A conversation with Peter Lawrence, Cambridge
“The Heart of Research is Sick”
A senior scientist speaks out on real lives and lies in the ‘broken’ research system. Peter Lawrence explains how
current research is in crisis and why young scientists are suffering.
Lab Times: About ten years ago, you began publishing the first of a series of
articles criticising the way in which
the scientific research system is organised
and the direction it’s taken. What motivated
you to publish your first article, “Science or
Alchemy?”(Nature Reviews Genetics 2001; 2,
139-42), in which you condemn the ‘alchemy
of spin’ that has crept into research articles?
articles criticising the way in which
the scientific research system is organised
and the direction it’s taken. What motivated
you to publish your first article, “Science or
Alchemy?”(Nature Reviews Genetics 2001; 2,
139-42), in which you condemn the ‘alchemy
of spin’ that has crept into research articles?
Lawrence: That’s an interesting question. Really, what started me on this was
something else. When my PhD supervisor,
Sir Vincent Wigglesworth died, I wrote an
obituary in Nature together with another
former student of his, Michael Locke. We
called it “A man for our season” (Nature
1997; 386,757-8) and explained Wiggles-
worth’s approach to science and his ideas about putting research first and administration second. I was also asked to give
the first Wigglesworth Memorial lecture at
the International Congress of Entomology.
I talked mostly about Wigglesworth’s scientific work but, at the end, I put in a ten
minute section on his scientific style – how
he saw what was going wrong with modern
science and how he differed from the way
things are done nowadays. (For example,
he gave his students complete independence and did not put his name on their papers. He supervised ‘by example’ – he just
went off and did his own research.)
I got such an overwhelming response,
I realised that there was a need for a voice
to express the frustration that many scientists felt, particularly young scientists, about
what was happening to science. Since then,
the trends that I picked out have continued,
getting worse and worse and worse, until
the whole fabric of science and the way we
do things has become corrupted. There are
many problems. Some are more interesting than others.
Essentially, it’s the publication process.
It has become a system of collecting counters for particular purposes – to get grants,
to get tenure, etc. – rather than to communicate and illuminate findings to other people.
The literature is, by and large, unread able.
It’s all written in a kind of code, with inappropriate data in large amounts, and the
storyline is becoming increasingly orches
trated by this need to publish. We all know
it. We all suffer from it. I think the changes
to the scientific enterprise have been inexorable and progressive. The deterioration
has been so steady that people don’t really realise how much things have changed.
You wrote about the publication system in ‘The Politics of Publication’ (Nature
2003; 422, 259-61), criticising the attitude of the editors. At that time, you’d already been a journal editor for more than
20 years. Do you feel in some way responsible for how things have changed? Were you
carried along by this movement?
Lawrence: I guess I should share some
responsibility. But I did try to resist it. Development is an unusual journal because its
editors are all professional scientists, who
are still working; most of us in full-time research enterprises of our own. Their perspective on science is different. When I
started, there were hardly any young professional editors. Now, most of the journals
are managed by professional editors, most
of whom have chosen editing rather than
research, or who couldn’t go on in research
because they didn’t have enough competitive advantages. The power structure
of scientific publication has moved more
and more into their hands. They are partly to blame for what’s happened, they and
those who try to measure everything. Those
who measure us are using publications as
a means of assessment. I think measurement, assessment and evaluation lie at the
heart of the problem. Once you start counting papers, scoring journals and measuring impact then the purposes of publication change.
What about the ‘misallocation of credit’ and the ‘Rank Injustice’ of the research
system (Nature 2002; 415, 835-6)?
Peter A. Lawrence
started his research career in 1962 at the
Department of Zoology, Cambridge University. For his PhD, he studied pattern formation in insects (or “animal design” as he later termed it) under the supervision of the
great insect physiologist, Professor Sir Vincent Wigglesworth. He was a postdoc for
two years in the US and two years back in
Cambridge before “I got recruited by Sydney
Brenner and Francis Crick” to a permanent
research position at the Medical Research
Council’s noted Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge. He remained there for
37 years until obliged by their “age discrimination” policy (he was 65) to set up a new,
Wellcome Trust-funded, laboratory in the
Department of Zoology (i.e. where he first
began research). Peter Lawrence’s work has
defined the concepts of polarity, morphoge
netic gradients and cellular compartments
as key components in the growth and patterning of animals.
