The pet hypothesis - Why dogs really are man's best friend

The relationship between pet and man is one that has been around for millennia. Dogs exemplify this relationship, with the domestication of wolves occurring as early as the end of the last Ice Age. Following the realisation that canine species possessed attributes ideal for activities such as hunting and tracking, efforts were made to selectively breed animals with highly useful traits. In return for their efforts, dogs were provided with food, shelter and companionship.

This symbiotic relationship has consequently led to changes in social behaviour between dog and man throughout many generations. In particular, communication and cooperation of dogs with their owners has evolved so that owners now often view dogs as the equivalent of an offspring and dogs are as comfortable around humans as they are amongst their own kin.

Increasingly now, pets are obtained for their emotional support and companionship. A range of studies have identified pets to reduce anxiety and increase empathy in children. In the elderly, animals are thought to encourage socialisation and can improve conditions such as hypertension. Scientifically, it is becoming clear that the special relationship between human and pet may be exploited for innovative intervention strategies for a number of medical conditions.

Animal based therapies for example, have been shown to be effective in the treatment of childhood autism. A study comparing the effectiveness of normal therapy sessions to those including animals has shown that children respond more strongly when animals are present. Language use, sensory and motor function were improved when activities such as riding llamas, petting rabbits and playing fetch with dogs were included. Interviews also demonstrated that the gains made during these sessions produced an observable impact on the social behaviour of autistic children within an everyday setting.

Schizophrenia is another example of a medical condition where benefits have been observed by incorporating animals into treatment regimes. One study noted that the feelings of safety and comfort invoked by dogs were found to decrease the level of anxiety experienced by schizophrenic patients during interviews.

So if you are looking for an excuse to add a cute and furry to your household, then you have medicine supporting you all the way... And after all, who can resist those eyes?

Sams M.J., Fortney E.V. & Willenbring S. (2006). Occupational Therapy Incorporating Animals for Children With Autism: A Pilot Investigation, American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 60 (3) 268-274. DOI: 10.5014/ajot.60.3.268

Lang U.E., Jansen J.B., Wertenauer F., Gallinat J. & Rapp M.A. (2010). Reduced anxiety during dog assisted interviews in acute schizophrenic patients, European Journal of Integrative Medicine, 2 (3) 123-127. DOI: 10.1016/j.eujim.2010.07.002

A tale of cannabalism, sorcery and infectious proteins

A Fore child suffering from kuru, http://nobelprize.org

It was customary for the Fore people of Papua New Guinea to eat their dead. They did not believe in burial, as the flesh of loved ones would be left to decompose in the ground and be consumed by worms and insects. Consumption of the body would instead allow the soul of the deceased to be recycled within the family, providing them with protection. It would also allow the rebirth of the dead as an ancestor.

Following the mourning period, the female relatives of the deceased would cut the body up as it lay upon a cloth. The meat was divided up and passed around on banana leaves to women who had attended the ceremony to share the grief of the family. Upon a large fire, the meat would be cooked within bamboo cylinders. Sticks were used to skewer the meat and feed it into their mouths. In this way, the soul of the deceased would enter the wombs of the women.

Often on the same day, the head of the deceased would also be consumed. The hair would first be burned off over a flame and then a stone used to make a hole in the top of the skull. From this hole, the brain would be removed and similarly cooked within bamboo cylinders before being eaten. Frequently, young children would also be indulged and provided with a portion of the brain, as it was considered a delicacy. Once all the meat had been removed from the body, the remaining bone would be dried next to the fire then crushed with stones. This too, was cooked and eaten. Consumption of the entire body was necessary to ensure that the soul would depart to the land of the dead and become an ancestor.

A few of those, mainly women and young children, who had consumed the human brain would comprise the unlucky 1-2% of the Fore population that would go on to develop illness. Internally, the disease would lie dormant and undetected for many years, usually around a decade. Sometimes as long as fifty years. Finally when this incubation period came to an end, the infected individuals would begin to experience joint pain and headache. Co-ordination would become affected, with walking becoming difficult and tremors plaguing the muscles.

