The extent of plastic pollution is tracked in a daily briefing

Decolonizing the biosciences I: Research malfeasance, publishership and reproducibility in low- and middle-income countries

Research institutions — be they universities, non-governmental organizations, or national or transnational science councils — should develop and implement policies, structures and processes that support and promote diversity and inclusivity in research.

This is the first in a short series of articles about decolonizing the biosciences. Dolors Armenteras Pascual is a researcher in the global south at the National University of Bogot.

The meetings tend to focus on certain issues such as research malfeasance, responsible behavior around data collection, analysis, authorship and publication, and the importance of reproducibility. At the 7th World Conference on Research Integrity held in Cape Town, South Africa, a significant step was taken by attendees. The suite of issues that threaten the integrity of science is due to the various ways in which research programmes and practices disadvantage those living in low- and middle-income countries.

For example, here is a typical funding rejection I receive: “The applicant has strong credentials. She has published many times in the field. However, compared to highly cited researchers, her output seems below the standards of the call.” I don’t have the resources available to colleagues in wealthier countries in the global north. To compare researchers’ impacts fairly, I think we should change how metrics, such as h-index, are calculated. The impact score could be figured out by the percentage difference between the gross domestic product in a country and the Gross Domestic Product in another country.

Decolonization in the Global South: Why scientists and researchers alike should be invited to speak at conferences and conferences – I hope to contribute to the Digital Green project

It’s difficult when colleagues with privilege view those of us who vocalize our frustrations as complainers. If you want to collaborate with me here in Brazil to help you build a brand in France or the United Kingdom, forget it. I only accept invitations that allow my group to be on a level playing field and for us to take a leadership role. It’s not easy, and there is a cost, but I find it helpful to set these boundaries.

I’ve studied rain-fed cropping systems alongside colleagues in sub-Saharan Africa, notably Malawi, Zimbabwe and Tanzania, throughout my career. The colleagues are not invited to speak at conferences or co-author high-profile papers. My colleagues at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and I hope to reverse this trend by advocating for decolonization through authorship. As a start, my team of researchers will include a paragraph about what each author did, and how the team paid attention to gender and global-south inclusivity in publications.

Performance evaluations are performed at most of the 13 agriculturalGene banks and research centers in the global research partnership, including CIMMYT. It is a method for ranking a scientist’s productivity and influence. Alternative indices, such as Google Scholar, which includes outputs such as book chapters, can be less elitist and include a wider range of viewpoints.

Agricultural research is steeped in colonial attitudes in many ways, too. For example, many programmes focus solely on higher crop yields, rather than including the nuances of resource stewardship, such as how using perennial crops improves soil health at the cost of lower yields. By conducting agricultural research that involves scholars from the global south, we can better address a broader range of production and sustainability goals.

I’m also making the case at CIMMYT that performance evaluations reward sharing data sets and information with and between communities quicker. I am excited to see things like Digital Green, a Microsoft product that shares everything from weather to market data with farmers and farmer educators. This is part of decolonization in my view. Rather than, say, top-down fertilizer recommendations from experts, this offers a way to connect people so they can share information more directly in a local context.

Satellites are being used by researchers to gather data that will support a treaty against plastic pollution. There are preventative antibiotics for sexually transmitted infections and animal-to-human transplants.

A health department in the United States recommends that people who are at high risk of acquiring a sexually transmitted infections take a preventive antibiotic after having sex. Clinical trials show that the strategy reduces infections. But some researchers worry it will contribute to antibiotic resistance. Researchers say guidelines about use are important for informing people about the safety of a strategy they might already be using. “People should have access to this tool, if it makes sense for them and their lifestyle,” says sexual-health physician Jenell Stewart.

Infections caused close to 8 million deaths in 2019 making them the second biggest killer after heart disease. Death rates in Africa ranged from a low of 230 deaths per 100,000 people in sub-Saharan Africa to a high of 52 deaths per 100,000 across western Europe and North America. “These new data for the first time reveal the full extent of the global public health challenge posed by bacterial infections,” says study co-author Christopher Murray.

Xenotransplantation as a solution to the human kidney and heart problems: a recent example of the need to go to the clinic

The 27th UN climate conference in Egypt has diplomats, activists and scientists thinking how to make the event more relevant. Some stakeholders suggest that COPs could focus less on targets and more on how to incentivize drastic reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions, with rich countries leading the way.

This year, the first trials of pig organs transplanted into humans have raised expectations for xenotransplantation. In January, a man who was too ill to qualify for a human or artificial heart was granted emergency authorization to receive a pig heart. He lived for almost two months after the procedure. Other tests have seen genetically modified pig kidneys transferred into people who had been declared legally dead. Proponents of more clinical trials say xenotransplantation could help to make a large dent in the list of the thousands of people in need of organ transplants. “I think we need to take that step forward and go to the clinic,” says transplant surgeon Wayne Hawthorne. The mood is cautious. “If there’s a problem, you could set the whole field back.”