He has been an editor of the journal Development for 33 years, and on the editorial boards of Cell and EMBO Journal. He received the Principe de Asturias prize in scientific and technical research, shared with
Gines Morata. He is a member of EMBO,
Fellow of the Royal Society and of the Royal
Swedish Academy of Sciences. He has just
been awarded the 2011 Lifetime Achievement Award by the Society of Developmental Biology (North America). Over the last
decade, he has become an increasingly vocal critic of the scientific research system.
His recent article, “Real lives and white lies
in the funding of scientific research” has
been downloaded over 45,000 times.
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Analysis
Lawrence: The article ‘Rank Injustice’
was to do with how credit is distributed in
the scientific world. The basic rule is that
credit always flows upwards. If you’re a
student, your supervisor will get the credit. If you’re a group leader, your department
head might get credit, for example, in the
research assessment exercise for rating UK
universities. You don’t get rewarded for having discovered some-
that meeting presented his own work. That
evening, my friend overheard the big shots
sitting around in the bar, trying to pour
some kind of suspicion on this speaker; how
could somebody do their own work? They
said it removed the checks and balances,
which you always have between students
and their supervisors. I find that argument
to be completely self-fulfilling ‘hokum’. It’s a
way of making sure
thing yourself. I think “It’s become so built-in that people that what you do is
that has a poisonous ef-somehow justified
fect. It encourages too think that if somebody does some-because, actually,
many scientists to steal thing on their own, there’s some-your job as a super-
credit, to annex the dis-thing slightly suspicious about it.” visor is to educate,
coveries of the young.
To keep on top of the young people working for them, so that they can claim to have
been involved and garner the credit for it.
It’s become so built-in that people think
that if somebody does something on their
own, there’s something slightly suspicious
about it. A friend of mine went to a ‘big
shot’ meeting, where the talks were mostly
from people with large groups, presenting
work from their groups. But one person in
not to take credit.
In a better world, as my mentors Wiggles-
worth and later Crick taught me, one’s career was built on one’s own contribution.
Wigglesworth helped us in the same way
that any senior person should help apprentices. But this has all changed. The career of
most scientists now depends on the success
of their juniors. There’s a reward system for
building up a large group, if you can, and
it doesn’t really matter how many of your
group fail, as long as one or two succeed.
You can build your career on their success.
Does this diverge from the publication
problem? Do we have two separate issues?
Lawrence: Yes, but they’re connected
because you get credit for your publications.
The pressure is very high on you to make
sure you get your name on those publications. You have situations where there are,
for example, two postdocs from different
groups in a big institute – they meet and
hatch a project together, do it, and it all
looks very promising. Then, their supervisors, who really have nothing to do with the
conception of the project, will get involved –
they will put their names on things. The two
people who actually did the work will be
two junior authors that have to carry with
them at least two senior authors – as a sort
of baggage. Then look how it’s perceived by
the world. It’s considered to be the work of
the senior authors’ big groups. And this is a
travesty of the truth. I’ve come across this
quite often. Supposing I don’t put my name
on one of my postdoc’s papers but this per
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son has collaborated with another postdoc
from another group. When the paper comes
out, the only senior person on the paper is
the one responsible for the other postdoc
and my name doesn’t appear. Then when it
gets looked at by bibliometricians and others, it is scored as if it’s come from the other
group. I find that very irritating because it
isn’t the truth. So, progressively, one is rewarded for making sure that one’s name is
on a paper even though one may have done
next to nothing. Generally speaking, I don’t
put my name on my graduate students’ or
postdocs’ work, unless I have been actively
involved. A while back, it wasn’t so weird
but now it’s considered to be terribly odd.
Also, of course, one suffers a bit because of
the bibliometricians – if you’re not on the
paper, you don’t get counted.
In ‘The Mismeasurement of Science’
(Curr Biol 2007; 17, R583-85) you criticised the H-index. Is this the worst example of the trend to equate scientific publications with productivity?