Inside the brains of the infected individuals, the neurons responsible for transmitting signals to the rest of the body would perforate and die. The supporting cells, or astrocytes, responsible for mediating the exchange of nutrients and electrochemical signals between neurons would swell up and begin to increase in number. Deposits of insoluble protein known as plaques would gradually accumulate and disrupt the connectivity of neural cells required for muscle control. Eventually, the inability to swallow would result in malnourishment. Death would swiftly follow within a year.

Human suffering inflicted by kuru

The Fore people blamed sorcery for the onset of the disease which they named 'kuru', meaning the shiver arising from fever. In addition to giving the people a reason for the existence of the disease, it provided hope that the affected might be cured. Being accused of sorcery held severe consequences. Stones were used to crush the bones of the sorcerer and the genitalia destroyed. Consumption of human tissue was not considered a cause for kuru.

By the 1950s however, visiting scientists Daniel Gajdusek and Vincent Zigas began to hypothesise that the cause of kuru might be an infectious agent. The scientists attempted to isolate such an agent from kuru patients using small animals and cultures of cells. But their efforts proved fruitless - no agent could be obtained or identified.

Finally, luck began to turn for the scientists during a visit to London where they were holding an exhibition on kuru. A veterinary scientist by the name of William Hadlow noticed that the symptoms of kuru and the characteristic destruction of brain cells resembled a disease he had seen within sheep populations - scrapie. Since it was known that scrapie was highly transmissible between sheep, efforts were made to prove that kuru was similarly transmissible using a primate model. Chimpanzees that were fed the infective brain material began to exhibit typical kuru symptoms within a few years, proving infectious transmission of the kuru agent. However, the actual agent of scrapie still remained a mystery.

With worldwide interest growing in the group of neuropathological diseases encompassing kuru and scrapie, research groups around the world began to hunt for the source of infection. Experiments slowly revealed that the agents of these diseases, collectively known as 'transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs), were unlike anything previously encountered. They were devoid of nucleic acid and resistant to common methods of decontamination that were effective for known pathogens such as viruses and bacteria.

After decades of study, an elegant set of experiments performed by Stanley Prusiner in the early 1980s definitively proved that the agent of scrapie was a protein. He named this new infectious agent a 'prion'.

We now understand that prions are a variant form of a naturally occurring protein that induce toxic effects on the host. Prions are usually made from an identical genetic code to their normal counterparts, but are assembled incorrectly when they are converted from nucleic acid to protein. When the normal version of the protein encounters this variant prion form, it is also induced to adopt the incorrect conformation. Toxicity results from large aggregates of prion protein assembling within the central nervous system.

Although cases of kuru are becomingly increasingly rare now that it is understood to be transmitted from consumption of infective brain material, other TSEs still remain a global problem. In 1996, a variant form of the existing TSE, Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease (CJD), was identified. In contrast to typical CJD, of which incidence is sporadic, variant CJD (vCJD) began to appear in a cluster of individuals within the United Kingdom. It has since been shown that vCJD is similar to a TSE common in cattle and we now understand this prion to be acquired from consumption of infective beef.

Additionally, the neuropathology of prion infection within the brain draws interesting parallels to other neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's disease. Although Alzheimer's disease is not infective, similar aggregates of incorrectly assembled protein are observed within the brains of Alzheimer's patients. Our understanding of how these insoluble deposits form may be aided by studies using identified prion proteins. Deducing the mechanism of protein misfolding will provide vital clues that may eventually drive the development of treatments for such long-term disorders.

