job at the commission by the late Donald Dewar. She worked with him as a reporter to the Children's Panel.
She earns more than twice as much as the next best-paid member and is paid more than the heads of the Scottish Legal Aid Board and the Parole Board.
As well as all her other duties, she is heading an inquiry ordered by Health Minister Susan Deacon into how hospitals store children's body parts and the rights of parents in such cases.
McLean admitted asking whether she could charge for her presence at the Christmas bash.
She said: "I asked my Director of Administration whether or not the time I spent at the party was in fact chargeable time. I was there until about 10pm.
"The answer I got was no it wasn't so I haven't submitted a claim."
Asked whether she was able to claim for time spent filling out expenses forms, she said: "Yes, if it takes a reasonable amount of time.
"We don't, by and large, claim for anything less than about 10 or 15 minutes of any kind of work.
"In fact, we have tightened up all of our regulations on this as part of the general attempt to keep costs down."
McLean insisted she does not claim for filling in her expenses forms unless it is part of the work she is doing at that point.
She said she would only do so if it was a very complex claim and took up a lot of her time.
HOW LONG IT TAKES TO EARN pounds 30,000:
Professor Sheila McLean 83 DAYS
Social Worker 616 DAYS
Teacher 609 DAYS
Staff Nurse 648 DAYS
+++
An end to health scares?
British Medical Journal (BMJ) 1999;319:716- ( 11 September )
Reviews - Press
At last, something is going to be done about health scares.
Irresponsible, biased medical journalists are going to be taken in hand and forced to abide by a code of conduct which will be drawn up a by a working party of the great and the good, according to last week’s edition of GP magazine.
The working party is being set up as the result of a recommendation from the House of Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology. In the
committee’s report on genetically modified food, published in May, the committee recommended that “media coverage of scientific matters should be governed by a Code of Practice, which stipulates that scientific stories should be factually accurate. Breaches of the Code of Practice should be referred to the Press Complaints Commission.”
The readers of GP magazine must have breathed a collective sigh of relief. But wait a moment. Which guardians of the public good are going to set up this powerful working party? Two organisations are involved apparently: the Royal Institution of Great Britain in London and the Social Issues Research Centre, in Oxford.
Most people have heard of the Royal Institution but who or what is the Social Issues Research Centre? At first sight, it seems to be a heavyweight research body. It calls itself “an independent, non-profit organisation founded to conduct research on social issues,” it is based in Oxford, and the “dreaming spires” adorn its website.
Moreover, it was quoted in the Independent last week, when the paper’s health editor, Jeremy Laurance, told us that the centre had invented the term “riskfactorphobia,” a condition in which people become hypersensitive to health scares. It has also been quoted in the last few months in the Times, the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail, the Observer and the Evening Standard.
But on closer inspection it transpires that this research organisation shares the same offices, directors, and leading personnel as a commercial market research company called MCM Research. Both organisations are based at 28 St Clements, Oxford, and both have social anthropologist Kate Fox and psychologist Dr Peter Marsh as directors, and Joe McCann as a research and training manager.
The scenario becomes even more interesting when one reads the list of MCM’s clients. These include Bass Taverns, the Brewers and Licensed Retail Association, the Cider Industry Council, the Civil Aviation Authority, Conoco, Coral Racing, Grand Metropolitan Retail, the Portman Group (jointly funded by Bass, Courage, Guinness, etc), Pubmaster, Rank Leisure, and Whitbread Inns, as well as several Australian brewing concerns and several independent television companies.
The Social Issues Research Centre (whose website is at http://www.sirc.org/) fosters the image of an ultraconcerned, public spirited group. It deplores the fact that it is “often impossible to distinguish between sound, evidence-based concerns and those which are either whimsical or fostered by unstated social and political agendas.”
Its website opens with a high minded editorial stating: “The public has a right to balanced and accurate information on the basis of which they can make responsible decisions. Unfortunately, unfounded scare stories are increasingly drowning out responsible reporting and sensible advice.” The editorial then attacks the press for unnecessarily increasing people’s fears about genetically modified food; the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine; the dangers of E coli O157; and the increased risk of liver cancer from aflatoxins in food.
MCM Research, in contrast, has a commercial approach. It describes itself as an Oxford based company that specialises in applying social science to real world issues and problems. Its website (which is at www.i-way.co.uk/~mcm/index.html) asks: “Do your PR initiatives sometimes look too much like PR initiatives? MCM conducts social/psychological research on the positive aspects of your business. The results do not read like PR literature, or like market research data. Our reports are credible, interesting and entertaining in their own right. This is why they capture the imagination of the media and your customers.”
Given that the two organisations are so closely connected, is the Social Issues Research Centre the best organisation to run a working party on responsible health reporting? I asked Kate Fox as director of both organisations, whether she thought there could be a conflict of interest. She said: “No, I don’t think so. The kinds of work we have done at MCM have been fairly worthy things like designing management training programmes to reduce violence in pubs. They are fairly uncontroversial.”
She added that the commercial work carried out by MCM Research sometimes paid for the research work undertaken by the Social Issues Research Centre.
But how seriously should journalists take an attack from an organisation that is so closely linked to the drinks industry? If, for example, the centre attacked newspapers for exaggerating the effects of alcohol and thereby causing an unnecessary scare, could the centre put its hand on its heart and claim that it was totally neutral on the issue? On its own website the centre has a long article, entitled Health Stories: Reading Between the Lines, which offers advice, including the need to look for the source of any information you are given, to read past the headline, and to consider whether a reported study makes sense.
Journalists and readers would be wise to heed this advice and look at the centre’s sources of information.
Annabel Ferriman, BMJ.
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“Journalists who blindly quote ‘experts’ without illuminating their agenda are simply adding another layer of fog to an already confusing debate.” - Howard Kurtz, “Dr Whelan’s media operation”, Columbia Journalism Review March/April 1990