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-04128-y

Foggy Bruno Latour and the Uruguayan Plastic Superconducting Convention ”Lambda” (The Voice of Bruno)

175 nations voted in March to create a legally binding international plastics treaty, after nearly 30 years of warnings about the problem. Negotiations start in earnest in Uruguay on 28 November. Yet the only way to ensure that a treaty — expected to be completed by the end of 2024 — is effective is to know where plastics come from, where they go and who’s responsible, every step of the way. Researchers are collecting tiny plastic particles from beaches and using satellites to reflect off debris and drop their bottles into India.

Steve Woolgar writes that Bruno Latour brought a Gallic touch to his work in science and technology studies, and that he wrote the influential 1979 book Laboratory Life. He wrote about profound issues that were light-hearted. A junior researcher tried to interrupt Bruno at a University of Oxford lecture in 2003 to point out a logical discrepancy. Bruno paused, and exclaimed: ‘But I am French!’, to rapturous applause.” Latour has died aged 75.

A prototype navigation system overcomes obstacles to achieve centimetre-level accuracy. The system combines multiple mobile-phone signals with the aid of a telecommunications technique. The transmitters are connected by optical cables to make sure they are perfectly synchronized.

The Zero Draft: Negotiating the World Trade Organization’s Framework on Intellectual Property Rights for COVID-19 Vaccines, Drugs and Diagnostics

Parties should support temporary waivers on intellectual property rights in order to allow rapid production of vaccines, medical equipment, masks, diagnostics and drugs if there is a pandemic. Moon says that agreeing on terms before the next crisis can help avoid a stalemate. In late 2020, South Africa and India proposed the introduction of a time-bound waiver on IP rights for COVID-19 vaccines, drugs and diagnostics, but the proposal, which was backed by more than 60 other countries, was largely quashed by the World Trade Organization some 18 months later.

The treaty in its current form is so weak that even countries that sign it can ignore the rules when the next epidemic strikes. The document is intended to be legally binding, but in some key instances, the text avoids strong language, such as ‘shall’ and ‘must’, instead using fuzzier terms such as ‘encourage’ and ‘promote’, say researchers. “It’s still quite heavily reliant on voluntary compliance,” says Lee.

Kelley Lee, scientific co- director at the Pacific Institute on Pathogens, Pandemics and Society in Canada, said it has more heart and brain than he expected. It has insufficient teeth and insufficient spine to ensure that we’ll definitely have a better response next time.

WHO member states will now begin debating the terms of the document — known as the zero draft — at a series of meetings, the first of which will begin later this month. Researchers expect the negotiations to be contentious, and some of the language is likely to be watered down before the agreement is adopted in 2024.

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00358-w

Treaty building, but not before the next major outbreak: The case of the H5N1 bird flu and its implications for global health and policy

A new legal instrument can take a long time, but it may still be too late for the next major outbreak. The H5N1 bird flu outbreak is being tracked by researchers and they are worried that it will spread quickly to mammals. “Time is not on our side,” says Alexandra Phelan, a global-health lawyer at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland.

A key focus of the zero draft is equity. Articles in the treaty include establishing a global network for the supply and distribution of ingredients used to produce drugs; strengthening research and the development of vaccines and therapeutics; and sharing that knowledge with the world.

Under the terms of the treaty, parties should also commit to allocating no less than 5% of their annual health budget for pandemic prevention and response. And they should earmark an as-yet-unspecified percentage of their gross domestic product, in particular to support developing countries in preparing for pandemics. If agreed, Moon says this would be the first instance she knows of in which governments commit to setting aside a specific amount of money for international aid in a treaty. “I don’t think it’s likely, but it’s a bold proposal.”

Layth Hanbali, a health-policy analyst at Spark Street Advisors who is based in the occupied Palestinian territories, says that the treaty needs to be addressed after it comes into force. Unless there is a mechanism in place to hold states accountable, the treaty document won’t have anything to do with it.

Phelan says it is important to not forget the value of the treaty building process. Establishing international guidelines of solidarity, building trust between governments, and changing behaviour will all be achieved by discussions and debates over provisions.

The challenges of open-science research in low-resource countries: how Africans are treated and how they find their colleagues in high-income countries

As awareness has grown about fraud and misconduct in science, the World Conferences on Research Integrity have become a leading forum for the discussion and study of ways to promote responsible behaviour in research. Since the first meeting in 2007, which was held in Lisbon, the events have helped to establish an academic field focused on research integrity.

The reasons for the statement are clear. Researchers and institutions from high-income countries are more likely to reap benefits from global collaborations than LMIC co-workers.