Alpers M. (2007). A history of kuru, PNG Med J, 50 (1-2) 10-9. PMID: 19354007

Prusiner S. (1982). Novel proteinaceous infectious particles cause scrapie, Science, 216 (4542) 136-144. DOI: 10.1126/science.6801762

Whitfield J.T., Pako W.H., Collinge J. & Alpers M.P. (2008). Mortuary rites of the South Fore and kuru, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 363 (1510) 3721-3724. DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2008.0074

Stem cells - building blocks for engineering new blood vessels

Will the use of stem cell technology for regenerating damaged blood vessels ever become a reality? Stem cells have long been hailed as a promising treatment for blood circulation disorders such as coronary heart disease, one of the leading causes of death worldwide. Although early-phase clinical trials using stem cells derived from human bone marrow to treat heart disease are underway, these therapies have to date shown minimal long-term effectiveness. Additionally, the use of stem cells derived from embryos has generated much ethical and scientific concern since their use necessitates embryo destruction and can result in immune rejection of the tissue after transplantation.

Image from Shutterstock Images LLC

In research published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Andriana Margariti and colleagues based at the King’s College in London show for the first time that modified ‘induced pluripotent stem cells’ (iPSCs) can be used to create functioning blood vessels within the mammalian body (Margariti et al., 2012). The well-established method of producing iPSCs uses mature adult cells which are induced to ‘turn back’ and adopt pluripotency - the immature stage of cell development during which a single cell has the potential to develop into many different cell types (Takahashi and Yamanaka 2006).

The original iPSC method has proven so powerful a scientific tool that the pioneer of this research, Shinya Yamanaka was awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine. However, the applications of iPSCs in regenerative medicine have until recently been restricted due to a problematic limitation – these cells have the propensity to form tumours.

Within their study, Margariti and colleagues document a novel method to reprogram adult cells by ‘skipping pluripotency’, thus eliminating the risk of tumour development. Based on the original Takahashi and Yamanaka method, the scientists delivered a cocktail of four important genes into human fibroblasts, the principle cell-type comprising connective tissue, to produce ‘partial iPSCs’ (PiPSCs).

Previous studies aiming to generate iPSCs have utilised long culturing periods to drive the cells back to a complete pluripotent state. However, Margariti and colleagues found that a much shorter period of 4 days was sufficient to induce cellular reprogramming to occur in the absence of complete pluripotency. In addition, it was found that the expression of a high number of genes important in vascular development was altered. This suggested that PiPSCs may be ideal candidates for producing endothelial cells - the cell type which lines the blood and lymphatic vessels.

Using specialised media formulated to drive PiPSCs toward the endothelial lineage, the researchers observed that the cells quickly began to express genes specific for vascular tissues and did not revert back to a pluripotent state. Structurally, PiPSCs also began to resemble endothelial cells. Formation of capillary-like structures outside the body was achieved in less than 24 hours by growing the endothelial cells on a protein rich matrix. Additionally, injection of the endothelial cells into damaged aortic grafts removed from the body increased blood vessel wall stability and integrity.

When the endothelial cells were injected into mice, they formed tube-like structures indicative of vessels. Mice also exhibited increased blood flow, higher capillary numbers and an enhanced ability to stimulate tissue regeneration. Importantly, injection of these cells did not result in tumour formation, despite tumours developing in control animals injected with iPSCs.

What biochemical changes drive endothelial cell development from PiPSCs? The authors identified a previously uncharacterised gene, named SETSIP, which was found to be important during endothelial cell differentiation. In particular, the SETSIP gene product was found to stimulate the activity of ‘vascular endothelial cadherin’ – a protein essential for the cohesion and organisation of endothelial cells and proper vascular development. The identification of genes such as SETSIP will prove critical for complete understanding of the biochemical pathways essential during endothelial cell development from PiPSCs. This may aid in the refinement of vascular tissue engineering methodology to produce safer, highly effective stem cell based therapies.

Does this mean that the doctor will be able to prescribe new blood vessels soon? Unfortunately not - a battery of scientific tests assessing the efficacy and safety of this cellular reprogramming method are yet to be performed. Included in these should be the confirmation that cells taken from actual patients consistently respond to reprogramming treatments.

However, a number of exciting long-term clinical applications for PiPSC technology remain a distinct possibility. The ability to produce patient-specific endothelial cells in less than two weeks as shown by Margariti and colleagues makes feasible the concept of personalised treatment for vascular diseases. Potentially, either direct injection of reprogrammed cells into damaged blood vessels, or the grafting of whole vessels may in the near future lead to stem cell treatments for blood circulation disorders becoming a reality.

