APPENDIX 52
Memorandum from Professor John Walker,
Medical Research Council
I am writing to you in relation to the forthcoming
inquiry of the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee
into the future of the National Institute for Medical Research
(NIMR).
Over the past 30 years I have worked as a research
scientist for the Medical Research Council (MRC), from 1974-98
in the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) and from 1998
to the present in the MRC's Dunn Human Nutrition Unit (DHNU).
My research work and other professional activities have been scrutinised
regularly at five-yearly intervals by visiting sub-committees
of MRC Boards, as part of the MRC's Quinquennial Review process.
Most recently, in December 2003, the activities of the DHNU, of
which I am the Director, were examined by such a sub-committee.
I have also been a member of Quinquennial Review
Committees visiting other Units, and I have taken part twice in
reviews of the activities of Divisions at the NIMR. In addition,
I have participated in similar reviews of research institutes
overseas on behalf of their national bodies, notably in Sweden,
Finland, Germany and Switzerland.
From these experiences, I have no hesitation
in saying that the MRC's review processes are thorough, probing
and rigorous. They also strive to be fair to those being reviewed
by giving ample opportunity to scientists to present their work,
both in the written submitted Report and in verbal presentations
to the sub-committee, and for them to comment at each stage of
the process.
Sometimes, the scientific reviews are laudatory
(happily my personal experiences are so characterised). However,
sometimes they can be critical, but usually in a constructive
way. Occasionally, as in the case of the Quinquennial Report of
the Dunn immediately preceding my appointment as Director, the
outcome of the review is sufficiently critical that radical redirection
of the research effort is required, and wide ranging and strategic
decisions have to be made about the future of the Unit. My experience
was that the MRC acted decisively and fairly, and with clarity
of purpose. I believe that the recent favourable outcome of the
Quinquennial Review of the DHNU shows that that the restructuring
and redirection that followed my appointment as Director have
been beneficial and productive, opening up, as they have, new
avenues of research that have been judged to be at the highest
level.
The review process itself is controlled by the
Chair of the visiting sub-committee who is usually the Chair of
the appropriate MRC Board. The Boards scrutinise and debate the
recommendations of the review sub-committees and make their recommendations
based on the sub-committee's report about Institutes and Units
to the MRC Council. The Chair has an important role to play in
ensuring the objectivity and fairness of the review both with
the visiting review sub-committee and at Board meetings. The Chairs
are selected invariably (in my experience) from the "extramural"
University sector, and the memberships of Boards are dominated
by members from the same sector. Institutes and Units are represented
on the Boards, and an independent Unit Director usually participates
in the Board's discussions about a sub-committee report. However,
members of Boards from the so-called "intramural" sector
are in a small minority.
In the current prevailing climate of debate
within the MRC where the roles of Institutes and Units and of
the need for them to exist at all are being questioned by the
Council, and where many medical scientists in the University sector
appear to believe that they have been poorly supported by the
MRC in recent years, whilst at the same believing that the MRC's
Institutes and Units have been favoured by receiving strong support,
it is extremely important that the Chairs of Boards act with scrupulous
impartiality both in reviews of Institutes and Units and in the
decision making processes that may influence their futures. It
is possible that since the Chairs of the MRC's boards are drawn
from the "extramural" sector, they too have a conflict
of interest.
The Board Chairs are also ex officio members
of the MRC Council, whereas with the exception of honorary Directors
of Institutes and Units, who are a small minority, Institute and
Unit Directors are not allowed to be Council members, because
they are perceived as having a conflict of interest. The Council
makes the final decisions about Institutes and Units that are
being reviewed.
Thus, the views and interests of the intramural
sector of MRC Institutes and Units are poorly represented at important
levels of the decision making process. In contrast, the extramural
sector, which has vested interests in the outcomes of reviews
and Units because extramural scientists are competing for the
MRC's finances with Institutes and Units, is well represented
and holds powerful and influential positions. Clearly, it is desirable
to correct this imbalance by ensuring that both intramural and
extramural interests are both properly represented, and that important
decisions about Institutes and Units are arrived at impartially.
Otherwise, the best decisions about the future of publicly funded
Medical Research in the United Kingdom are unlikely to be made.
In the current climate in the MRC, there is
a real danger that unless appropriate decisions are made, this
country could lose its position of pre-eminence in biomedical
research surpassed only by the United States. The MRC Institutes
and Units have played a conspicuous even dominant role in gaining
and maintaining that position. Once this pre-eminence is lost,
it will be extremely difficult and probably impossible to regain.
As I have no personal knowledge, I cannot comment
on the recent controversies surrounding the future of the NIMR.
However, I suspect that some of the points that I have made above
about the MRC's processes for review of its Institutes and Units
may apply to that specific issue.
22 November 2004
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