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| EDITORIAL |
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| Year : 2016 | Volume
: 2
| Issue : 4 | Page : 163-166 |
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The first pre-requisites of “make in India” clinical research: Inculcating a scientific temper and building a conducive landscape in the country
Yatish Agarwal1, Bipin Batra2
1 Editor-in-Chief, Astrocyte and Professor of Radiology at New Delhi's Safdarjung Hospital and VM Medical College
2 Bipin Batra is the Executive Director, National Board of Examinations and Executive Editor, Astrocyte
| Date of Web Publication | 22-Sep-2016 |
Correspondence Address:
Yatish Agarwal
Editor-in-Chief, Astrocyte and Professor of Radiology at New Delhi's Safdarjung Hospital and VM Medical College
 Source of Support: None, Conflict of Interest: None  | Check |
DOI: 10.4103/2349-0977.191051
How to cite this article:
Agarwal Y, Batra B. The first pre-requisites of “make in India” clinical research: Inculcating a scientific temper and building a conducive landscape in the country. Astrocyte 2016;2:163-6 |
How to cite this URL:
Agarwal Y, Batra B. The first pre-requisites of “make in India” clinical research: Inculcating a scientific temper and building a conducive landscape in the country. Astrocyte [serial online] 2016 [cited 2023 May 28];2:163-6. Available from: http://www.astrocyte.in/text.asp?2016/2/4/163/191051 |
The basic environment in the country for research is far from enabling. Be it the mentation process, the spirit, the ethics, the infrastructure, the funding, the incentives for research or the teaching methodology from early days at the foot of founding principles of science, nothing seems to be oiling the wheels of scientific methodology and innovation in the clinical realm in the country.
The pursuit, production, dissemination, and preservation of knowledge are the central activities of a civilization. Knowledge is social memory, a connection to the past; and it is social hope, an investment in the future. The ability to create knowledge and put it to use is the adaptive characteristics of humans. It is how we reproduce ourselves as social beings and how we change.
—Louis Menand in The Marketplace of Ideas[1]
Despite a landscape charged with immense potential — a rainbow of disease spectrum and large number of patients — India has, until now, largely been a laggard in the realm of clinical research. Even as we march in the 70th year of sovereignty and free will, our contribution to the global pool of knowledge in diverse clinical fields; development of newer therapeutic molecules, techniques, and treatment strategies; medical technology; and even in information technology-related clinical software development has been singularly abysmal. Ditto is the case of clinical literature, despite the overflowing clinics and wards, and also with respect to disease entities which carry the epithet of being tropical or are peculiar to the third world. Even the signs and symptoms of pathologies such as tuberculosis, must, unfortunately, still first find recognition and description in other geographies of the world.
The current landscape
Clearly, the basic environment in the country for research is far from enabling. Be it the mentation process, the spirit, the ethics, the infrastructure, the funding, the incentives for research, or the teaching methodology from early days at the foot of founding principles of science, nothing seems to be oiling the wheels of scientific methodology and innovation in the clinical realm in the country.
The malaise begins while we are still at school, and grows in the years when we wade through our graduation years. Instead of developing a scientific temper, where each scientific enquiry, exploration, analysis must be guided by inscrutable scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to utter honesty, teachers tell you not only to replicate generations-old textbook experiments but also to reproduce the exact known results. Should you be curious, observant, or imaginative and wish to report something new, you can be sure that it would be struck down. This perturbing bigotry breaches the very essence of science. Scientific research consists in seeing what everyone else has seen, but thinking what no one else has thought. If you are doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid — not only what you think is right about it; other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought you've eliminated by some other experiment, and how that's worked.
Objectivity and openness are the basic touchstones of science. Science changes. It evolves. Verifiable facts always take precedence. Verifiability is the heart of science, and scientific rigor. Each new hypothesis must stand this basic test before it is accepted as a piece of scientific knowledge.
The basic tenets
Based on the basic tenets of ethical principles and research practices, a robust system of self-regulation must exist to ensure a total integrity in the research process. Among the very basic principles that guide scientific minds — and scholars — are those expressed as respect for the integrity of knowledge, collegiality, honesty, objectivity, and openness. These principles are at work as the fundamental elements of each scientific method, such as formulating a hypothesis, designing an experiment to test the hypothesis, and collecting and interpreting data.
Honesty is a critical component. Science seeks a systematic organization of knowledge. This knowledge is based on explanatory principles whose verifiable consequences can be tested by anybody, and particularly so, by independent observers. Sieved by repeated observations and experiments, science embodies a large body of evidence. However, objectivity and openness are its basic touchstones. Science changes; it evolves. Verifiable facts always take precedence. Verifiability is the heart of science and scientific rigor. Each new hypothesis must stand this basic test before it is accepted as a piece of scientific knowledge.
Scientific method is the touchstone of all good clinical research. An idea that has not yet been sufficiently tested is called a hypothesis. Different hypotheses are sometimes advanced to explain the same factual evidence. If you hit upon a new thought, a new theory, a new explanation, and wish to propose it before the wider scientific community, then you must be honest to also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it. You must possess the integrity and strength to share all the data to help others to judge the value of your contribution, not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another.
Inculcating these basic tenets of scientific temper and a robust training in research methodology are critical fuels for advancing scientific research. Currently, few or no medical colleges or universities in the country emphasize this in their curricula; as regards imparting a structured training in research methodology, the less said the better. Despite research being an inescapable component of postgraduate and postdoctoral medical education programs, most students are ill-equipped to think, strategize, or plan basic or clinical research, make unbiased observations, and critically analyze the mine of data that they might uncover. Few teachers, guides, and supervisors possess the requisite traits to shepherd their wards. Of the thousands of dissertations produced in the country, few, if any, are seminal, thought-provoking, or path-breaking. In fact, very few are worth the paper they are published upon. Many guides even propagate dishonesty, asking students to multiply their results with non-existent patients. The irony is no checks and balances exist to curb these malpractices. Incentivizing those who live by the true tenets of scientific temper, recognizing and rewarding excellence, and isolating the black sheep must be the first steps to generate a conducive landscape.
A definitive national research policy, which promotes scientific temper, builds a positive landscape for research, funds deserving institutions and individuals, and inspires pooling of talent and collaboration between clinical researchers in medical colleges, premier healthcare institutions, and dedicated research laboratories must be thought of and galvanized, if prime minister Narendra Modi's "Make in India" philosophy has to find feet in the intimately human field of clinical research.
Building a national research policy
A definitive national research policy, which promotes scientific temper from early school days, builds a positive landscape for research, funds deserving institutions and individuals, and inspires pooling of talent and collaboration between clinical researchers in medical colleges, premier healthcare institutions, and dedicated research laboratories affiliated to such institutions as the Indian Council of Medical Research, Department of Science and Technology, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, Department of Biotechnology, and technology and engineering institutions, and the applied arm of industry must be thought of and galvanized, if prime minister Narendra Modi's “Make in India” philosophy has to find feet in the intimately human field of clinical research. The possibilities are considerable; just that a conducive landscape requires to be created, free of officialese and all else that ails the country.
| References | |  |
| 1. | Menand Louis. The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Resistance in the American University. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc; 2010.  |
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