Margariti A., Winkler B., Karamariti E., Zampetaki A., Tsai T.N., Baban D., Ragoussis J., Huang Y., Han J.D.J. & Zeng L. & (2012). Direct reprogramming of fibroblasts into endothelial cells capable of angiogenesis and reendothelialization in tissue-engineered vessels, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109 (34) 13793-13798. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1205526109

Takahashi K. & Yamanaka S. (2006). Induction of Pluripotent Stem Cells from Mouse Embryonic and Adult Fibroblast Cultures by Defined Factors, Cell, 126 (4) 663-676. DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2006.07.024

Scientific synergy - accommodating new students into the lab

Where did my tube rack go? Who stole my pipettes? And what happened to all the permanent markers!?!

It's that time of the year where the lab has gone from a nice place of quiet solitude to one overrun with new bodies. With the latest batch of undergraduate students in, the more stable residents of the lab are having to once again adjust to the new working conditions. Instead of being able to freely flit between equipment as desire dictates, booking schedules are being cluttered with names. The monopoly over items such as pipettes and racks has been thwarted.

The post-docs find themselves mentally feeding the brains of multiple students, with their own work removed to the back of the pile somewhere. For the first few weeks, the training process requires intensive scrutiny, with the production line of students being shuffled through the various techniques until they are deemed self sufficient enough to continue on their own. Even then, a constant stream of questions interject the flow of the day. Procedures that would normally take a post-doc an hour might take two or three when first performed by the new student. They are rushed and exhausted.

The new students find themselves in a strange new mountainous landscape. There are confusing transitions from exciting moments in the lab making their first difference to the world, to sitting in their offices with drooping eyelids over papers that don't completely make sense. The information is overwhelming at times. The sequence of events that occurs during their first experiments remains a blur. Accidents happen, samples get mixed up, results are obtained that cannot be explained.

Graduate students find themselves stuck somewhere in the middle of the lab dynamic. Not yet in a supervisory role, but called on for advice, assistance with experiments and looked on as mentors by the new students. With tutorial and practical classes also commencing, time becomes an even more valuable commodity. They are there to 'fill in the gaps', to keep things running smoothly and to set a good example.

Lab meetings are arranged to discuss the new logistics for the year ahead. Rosters are designed. Opinions differ over how they are implemented. A happy work environment hangs on a delicate balance of accommodating everyone's individual needs and the synchronization of different personalities.

Adjustment will require time and effort by everyone. And then just when the lab has finally reached this elusive balance, it will be time for the students to leave... And thus the cycle begins all over again.

Ligers and tigons and sex! Oh my!

Approximately 11 million years ago in Africa, a group of felines began to develop genetic characteristics that were distinct from their other feline counterparts. This began the process of evolution into what we know today as the big cats. Also known as the pantherine cats, this group of species has since evolved into the five species - lions, tigers, jaguar, leopards and snow leopards.

There has been much debate regarding the point at which divergence occurred amongst each of the pantherine species. However, for the sake of our story, the majority of studies looking at the relatedness of tigers and lions agree that they are probably not the most closely related members within this group. Despite this, lions and tigers remain closely enough related that they can breed and produce viable offspring.

 



Usually when we think of two physically dissimilar animals mating and producing offspring, we assume that the appearance of the offspring will end up being somewhere in the middle of the two parents. Take for example the hybrid offspring of a lion and leopard. When a lioness and male leaopard mate, they produce a 'leopon'. These offspring retain the spots of the leopard but the mane of the lion.

Leopon



Anyone with a basic understanding of genetics might also argue that the dominant and recessive interplay of genes will also factor into the characteristics of the offspring. For example a leopon also tends to retain the size of the lioness mother. In simplified terms, the dominance of a certain gene from one parent can result in the supression of the same gene inherited from the other parent, thus it can appear as though some characteristics are only inherited from one parent.

