Research teams worked separately to investigate similar problems when combined studies might have delivered meaningful results
Australia’s energetic Covid research response has been blighted by waste, with clinical trials undermined by parochialism, poor coordination, privacy constraints and skewed priorities.
Internationally there has been praised for how research has quickly delivered vaccines that are efficacious and safe. And rightfully so. This Times Higher Education piece and the Sydney University research it discusses, suggest that the Australian picture isn’t quite as rosy. It is incredibly important that we learn lessons from this experience.
The findings, published by a University of Sydney team in the Medical Journal of Australia, echo concerns that researchers have ignored sociological aspects of the coronavirus crisis in a rush to unpack Covid’s biological secrets. Experts say that human and government behaviour, which can be far less predictable than the virus, has been implicated in some of the crisis’ most disastrous developments.

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