Lawrence: The H-index is a measure of
citations, not the number of papers. All citations count more or less equally in the H-index. I would take the view that citations are
marginally better, when assessing the value
of a paper, than adding up the impact factor of the journal in which the
field then, even if everybody in the field
cites your paper, you still won’t get many
citations. But if you work in a big crowded
field, you’ll get many more citations, particularly if you publish in a prominent journal. And this is independent of the quality
of the work or whether you’ve contributed
anything.
This puts enormous “I don’t put my name on my they’re not so good but
pressure on the journals to graduate students’ or post-they can’t contribute
accept papers that will be docs’ work, unless I have to the assessment with
cited a lot. And this is also been actively involved.” a first author paper of
make it less straightforward for young scientists to get recognised. For a start, young
people may not always get a paper because
they may not, by bad luck or whatever, have
contributed to one of the five papers being
assessed; one that’s thought worth publishing by the head of the group. That doesn’t
necessarily mean that
A clone of cells in the Drosophila cuticle that repolaris-
es wildtype cells behind the clone. The cells of the clone
lack the gene “four-jointed”.
paper was published. At least, “The system we have tion in which the How-
it means that if you publish a now is counter-produc-ard Hughes Medical In-
paper that other people want tive, wasteful of time stitute is moving. They’re
to cite, in any journal, you get and energy.“ now asking people to sub-
having a corrupting ef
fect. Journals will tend to take papers in
medically-related disciplines,
for example, that mention or relate to common genetic diseases. Journals from, say, the Cell
group, will favour such papers
when they’re submitted. At Development, we tried to resist this
trend. We published papers dealing with small obscure fields, like
flatworms. People published papers about flatworms in Development because they couldn’t publish them elsewhere. But they
don’t get many citations and the
impact factor of Development suffers. Then the people in Development’s head office would say we
should have a higher impact fac
tor and that we must be more careful about
the kind of papers we’re accepting.
We’ve got into a situation where the
measurers drive the science, rather than
the measurers being there to quantify the
scientific effort or achievement.
Publications now have such a high
value because of this number attached to
them. With this number, not only do job
prospects improve but also the chances of
getting grant money. One of the solutions
you’ve proposed calls for granting agencies to change their whole philosophy when
judging the quality of scientists.
Lawrence: Yes, I made suggestions
about what granting agencies should do.
This may be the direc
their own.
The single, simplest thing that the
granting agencies could do is to look backwards, when possible, rather than forwards. The system we have now is counter-productive, wasteful of time and energy. We get people to write a piece of fiction about what they’re planning to do. It’s
a kind of intellectual exercise – sometimes it
relates to what they actually do, sometimes
it doesn’t. It’s a sort of game we have to play
to get a grant. We put all this stuff down,
we show that we are competent intellectually and technically. By the time the grant
is awarded, maybe a year later, and you can
finally start the research, everything has
changed – we might be doing something
else. The Wellcome Trust is very good about
this. They realise that scientists can’t predict what they’re going to do and they let
people move away from what they’re actually funded for. Unfortunately, some of
the other grant agencies consider it more
like a contract, which is not what research
is about. If you know what you’re going to
find, you’re just not doing research.
There are many ways in which the
granting agencies could change the system. One thing I’ve mentioned is about
the shortness of the Fellowship. Both the
postdoctoral fellowships and the grants
are far too short. In order to save money, I guess they’ve reduced the period of
grants but this is counter-productive. I discussed the consequences in my recent article, ‘Real lives and white lies in the funding
of scientific research’ (PLoS Biology 2009;
7(9):e1000197).
I described what happens to young scientists when they get their postdocs, which
are usually limited to two years. In that
two-year period, they are expected to start
what is often a new line of research, and to
have produced and got published a paper
in a major journal, by say, at the latest, 18
months, so that they can apply for another
grant. Who can do that? They may need another postdoc to get somewhere but there
are very few of those. They are really in a
credit for it through the H-index. So, it is a slight improvement. I know
that the English systems of measurement
are going over towards citations as a way
of assessing scientific productivity. But this
is absolutely riddled with problems. For example, if you’re doing research in a small
mit only a small number
of publications for assessment from the previous five years. I think this is a tremendous
leap forward because it will remove the
pressure on scientists to produce large numbers of papers. This change will improve the
quality of the scientific literature but it may
Analysis
are, but you’re telling them exact-is. In the old days, there was no way of
ly what you’re planning. shaming anyone in the public domain. But
What about a Code of Eth-if there was an officially approved and valics? For example, you’re saying ued ethical chief, like an ombudsman or
that for reviewers who are very a small committee, then if somebody had
unethical, who are stealing re-a really good case, it could be judged by
sults and blocking publication, that committee and the judgment could be
we need to be able to do some-put out on the Web. People would see that
thing to control or punish them? they get into trouble and that their reputa-
Lawrence: I think we need to
Peter and his longterm collaborator Ginés Morata
do something to chastise and con-
receiving the Prince of Asturias Award in Scientif
trol people. Some kind of ‘police
ic and Technical Research for 2007.
