Coffee causes cancer. Red wine protects your heart. Chocolate cuts diabetes risk. These eye-catching headlines are designed to catch readers’ attention and encourage clicks. But are they true?

Professor George Davey Smith, director of the Medical Research Council (MRC) Integrative Epidemiology Unit at the University of Bristol, takes a scientific approach to verifying such claims: “Depending on the claim and how annoying it is, I’ll either move on with my day or hunt down the original paper. If it’s in a journal or prestigious publication that should know better, I’ll skip straight through to the methodology section.”

“Spurious headlines and meaningless findings are harmful to both science and the population, and we should be combating them.”

Causation matters in health research

George has spent decades untangling mere correlation from causation. His work demonstrates why the health headlines we see daily often have a more complicated story than first appears.

“When a powerful figure or institution makes sweeping health claims based on correlations in research data, millions of people listen.

“Recently, pregnant women around the world were worried by assertions about paracetamol that simply aren’t supported by causal evidence.

“It’s a reminder of why understanding the difference between correlation and causation matters beyond academia: it shapes real decisions and affects real lives.”

The problem with ‘independent’ risk factors

George’s entry into epidemiology was almost accidental. As a medical student, he found the first lecture in a two-week epidemiology module so tedious he went cycling around Ireland instead. Yet after sitting the module exam, he discovered he was fascinated by the mathematical challenge of understanding what actually causes disease, rather than by what merely correlates with it.

By the late 1980s, he was asking uncomfortable questions about how epidemiologists establish causation. Working in Nicaragua during this period, an experience that included a dramatic motorbike crash, he was developing ideas that would challenge decades of medical consensus.

The core problem was identified by George and his colleague Andrew Phillips in a series of papers from 1990 onwards. When two things are strongly correlated with each other, it becomes nearly impossible to determine which one, if either, is truly causing a disease.

George said: “Add in the messy reality of measurement error, the fact that a single blood test or dietary questionnaire captures only a snapshot of someone’s true exposure. Different degrees of measurement error can drive which factor appears to be independently responsible for disease and can lead researchers dramatically astray.”

When apples aren’t the answer

‘An apple a day keeps the doctor away’ is a proverb known to most people in the UK, and could be the oldest public health claim.

George said: “Observational studies have shown that people who eat more fruit and vegetables, or take vitamin supplements, are healthier. But people who take supplements or eat apples tend to do lots of other healthy things too. They exercise more, smoke less, have higher incomes, and better access to healthcare.”

“When vitamins, which were thought to be the health-promoting factors in fruit and vegetables, were tested in randomised controlled trials, with all confounding factors removed, the apparently dramatic health benefits disappeared.

“The correlation between vitamin supplement use and being healthy was real. The causation was an illusion, created by healthier lifestyles amongst other factors.

“This doesn’t mean supplements and apples are bad for you. It means that the observational evidence oversold their benefits.”

The billion-dollar mistake

Perhaps the most striking example of measurement error was HDL cholesterol, then colloquially known as “good cholesterol.” For decades, studies showed that people with higher HDL levels had lower rates of coronary heart disease (CHD). It seemed obvious: raise HDL, prevent heart attacks. Pharmaceutical companies invested billions in developing and testing drugs designed to do exactly that.

But George and Andrew had demonstrated through simulations in the early 1990s that measurement error could make HDL appear protective, even when it wasn’t. This is due to levels of HDL cholesterol remaining stable in response to short-term factors, like diet, compared to highly variable levels of other dietary fats, such as triglycerides. Their work was largely ignored. The medical consensus remained firm: HDL was protective.

It took large randomised controlled trials, the gold standard of medical evidence, to prove them right. Drug after drug that successfully raised HDL levels failed to prevent CHD. Billions of dollars and decades of effort had been directed at the wrong target. The association was real; the causation was not.

Mendelian randomisation and triangulation of evidence

To establish true causation, George advocates for what he calls “triangulation of evidence”: using multiple different methods and studying diverse populations to strengthen causal inference.

He pioneered Mendelian randomisation, which uses genetic variants as natural experiments. Since genes are randomly distributed at conception, like a randomised trial built into our DNA, they can help distinguish causation from correlation.

This method played a crucial role in the finding that HDL cholesterol wasn’t protective after all, and that alcohol, despite raising HDL, doesn’t protect against cardiovascular disease at any level of intake.

The need for large-scale and diverse population data

Studying different populations also reveals hidden confounding, which George illustrates through some breastfeeding research conducted in 2011. “In the UK, where better off mothers are more likely to breastfeed, studies suggested it protected children against numerous health problems.

“But in Southern Brazil, where socioeconomic influences on breastfeeding didn’t follow the same pattern, those apparently protective associations largely disappeared. The only beneficial effect that was seen in both settings was with children’s cognitive ability.

“A large-scale randomised trial of breastfeeding produced the same findings as were inferred from the comparison of UK and Brazilian data. Many correlations existed; but most of them were produced by confounding.”

Why headlines get it wrong

When you see a headline claiming ‘coffee causes cancer’ or any similar causal claim, George suggests asking: what’s the evidence beyond correlation? Often, these stories stem from observational studies that have identified an association but cannot prove causation.

As another contributor to triangulation, he advocates for the use of negative controls in research, examining outcomes that are implausible to check for confounding.

“My favourite example of this comes from the US. Many studies found that smoking was strongly predictive of risk of suicide, but there are obvious social and behavioural factors that could influence both, and depression could make it more difficult to quit smoking, or smoking could be a form of self-medication.

“We showed in the same huge study that smoking was as strongly linked to the risk of being murdered as it was to death by suicide. While it could be argued that the suicide link was biologically plausible, this was obviously not the case for being murdered, which suggested that confounding generated the associations.”