However, an interesting anomaly to both of these scenarios occurs during the mating of a female tiger and male lion. In this case, the newly assembled set of genes combine within the 'liger' offspring to produce offspring that are much larger than either of the parents. Are these creatures then defying the laws of genetics?

The short answer is no. Although it is not well understood, is is thought that the phenomenon is a result of differing breeding strategies of the lion and tiger which have emerged throughout their evolutionary divergence. To understand this we first need to understand exactly how lions and tigers go about haing sex.

Lions are social animals and during the mating period, both male and female lions are highly promiscuous. Thus, it may be possible for siblings to be born from the same mother with different fathers. This is where the goals of female and male lions differ. Males want to ensure that their offspring are able to outcompete all offspring which may have been fathered by other male lions. It is thought this is why paternal genes promote offspring size. Conversely, lionesses want to ensure that all their offspring survive with good health. In order to achieve this, it is necessary for them to pass on maternal genes which regulate size and inhibit excessive fetal growth.

Now let us move on to the mating strategies of tigers. In contrast to lions, tigers are solitary animals and prefer to inhabit territories distinct from other adult tigers. Although the territories of males rarely come into contact, within each male territory will be the smaller ranges of one or two females. Thus mating generally takes place between only a single male and female, eliminating the necessity for competitive size traits during gestation.

So if you haven't guessed it already, when a male lion inseminates a female tiger the offspring liger will receiving growth enhancing genes from the male which are not suppressed by the female tiger genes. Thus, producing the massive 400 kilogram beast seen below.

Liger: Image from T.I.G.E.R.S. Preservation Stations, Miami

Conversely, when a male tiger mates with a female lion, there are no genes contributing towards the growth enhancing effect seen during liger development. This results in the normal sized tigon seen below.

Tigon

Although hybrid animals outwardly appear novel, there are many drawbacks to breeding them. Like many other hybrids male offspring are sterile, ensuring that ligers and tigers will never be able to form a distinct, self-propagating species. Also, ligers and tigons are prone to many medical problems and conflicting parental traits can often cause behavioural problems. An example is the conflicting social environment of the lion with the lifestyle of solitude preferable to the tiger.

Sul S.J. & Williams T.L. (2011). Big Cat Phylogenies, Consensus Trees, and Computational Thinking, Journal of Computational Biology, 18 (7) 895-906. DOI: 10.1089/cmb.2010.0199

McKinnell Z. & Wessel G. Ligers and tigons and .....what? ....oh my!, Molecular reproduction and development, PMID: 22888027

Argghh! Get that spider away from me!

After watching the video of spiders 'falling from the sky' in Brazil, which has doing the rounds on various social media sites over the last couple of days, I got to thinking about arachnophobia. Now I'm not a fan of spiders at all - they make my skin crawl and I have even been known to relocate to another room to sleep when a spider has been in my bedroom (I'm talking the large hairy ones here, not your average garden spider). But at what point does a nervous fear transition to a full blown phobia? And how can such phobias be overcome?

This article written by psychologist Roger Coven nicely sums up what the difference is between a fear and phobia. A fear is a reaction to a real or tangible threat, for example, the anxiety upon seeing a spider where it shouldn't be. In contrast, a phobia is an irrational fear that has the capacity to interfere with a person's quality of life - these people may spend hours thinking about how to avoid coming into contact with spiders and their anxiety can be emotionally consuming.

One theory I discovered suggests that phobias may involve a distortion in cognitive processing - this may also effect the way that perceptual information regarding a particular event is processed in the brain. A study aiming to evaluate this effect recruited 57 spider phobic individuals and asked them to recount the size of tarantuala spiders following exposure by drawing their length on a piece of paper. Interestingly, the higher individuals rated their levels of distress during the exposure, the larger they estimated the spider to be.