bind. I see this time and time again. We had
an absolutely excellent postdoc from the
US in the zoology department with a very
good cv, who came towards the end of his
two-year grant, and spent most of his second year seeking an extension and not getting on with his research. So he went back
to America and got a really good job there.
The career structure in the UK doesn’t
make sense any more. If you’re a postdoc,
you cannot start a project. If you’re a senior
scientist, with a proper grant, you cannot
produce published evidence of quality work
within two years. It is virtually impossible!
You cite your own experience of writing
what was effectively your first grant application just a few years ago. As a staff scientist at the MRC, you didn’t need to apply for grants?
Lawrence: Wasn’t I lucky! It’s a much
better way of funding sciences. If you want
to fund researchers for a couple of years,
you don’t want them to spend 30-40% of
their time using all their intellectual and
emotional energy looking for other grants.
But that’s what the present system is doing
to scientists and researchers. They haven’t
got the emotional and intellectual energy
left to concentrate on discovery.
I’m afraid you have to gamble with research. You have to give somebody enough
money and enough peace of mind to get
on with it. If at the end of five years they
haven’t done much, then you end the grant.
That’s the way to do it. To look backwards,
to see what they’ve achieved and not worry about what they say they’re going to
achieve because it is all fiction anyway.
You describe some of the advice you received when writing your first grant, that
you shouldn’t tell the truth about what
you’re really going to do?
Lawrence: They were wise. Your grant
is going to be read by lots of people who
are all specialists in your field. If you’re in a
small field, you might well know who they
force’. Most scientists behave very
well but people under pressure are tempted to take advantage of things they pick up.
They may well go to meetings, for example,
and learn something new from a competitor
and be able to change what they are writing to put the new finding in. There’s a lot of
this going on. At least people think so, and
this helps generate an atmosphere of paranoia. People are very defensive and unwilling to talk about what they’re doing, which
means the whole purpose of the meeting,
to share and help each other, is lost. People
nowadays only talk about something that is
just about to come out or has already been
published. They daren’t talk about their
new stuff. We can change that system by
making people behave better.
There are a lot of organisations worldwide who deal with ethics, for example,
COPE (the Committee On Publication Ethics), and the recent World Conference on
Research Integrity in Singapore. From these
meetings, they produce a very sensible
statement about how things should be done
in science. And what should not be done.
They are very well written. Various US universities and the NIH have their code of ethics. These are also written down and carefully worded – but there’s nothing about enforcement. If some person feels their work
has been plagiarised, that somebody has
stolen something
tion would suffer. It’s quite the opposite at
the moment: if you publish something, no
matter how you’ve stolen it, no matter how
you’ve obtained it, your reputation will be
enhanced.
Didn’t this happen to you with the Axelrod group from Stanford University and
their Cell paper about intercellular polarity signalling (Cell 2008;133, 1093-1105)?
Lawrence: Yes, I felt that this paper had
not made proper reference to our previous
work, that they had essentially republished
the most important of our findings without
making it at all clear that we had published
them four years previously (Development
2004; 131, 4651-64). My job was not on the
line and I was not subject to the pressures
that many young people are under; that is,
if they make a fuss they’ll worry about getting their next grant. So, we decided to be
tough about it. With the help of other scientists not acknowledged in the paper we
went to Cell. I asked them to publish a short
review that would explain the history of this
particular field. Cell refused to discuss it.
