Many thanks to Hassani Mohsen (Tunisia) for your comments reminding us of the importance of researcher motivation for the public good.
In an ideal world all health researchers would be focused on improving health outcomes, and I am sure that this is the reason that almost all researchers start on their chosen career. Just in the same way that (some) politicians go into politics "to make society better".
But, just as politicians can become increasingly self-interested, the same is possible with researchers.
The system tends to push researchers in this direction. Their professional success is determined largely by the number of papers they produce, and the impact factor of the journals where they publish those papers. Furthermore, researchers spend a lot of their time chasing research funding from a relatively small number of funders. The competition with other researchers is intense.
As we have heard earlier in this discussion, the funding agencies themselves are often driven by research 'successes' in the sense of discovery and translation into policy and practice. So researchers are motivated to get their findings directly into policy.
'Getting findings directly into policy' may sometimes be appropriate, but perhaps more often it deviates policymakers from an evidence-informed approach whereby policy is based on research synthesis rather than single studies. Funding agencies are perhaps less interested in research that adds to the cumulative evidence base as compared with research that directly changes policy and practice.
I would be interested to hear from researchers and others about these pressures and incentives, and how this might impact on the impartiality of their communication with policymakers.
Neil Pakenham-Walsh, Global Coordinator HIFA, www.hifa.org neil@hifa.org
Working in official relations with WHO