Another aspect of phobia is the tendency for individuals to show a bias toward situations, percieving them as more threatening than they are. A separate study investigated this idea by asking participants to decide whether particular visual stimuli was more similar to a spider, a flower or neither (shown below). The participant's answers were divided into four separate groups for analysis - spider phobics, social phobics, spider aficionados and non-phobics. Not surprisingly, the spider phobic individuals showed a quite dramatic tendency to categorise the pictures as spider-like. In particular, images in the middle of the flower to spider transition saw a 20-30% increase in spider phobic individuals perceiving the images as spiders over control groups.

Image from Kolassa et al; Behav Brain Funct. 2007; 3: 59.

One potential approach to treating phobia is 'single session exposure therapy', whereby patients are progressively confronted with their phobia stimulus until their distress responses reach a minimum. Such an approach was used in a study assessing the brain behaviour of spider phobic individuals upon interaction with a Chilean Rose tarantula (shown below). Participants were required to approach the spider, which was housed within an enclosed cage and were then exposed to a series of colour photographs of spiders and moths whilst MRI scans were performed. Following, the MRI session, participants were assigned to 2 hours of exposure therapy involving a 14-step series of spider approach exercises and then MRI scans repeated. By the end of treatment all individuals were able to touch the spider with a naked hand whilst showing reduced distress responses.

http://www.jonathansjungleroadshow.co.uk/

A follow-up study performed 6 months after the initial treatment verified that the therapeutic gains had remained and that participants were no longer classified as spider phobic. In addition, comparison of MRI scans from all stages of treatment allowed the researchers to identify key areas within the brain associated with both immediate and long-term behavioural changes.

So it goes to show that phobias can indeed be cured. But in the words of a true spider phobic, I think I will pass on the exposure therapy for now!

Vasey M.W., Vilensky M.R., Heath J.H., Harbaugh C.N., Buffington A.G. & Fazio R.H. (2012). It was as big as my head, I swear!, Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 26 (1) 20-24. DOI: 10.1016/j.janxdis.2011.08.009

Kolassa I.T., Buchmann A., Lauche R., Kolassa S., Partchev I., Miltner W.H. & Musial F. Spider phobics more easily see a spider in morphed schematic pictures, Behavioral and Brain Functions, 3 (1) 59. DOI: 10.1186/1744-9081-3-59

Hauner K.K., Mineka S., Voss J.L. & Paller K.A. (2012). From the Cover: Exposure therapy triggers lasting reorganization of neural fear processing, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109 (23) 9203-9208. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1205242109

The future of science communication

There are two differing but equally important aspects of science communication today. The first is the mode by which scientific researchers communicate with one another to share their research, collaborate, exchange ideas and provide research related critique. The second is the communication of the fruitions of scientific research to the general public.

With technology now moving along at such a fast pace, there should be no excuses for science communication not to be snappy, effective and widespread. However, a closer look at some of the issues impeding the communication of scientific research today reveals that there are areas with definite room for improvement. What are these roadblocks? And how can we overcome them?

Image from http://serc.carleton.edu

 

Open Access

Free access and dissemination of information are imperative to the effective sharing of scientific results. This is the idea behind 'open access' publication - if the impediment of extravagant journal subscription costs can be overcome, potentially anyone anyone with a scientific background would be able to access original research papers and form their own opinions and critiques regarding the research of others.

A number of organisations have already begun to put open access to the test. The foremost medical research funding body of the United States, the National Institute of Health (NIH) has had an open access policy in place since 2008 which requires all researchers to make their articles available on the digital archive PubMed Central within twelve months of publication. In Australia one of the major medical science funding bodies, the Australian Research Council (ARC), has recently implemented an open access policy as of the beginning of 2013. Similarly, this requires all researchers awarded funding through the ARC to make their articles readily available in an open access repository within twelve months of publication.

The global push towards open access has also seen an academic uprising against some of the powerhouse scientific publishing companies that hide articles behind extremely expensive paywalls. More than 13 000 academic researchers have signed a petition rallying against the exorbitant subscription costs to access Elsevier owned journals and the restriction to free dissemination of scientific information.