They were very disdainful and refused to
consider the possibility that there might be
a problem. So we published our views in
Current Biology (Curr. Biol. 2008; 18, R95961). We did something about it because I
know from talking to other scientists that
many people feel there is a growing irresponsibility with citations in journals, of
not giving credit to others. There were a
couple of articles about this
they have not yet “One way might be to appoint matter in The Scientist mag-
published, where a scientific ombudsman, who azine and elsewhere, and
can they go? The would have the power to name an online conversation with
only place is the civ-Jeff Axelrod in Current Bi
and shame.”
il courts. And this
is very difficult and
expensive. These aren’t really criminal offences, they are scientific and ethical offences. But there’s nowhere to go. So, instead of having all these organisations producing these finely-worded statements,
they should put some teeth into them. One
way might be to appoint a scientific ombudsman, who would have the power to
name and shame. I don’t think these organisations realise how powerful the Web
ology that people can read.
But I think I was in a very
strong position there. My complaint did
not depend on anything that was unpublished. Anyone can now go and look at the
two papers and make their own mind up as
to how they judge our complaint. Are we
right or not?
We should all get together and set up a
little system of enforcement of these ethical principles. I think in any society, things
don’t work without some sort of policing. It
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Analysis
would also be a good way of spending some
of the money these ethical organisations
use without achieving very much.
In ‘Men, women and ghosts in science’
(PLoS Biology 2006; 4, 13-15) you tackle the notion of men and women in science
from a biological viewpoint. You say there
are men and women, male brains and female brains, but that the actual characteristics underlying what we would identify
as masculine qualities and feminine qualities can be fused in men and women in different proportions. Then you argue that
the scientific system has been pushed over
towards a very masculine, aggressive
latory talks, to be confident. While those
characteristics may be of value in certain
walks of life, for example, if you want to be
a soldier, they may not be what we want in
scientists. I’m not saying it should be forbidden in science but I think there should be
more room for people who have more gentle aspirations, who are more social, who
understand other people better. In that article I went over some thorny ground, which
is constantly being debated, but it seems obvious to me that men and women are, ON
AVERAGE (he emphasises), fundamentally,
genetically and psychologically, distinct. Of
Which brings us to the general problem
of job security in science, because women
who want to have children are heavily penalised by a system that is already very insecure. It’s hard enough for a man to get
a job, let alone for a woman who wants to
have a baby before she’s too old.
Lawrence: Quite right. The problem
goes through society. Women are disadvantaged, both because of the babies that
we want them to have and also because of
their stronger instinctive tendency to care
for people, not just babies. We should find
room for these people. Some of them are
very good at research. We shouldn’t have
stance, where we’re encouraging people
Peter and his wife in Zambia
this system of measurement. We’re count-
who are insensitive to others and aggres
ing papers. We are measuring impact fac
sive. In fact, they’re nasty! Not only has
tors. We need to see beyond these silly
this led to fewer women higher up the
measures. We should try to ask: Does
system but it’s actually making life very
this person contribute to the department
unpleasant for people lower down the
in which she’s working? Has she made
system – students and postdocs – espe
some discoveries? Will she be good to
cially if they’re gentle people.
have back?
Lawrence: Yes, you put it very well.
I talk to young scientists and I know
Essentially, it could be argued that you
about their anxieties – every minute of
should encourage competitiveness if you
the day, they’re thinking: How can I get
have the view that creativity goes hand-
a paper, will I be the first author? Will I
in-hand with it. But there doesn’t seem to
be able to get a postdoc with this paper?
be much evidence of that. Look at people
Is this journal good enough for me to get
in the Arts or musicians. I don’t get the
a postdoc?
impression that many of the best need to
be very aggressive. Creativity is not con-
And what comes next? You get a
fined to science. My hypothesis is that
creativity is fairly well distributed among
individuals in a very unpredictable and variable way.
I think that we should have a system
where we select for what we want. And
what we want is people who make discoveries. In my opinion, science is not like
some kind of an army, with a large number of people who make the main steps forward together. You need to have individually creative people who are making breakthroughs – who make things different. But
how do you find those people? I don’t think
you want to have a situation in which only
those who are competitive and tough can
get to the top, and those who are reflective
and retiring would be cast aside. I’ve been
in research for so long now. I’ve talked to
so many young people. I get to know them
personally because I work on the bench myself. And I hear all the time that people get
put off from continuing in science. Not because they’re unable but because they just
don’t like it. Those people are often women but there are also many ‘gentle’ men who
don’t like it.
