Do you agree and why?
I agree with his statement. From the start, the goal of medical research is to further knowledge and care of those requiring medical attention. In the current setting, medical knowledge appears to be almost siloed to those within the medical field, an indirect barrier to furthering the knowledge and understanding for the common layperson. With the focus of medicine serving the public health, the ability for the people to better understand how interventions affect their lives has been operationally removed due to the separation of the general public from the researchers/investigator population.
Is it permissible for scientists to become advocates in the areas of their research?
I think it is permissible for scientists to become advocates in the areas of research, as long as their research is conducted ethically and objectively. They also become a resource to reliably communicate the ideas, thoughts and findings/conclusions from their research in order to frame them in a context which matters to the study population.
What steps can one take to balance advocacy with the objectivity that is considered the ideal in scientific inquiry?
- can use a community-based participatory research approach to feed information back to the population involved
- incorporation of the principles of strategic science when planning and conducting research to improve the potential impact on policy