Yesterday the Lancet published a study by Mona Nasser, Mike Clarke, Iain Chalmers and others looking at how well eleven international research founders are doing to reduce waste in research. This follows a series of articles by Chalmers et al over the last couple of years on the same issue.

The study scored funders using a traffic light system for the following:

Are patients and the public involved?
New research requires systematic reviews of existing evidence?
Public access to full protocols for completed or ongoing research?

Funding to undertake “research on research”?
The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) was the only funder to score green for each one. The only other UK funder included in the study – the Medical Research Council (MRC) only scored a yellow for its public involvement. ‘Could do better’ as my headmaster would have said.

Other funders that scored green for their public involvement included the National Institutes for Health in the United States and Nederlandse organisatie voor gezondsheidsonderzoek en zorinnovatie (ZonMw) in the Netherlands. And try saying that after a glass of wine!

You can find the full paper here.