What we’re doing is telling people to be
tough, to be pushy, to give self-congratu
course, there is a tremendous overlap between the sexes and stereotyping of individuals by their gender is neither objective nor
correct. So, I think we need to think again
about how we select people.
This brings us back to the same old
problem – people who get their names on
other people’s papers, who annex credit from their students and get rewarded.
These people are very often men, although
there can be very tough, competitive women scientists as well. But the idea that politically correct peo
postdoc and…?
Lawrence: You get a postdoc for two
years and, already after one year, you’re
worried about what you’re going to do
next. There’s no relaxation. You don’t realise how much this has changed. From my
own work, I’ve published some 150 papers.
The first 80 papers I published got accepted directly by the journals to which they
were sent. Some had to be revised but all of
them were accepted. And then there was an
abrupt change. Suddenly, you started sending papers to journals because you thought
they might get in there
ple have, that all pro-“The idea that politically correct and that would be betfessions will one day people have, that all professions ter. In the early days,
have equal numbers will one day have equal numbers you didn’t do that. You
of men and women sent your paper to the
is not only wrong, it’s of men and women is not only journal that you thought
silly. There’s no rea-wrong, it’s silly.” was most appropriate for
son to aspire to that
aim. Individuals should do the kind of work
they enjoy doing, that they’re good at. And
this can lead to different proportions of men
and women in the arts and sciences. How
the gender numbers work out doesn’t really matter if we can have a society organised
in such a way as to take advantage of “the
qualities of people”.
your paper. There was no
impact factor.
A funny thing that tended to happen in
the first part of my career was, when you
found something that you thought was in
your opinion more interesting, you would
write a very short Letter to Nature, in which
you summarised the main thing in a way
that somebody else could understand it.
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Nature was for the general reader in those
days. When you got that accepted, then
you would write a more detailed report
about what you had done for a more specialised journal. People never do that nowadays. What they do is pack huge amounts
of specialised material into a Nature Letter
that becomes indigestible and compressed.
They’ll get it in there if they’re lucky. It
doesn’t matter if people don’t read it or
hardly understand it. That’s not the point.
The point is to get it in there. This is what I
mean about the deterioration and corruption of publishing practice. It has gone from
a situation, which was not too bad, to one
that is terrible. I’ve seen all this happen in
the nearly 50 years I’ve been in science.
Are you optimistic for the next few
years?
Lawrence: Not really. A friend told me
that these pendulums always swing; that
it will swing back one day, that there’ll be
a change and there will be a move away
from measurement. But, when you look at
the way business management techniques
have moved into public research agencies
like the MRC, one just despairs. There is an
enormous increase in bureaucracy – form
filling, targeting, assessment, evaluations.
This has gone right through society, like the
Black Death!
I’m not optimistic.
Lawrence: The real quality and communicability of our work has deteriorated.
The people who fund us will finally discover
that. But I think that there is still great work
going on in science. There’s a lot of privatisation of scientific research, some of which
is more targeted and can
Science is such a won-“The intellectual heart of re-be very useful, for exam
derful thing to be doing. search is sick because its main ple, in biotechnology. But
There are people who un-purpose is discovery. Illumi-the intellectual heart of
derstand that. They will nating our understanding of research is sick because
go on doing it and will
nature, that’s what it’s about.“
its main purpose is dis
see us beyond the short
term measures we’re now
subject to, I hope. But they are suffering
due to the insecurity. Many of them have
trained for years to become research scientists. Some are very good, yet they’re looking down from the edge into an abyss. Some
will succeed but most will fail. As for those
who do succeed, I’m not sure that they will
have such a good life – writing grants the
whole time, sitting at the top of the pyramid.
Overall, what are likely to be the consequences if it continues like this?
covery. Illuminating our
understanding of nature,
that’s what it’s about. It’s not about producing a paper that nobody wants to read or
understand. If we lose sight of that, then
we won’t find out things so easily. We may
stumble across things occasionally, as we’ve
always done. But many young people just
don’t see what science is for. Most of them
are trying to get a paper. We have to be ambitious. We have to find something that is
worth telling other people about.
Interview: Jeremy Garwood
Link: www.lab-times.org/labtimes/issues/lt2011/lt02/lt_2011_02_24_31.pdf
irbbarcelona.org
