Helen MacDonald

It sounds like a bit of a Wild West you're describing.

We don't know how good they are.

They're not obliged in any way to tell us how.

I spotted this paper from an Oxford group last week who had looked at a number of people who had COVID disease and were performing a whole different panel of diagnostic tests on them to see how good they were.

And I noticed, John, that you piped up on Twitter to say that you were not particularly satisfied with this paper.

Can you tell us about some of these problems that you're seeing?

How do you think we go about achieving that?

What needs to be done?

Tell us something that gives you hope.

Before Karl rants, I've got one thing to say.

So I was really glad to John for taking the time out to talk to me.

And I think we should come back to him as new evidence emerges on these diagnostic tests.

But equally so sad to hear that COVID is demonstrating why our international system is just not proving adequate without this central register, without an obligation to

of manufacturers to show that their test actually works in this kind of culture of lack of transparency and carl's been so quiet i think he must be gathering his breath or um just just wondering what he can possibly add to what john has just said well look i've known john for a long time and it was as close as i've ever seen him to being angry actually in a conversation because what is just described there is utterly outrageous

Yes, as you said, Carl mentioned this differentiation of evidence and science last week and that had been going around in my mind.

And when I saw these two stories emerging this week, they sort of brought about interesting thoughts.

So the first thing that happened was that there was news about the Scientific Advisory Committee in the UK and particularly criticism that the committee lacked diversity and therefore perhaps the advice

And debate and discussion around that evidence could be narrow.

And secondly, we've seen scientists being attacked on social media for expressing opinions or discussing science and evidence, perhaps where their opinions differ or their take differs from the mainstream.

And the implicit criticism there appears to be that we want sort of everyone to agree.