Page 104 - A Widening Idea of Health and Health Research - The South African Medical Research Council from Creation to COVID

Slimmer, but Not Lacking Gray Matter: The MRC, 2012–2021

research on the top causes of death’, he explained in justification. Within a year, 13 of
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the 27 intramural research units which did not focus on these or had a poor research
record were terminated. To the consequent saving in salaries and equipment were
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added the funds freed up by a 14 per cent pruning of the MRC’s administrative and
support staff too, the bulk of which was channelled into improved salaries and backing
for the 13 remaining intramural units and for new extramural research units judged to
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be well suited to conducting state-of-the-art laboratory and clinical research. As Karim
argued trenchantly, ‘Mere participation for data collection in international multi-
centre studies should not be misconstrued as science … The scientific contribution
in the realm of new ideas is fundamental to scientific participation … Self-initiated
research, where MRC scientists have developed the original ideas, developed the study
proposals and raised the funds, should comprise more than 50% of the research being
conducted in MRC units.’
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To spur its researchers to aim higher, the MRC directly linked the financial
support it would henceforth offer to publication counts, with a premium ambitiously
put on articles appearing in the four English-language medical science journals with
the highest impact in the world, The Lancet, Science, Nature and the New England
Journal of Medicine. The effect could be dramatic. Researchers ‘are working harder
to publish. Previously they were in a comfort-zone’, admitted one scientist. The new
criteria were ‘helping with the flow of work’. Moreover, to keep up the competitive
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pressure on researchers, a new monthly newsletter, MRC Celebrates Science, listed its
most productive research units in terms of articles published in accredited journals
and even mentioned those units ‘with no qualifying publications’. Top MRC authors
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were named and acclaimed, some of them featuring too at the reinstituted medal award
ceremonies to honour scientific excellence.
To incentivize innovative product research, in 2013 the MRC, with start-up
funding from the private and public sectors, set up the Strategic Health Innovation
Partnerships (SHIP), a multidisciplinary translational body to streamline the path
from concept to marketplace for new drugs, vaccines, diagnostics and devices, thereby
demonstrating its claim to leadership of medical research in the country. It prided
itself on this being ‘a prime example of a public–private partnership’.
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Alongside this, with generous backing from the Treasury, it also provided funds
for 17 large-scale flagship projects in order to boost collaborative medical research and
its translation nationally. Pithily, Karim described them as ‘essentially big ideas, big
science for big impact’.
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To overcome the Council’s cumbersome administration operation – its annual
report admitted that its administrative bodies were suffering from ‘organisational

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