research
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A scientist’s opinion: interview with Maria Elena Bottazzi on vaccines in low- and middle-income countries
Maria Elena Bottazzi, born in Italy, raised in Honduras, is a microbiologist and infectious disease expert at Baylor College of Medicine (Houston, United States). She and her colleague Peter Hotez led a team in India to develop the Covid-19 vaccine Corbevax, get it manufactured, and then give it away... -
Low cost and open source: vaccines in developing countries
In South Africa, a scientific knowledge transfer hub is working to create a Covid-19 vaccine based on the publicly available sequence of Moderna's mRNA vaccine, without Moderna's involvement but with its approval. In India, scientists are also testing a vaccine to fight SARS-CoV-2. These seem to be big... -
A scientist’s opinion: interview with Petro Terblanche on the first African vaccine hub
Petro Terblanche is Health Science Professor at North-West University and is Managing Director at Afrigen Biologics in South Africa. Next to developing an open source vaccine, Afrigen hosts a global vaccine hub to build capacity and capabilities in low- and middle-income countries to design, develop... -
Interview with Dr. Paul Stoneman: 'We see an increase in polarisation of complete trust or no trust at all in scientists'
Paul Stoneman is a political scientist who specialises in quantitative methods and social and political attitudes. He is currently one of the principal investigators of the World Values Survey, an international research program devoted to the study of social, political, economic, religious and cultural... -
'Predatory' publications put pressure on the integrity of scientific literature
Over two million scientific papers are published every year worldwide. Faced with the pressure to 'publish or perish', researchers can be tempted by journals that charge low publication fees and publish articles of dubious quality. The scale of these 'predatory publication practices' and 'predatory publication... -
An expert’s opinion: Interview with David Moher on predatory journals
Professor David Moher, Director of the Canadian Centre for Journalology, a centre that conducts research on publication practices, speaks about the, in his words, "perverse incentives in academia to publish", and about the impact of less trustworthy sources of scientific information on policy. How... -
An expert’s opinion: Interview with Ivan Oransky on the perils of scientific publishing
Medical writer Ivan Oransky, co-founder of the blog Retraction Watch and Editor-in-Chief of the autism research news website Spectrum, speaks about the difficulties of assessing the quality of peer review and of retraction, the process of publication withdrawal of articles that display flawed or erroneous... -
Massimo Florio: could a 'European Medicines Infrastructure' solve market failures in pharmaceutical R&D?
Interview with Massimo Florio (Professor of Public Economics, University of Milan, Italy) about a new European approach to pharmaceutical policy. In response to the Covid-19 crisis, the European Union has increased its commitment to the EU public health agenda. It has strengthened the mandate of both...