As an indication of this, a look at the authorship of papers about COVID-19 from the 10 top medical and global-health journals (according to impact ratings), containing content related to Africa or any African country, and published during the first 9 months of 2020, reveals that 66% of the authors were not from Africa2. There were no author from Africa in one in five articles. More than half of the first and last authors of the papers were from other parts of the world, while almost all of the African first and last authors were not from Africa.

Often, what happens is that after securing a grant for a project, a research team from a high-income country looks for local researchers in the low- or middle-income country of interest to collaborate with. Local researchers might be offered some grant money and co-authorship on a paper (usually with their name appearing in the middle of the list). Invariably, the lead research team conducts the analyses, with the local researchers only reviewing manuscripts, often to ensure that they are culturally and politically acceptable3.

The obstacles that make it harder for researchers working in low-resource settings to participate in ‘open science’ need to be identified and addressed by publishers, and other national and global stakeholders, such as science councils and funders.

There have been unforeseen difficulties around publishing. The costs to publish an article in a gold open-access journal is prohibitive for most researchers and institutions in LMICs. The University of Cape Town, for example, which produces around 3,300 articles each year, has an annual budget of $180,000 for article-processing costs. This only covers 120 articles a year.

Because of this, researchers in these countries frequently publish their papers in subscription-based journals. Scientists working in the same situation can’t access such journals because the libraries in their institutions can’t pay for subscriptions to many journals. All this makes it even harder for researchers to build on locally relevant science.

Furthermore, a tool for evaluating practices, called the Research Fairness Initiative, has already been developed by the Council on Health Research for Development, an international non-governmental organization that aims to support health research, particularly in LMICs. By providing questionnaires and guidance, the Research Fairness Initiative enables institutions, individual researchers and funders to evaluate their current practices, and if necessary, improve them.

The Cape Town Statement differs from these other guidelines and tools, however, in that it recognizes that unfair practices can harm the integrity of all research, no matter the discipline or context. Specifically, it focuses on the following four broad actions.

The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine has been a major player in global-health research for many decades. The staff and students of the university have been trying to address the fact that the organization’s members have held unacknowledged positions of advantage through its Decolonising Global Health initiative. So far, this has involved various undertakings, including a series of educational lectures.

All stakeholders, from researchers, institutions and funders, to journal editors and publishers, must take steps to ensure that they are not exacerbating power imbalances in research collaborations, but instead helping to remove them.

Some funders are making progress on this front. Currently, about 60% of the grants awarded by the EDCTP go directly to institutions in sub-Saharan Africa. Similarly, in 2021 the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), launched a $74.5 million five-year project called Data Science for Health Discovery and Innovation in Africa (DS-I Africa). African scientists are creating a pan-African network of data to address African research priorities.

Publishers and journal editors must question submissions from authors if data have been collected in a low- or middle-income country, but the lead and collaborating authors are from high-income countries.

Some are already taking steps in this direction. The data that is collected from Africa but with no mention or acknowledgement of a single African partner has been turned down by the Lancet in the past. Similarly, Nature journals now encourage authors to make various disclosures on inclusion and ethics when submitting manuscripts.

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00855-y

Research Ethics for Low- and Middle-Income Micropolitan Countries (LMICs), the Impact of HIV/AIDS and Other Issues

A research-support systems must be developed for LMICs. It could mean paying for computing infrastructure, mentorship programmes, open-access publishing or the training and salaries of project and financial managers.

Several controversies in research ethics, which occurred as a result of HIV research projects undergoing ethical scrutiny during the height of the HIV epidemic in the 1980s and early 1990s, prompted the Fogarty International Center at the NIH to launch the International Bioethics Education and Career Development Award in 1999. The goal was to make sure there were strong research ethics committees in LMIC institutions that could review and meet international standards for ethics. Hundreds of people in Africa and Asia have been trained in research ethics thanks to this and other efforts.

During the 2000s, researchers from the United Kingdom and other high-income countries obtained blood samples from people of the San community in Namibia for genetic research without always adequately explaining what those samples would be used for, or reaching any benefit-sharing agreements with the community.

The San people have since developed their own code of ethics — a value-based set of principles that researchers must adhere to before trying to obtain samples or information from them (see go.nature.com/3yz7ash). If there are codes for a particular community, this code can be used by researchers working with other Indigenous communities.

Ensuring that community members or knowledge-holders, who might not have formal qualifications, are included in research teams — with their contributions being adequately valued — is another way in which local knowledge can be incorporated equitably5.

Many of the greatest challenges facing humanity — climate change among them — are disproportionately affecting people living in LMICs. And many of these challenges have arisen largely because of a long history of colonial exploitation and inequitable use of Earth’s resources. Yet last year, reports of systemic bias and the contributions of researchers from LMICs being sidelined were made, even in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.