However, the process of enforcing open access at a government level may have some nasty drawbacks. Geraint Lewis, a Professor from the University of Sydney, argues that the losses incurred by publishing companies from subscription fees will simply result in higher publication fees to researchers. Any government subsidies designed to assist scientists in overcoming these higher publication costs would likely detract from the existing government science research budget. This would result in even fewer projects being awarded funding, thus impacting long-term scientific growth. Thus, while the principle of open access is in theory a fantastic idea, the practicalities of implementing open access policies will require careful considerations.

No compromises on quality

Although advances in technology and social networking have had some fabulous impacts on the accessibilty and dissemination of scientific information, the value of existing forms of scientific communication should not be forgotten. First and foremost will always be the stringent procedures of peer-review which assess the scientific rigour and accuracy of reporting scientific results.

There has been increasing concern regarding the 'publish or perish' mentality that now places pressure on academics to produce large numbers of publications. This can occur through institutions - for example some Chinese universities offer cash awards and other benefits to academics achieving high impact publications. Most importantly though, is the necessity of achieving and maintaining a impeccably high quality publication record to secure increasingly elusive grant money.

It is therefore not hard to imagine a large number of researchers being driven to malpractice to secure their careers. Indeed, a meta analysis aiming to uncover the true frequency of scientific misconduct found that approximately 2% of scientists admitted to fabrication, falsification or modification of data at least once.

With the number of refereed academic journals now growing at more than 3% anually, there has been concern raised by many academics that publishing has now been a matter of quantity over quality. This combined with the increasing frequency of publication retractions may be cause for some worry. Whether these statistics are simply due to an increase in the number of research scientists and an enhanced ability to detect incorrectly obtained, presented or interpreted data is not clear. However, there is most certainly an unaddressed need to secure the accuracy and integrity of published scientific data in the future.

Firstly, misconduct needs to be addressed at a departmental level at universities or within institutions. Encouragement to share results and problems within labs would help air complexities about data that is difficult to interpret. Individual labs and departments if possible should adopt quality control standards to ensure that all scientists are performing experiments to a similar high-quality level. Procedures to report any unethical behaviour should be in place that preserve the confidentiality of the reporter.

At a publication level, journals must ensure that selected review panels contain academics who are intimately involved in the appropriate field of research. Rather than leaving universities and research institutions to uphold the ethical conduct of the editorial process, they need to have measures in place to be able to detect data misrepresentation. Examples include the installation of state of the art software to help identify plagiarism and image manipulation. It will only be once this two tier approach is adopted that the issue of scientific malpractice will be fully addressed.

Bridging the scientist to general public divide

Although the dissemination of scientific data between scientists is of utmost importance, equally so is the effective communication of scientific results and ideas to the general public. Even with an open access policy adopted, a person with little scientific background would struggle to understand the jargon and significance of an article without a more comprehendible explanation. Thus, the sharing of information to the general public will inevitably always require go-between journalists, science-communicators or passionate scientists willing to write about their research and share their expertise.

In particular, communication by scientists to the public needs to be encouraged. With science communication entered as a staple subject into undergraduate science curriculums, every graduating scientist and therefore every new academic appointment would have the basic skills to share their expertise in a format that is accessible to the general public. Universities and institutes should have measures in place to facilitate a working relationship with the media and aid researchers by providing incentives to communicate their research to the public.

A much neglected area of communication is the policy and methodology of scientific practice to the public. A largescale study performed by the UK group Ipsos MORI identified concerns from the general public regarding lack of government control in science research. There was little understanding about the bodies responsible for administering research funding, or the procedures for prioritising funding. A third of participants were not even aware of any sort of peer review process during scientific publication.

The way forward

It is clear that there are still key areas which will require improvement if the quality of scientific communication is to keep up with the demand for academic publications and the desire for public knowledge. Scientists need to be the ones to advocate for these changes and help to implement them. This will in turn help to ensure a better future for science research.

Fanelli D. (2009). How many scientists fabricate and falsify research? A systematic review and meta-analysis of survey data., PloS one, PMID: 19478950

Grieneisen M.L. & Zhang M. (2012). A comprehensive survey of retracted articles from the scholarly literature., PloS one, PMID: 23115617