To regulate science we need to understand it, argues Monica Darnbrough

Teachers, writers and media presenters all have a pressing challenge. They need to be able to introduce scientific terms clearly enough so that we all have an accurate concept of their meaning.

Then we can all play a part with politicians to decide whether science and technology is used or not, and how its use is regulated in order to ensure public benefit and public safety.

Civil servants

Colleagues in the civil service were intelligent, widely read, witty people. Many had degrees in politics, philosophy and economics or law from prestigious universities. I was enormously impressed by the speed and facility with which they tackled issues, however complex or specialized. They quickly grasped specialist legal terms and concepts, City financial practices, obscure aspects of treaties. In a very short time they could write clear explanatory notes on the crucial points.

What surprised me was that the confidence, easy assimilation and skilled analysis seemed to evaporate when these consummate professionals were faced with scientific or technological issues. Specialised scientific terminology, which was no more conceptually difficult than legal or tax terminology, tended to be put into the too difficult pile, passed to a specialist, or dismissed as unimportant. It was as though there was a barrier or block which stopped them from dealing with these matters in their normal effective way.

Examples ranged from the earliest discussions of global warming (raised with us by Germany when Mrs. Thatcher was both Prime Minister and Minister for Science); international decisions about banning products like tallow or gelatin which might be linked to BSE; agreeing separation distances between fields of GM crops.

Medical ignorance

A patient with Parkinson’s disease spoke in an easy-to-understand style on the radio about the causes and treatments. He described how two chemicals in the brain are out of balance and that dopamine levels are low. But, when he described compounds which are agonists (which bind to a receptor site and hence trigger an increase in production of the wanted dopamine) you could hear the interviewer losing the thread.

What we regulate

I am dismayed by the lack of knowledge, amongst generally well informed friends, about the regulations that surround the mandatory testing of chemicals, pesticides, and novel drugs before products can be put onto the market in UK, US and Europe.  Understanding the regulatory framework does not require knowledge of scientific terms: it is a civic matter. We should all know about the procedures which our societies have put in place to protect citizens.

It is not widely known that we no longer allow testing of cosmetics on animals to be done in the UK. There is little awareness of the way experiments on animals are regulated – the laboratories, the individual researcher and the experimental design all have to be authorized and licensed, and ethical committees are always involved in consideration of the research which is being planned.

There is also surprise that natural remedies and health foods have not had to undergo testing to demonstrate their efficacy in the way that drugs do.

The role of jargon

Why do scientists and the medical profession use unfamiliar words? It may seem as though they want to mystify or exclude ‘outsiders’.
The use of special terms comes in part from the need to write up experimental methods in a precise way which will enable someone else to repeat the experiment exactly. Results must also be described precisely. When new observations are made, researchers ‘invent’ new words to describe them.

This new language is initially used only by the few specialist researchers working in the narrow field, but the research may be more widely presented.  Most people want to understand something about their bodies and can understand that chemicals help to carry messages between nerves in the brain (neurotransmitters) but are baffled by terms such as ‘anterior resection’ on a consent form to describe the abdominal incision (sorry – the cut in the belly) needed for surgery on the gut.

Only when we understand the words and the concepts will we be able to consider how discoveries might be used and regulated in society. In the debate about whether to allow or encourage research using stem cells, we must distinguish between human embryonic stem cells (originally taken from  a ‘blastocyst’ – a minute hollow ball of  ‘totipotent’ cells which is the embryo after a few hours of development – and grown in ‘cultures’) and ‘pluripotent’ cells derived from umbilical cord blood or from bone marrow. See what I mean about needing to understand the words?

Dr Monica Darnbrough CBE was formerly head of the DTI’s Bioscience Unit.

Comments to Wendy Barnaby.