Government Social Research
11 May 2006: the Royal Society publish Science and the public interest: communicating the results of new scientific research to the public which says that scientists should consider the public interest when deciding whether, when and how to communicate their research results.
The report, which deals with issues arising from recent controversies
over research on the MMR vaccine, smoking, GM foods and other areas, points
out that "these issues affect potentially tens of millions, if not
hundreds of millions, of people worldwide, and although controversies may
be relatively infrequent compared to the total volume of research, their
impact can be very great.
The report makes a number of recommendations about practices such as the
promotion of papers from journals and scientific conferences, and managing
interests that compete with the public interest. It includes a checklist
of questions to help researchers to consider the public interest in relation
to their results.
The report can be viewed on the Royal Society website