Impact on public health

The consequences of mistaking correlation for causation extend beyond wasted research funding. It can shape real-world health advice.

Vitamin E supplements, for instance, were heavily promoted as heart-protective based on observational studies. Nearly half of US adults in the early 2000s took them, before randomised trials showed they provided no benefit. George notes “That’s money, effort and hope directed at interventions that couldn’t deliver on their promise.”

Improving the research and publishing culture

George points out that the scientific field and its culture could actually be pushing misleading health claims.

“There are structural improvements in the organisation of scientific research we could make to protect against this practice. I think the incentive and reward structure around publication doesn’t encourage best practice.

“Carrying out a careful ‘triangulation of evidence’ exercise takes vastly more time than producing a headline-grabbing but unreliable paper. How to change this is a major challenge that funders, publishers and the many institutions researchers work within need to come together to address.”

Looking at all the evidence

“Funding applications could build in a required triangulation perspective to encourage scientists to consider the range of data that could test their hypotheses. Most scientists will agree with this in principle, but it’s not being actively implemented.”

George’s career-long mission has been to ensure that public health interventions target true causes, not mere correlations.

His recent MRC medal recognises not just technical brilliance but a commitment to ensuring epidemiology serves public health rather than generating misleading headlines. In an age where health information spreads rapidly and powerful voices can amplify uncertain claims, his work reminds us that rigorous evidence matters.

Want to know more?

We are UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), the body that allocates government funds for research. If you’re a UK taxpayer, your contributions help fund the work we support. You can read more about what we do here.

Professor George Davey Smith is Director of the MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit at the University of Bristol.

He is this year’s recipient of the MRC Millennium Medal, which over the last 25 years has been presented to 13 truly outstanding individuals whose work has shaped the future of medical research.

Several of these researchers have also gone on to receive a Nobel Prize and been listed in the New Years Honours List for scientific excellence in their field.

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To many people, Bristol inspires thoughts of trip-hop, Wallace and Gromit, and a certain photogenic bridge.

But Bristol is also a city that’s changing people’s lives for the better. Scientists and innovators in the city are improving our health, creating jobs and giving us new ways to enjoy culture: all with a healthy dose of Bristol’s famous creativity.

Here’s just a small selection of projects happening in Bristol now, funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and its councils.

80 years of thinking in one second

Did you know the UK’s most powerful supercomputer is based at the University of Bristol?

100,000 times faster than your average laptop, Isambard-AI can do calculations in one second that would take 80 years if every person in the world worked on them with a calculator! This power is essential to helping the UK harness AI for public good.

Isambard-AI became fully operational in July this year, but it’s already helping the NHS speed up cancer screening and identifying ways to cut harmful emissions from industry.

Puppies against Parkinson’s

A dog’s nose is one of nature’s great inventions. Medical assistance dogs can be trained to detect everything from low blood sugar to warning signs of seizures, and many owners have stories of their pets sniffing out their cancer.

Now dogs can add another achievement to their list. A team led by the University of Bristol recently demonstrated that trained dogs can detect Parkinson’s disease from skin swabs, and they’re really good at it. The two dogs had 70% and 80% accuracy at identifying the scent signature of Parkinson’s, and had 90% accuracy at ruling out healthy patients.

There’s currently no definitive diagnostic test for Parkinson’s, so this method could help people receive an earlier diagnosis and access treatment sooner. The findings could also help develop electronic “nose” devices that mimic the dogs’ abilities for medical use.

Live music . . . that you can be a part of

If your favourite artists never seem to tour near you, this one might appeal.

An innovative Bristol-based company, Condense, is bringing live performances to virtual venues for fans all round the world to enjoy. Using performance capture technology, artists can perform as digital versions of themselves, while audiences can explore the venue and interact with the performers in their own digital forms.

Last year, Condense worked with BBC Radio 1’s New Music Show to stage an interactive virtual gig of Sam Tompkins.

How (not) to get hit by a self-driving car

Could you trick a self-driving car into running you over? That’s the mission posed by an interactive street-based game developed by Playfool, with support from West of England creative tech programme MyWorld.

How (not) to get hit by a self-driving car challenges players to evade an AI camera trained to recognise pedestrians, like those used by self-driving cars. At the end, players have the option to share anonymised data from their session to train the AI to be better at spotting people and make self-driving cars safer.

Developed through Watershed’s Playable City Sandbox, the game first appeared in Bristol in 2023. It has since toured the world, sparking important conversations about safety, privacy and policy in a world that increasingly watches us back.

An orchestra for the future

Music is good for us. Research shows playing a musical instrument can help our brains age better, and music therapy can help with conditions ranging from schizophrenia to sleep disorders. But not everyone has equal access to these benefits.

Newport-based company Pyka has created The Expression Orchestra, a collection of alternative, easy-to-use instruments to help everyone access the joy of musical performance no matter their abilities. As performers roll, press and throw the instruments, an AI ‘Conductor’ interprets and combines their interactions to create a collaborative performance.

The Expression Orchestra is designed to be used in educational settings, and could especially benefit disabled students and those with additional educational needs.

Bristol people helped to train the Conductor in a workshop at Watershed in summer 2024, and it appeared at Bristol Tech festival alongside other projects supported by MyWorld.

Want to know more?

We are UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), the body that allocates government funds for research. If you’re a UK taxpayer, your contributions help fund the work we support. You can read more about what we do here.

And if you liked this article, follow us on Medium, Instagram, Facebook or YouTube — or sign up for our weekly newsletter!

Why do heating and cooling systems emit so much CO2? The answer lies in the outdated technologies that we continue to rely on. Gas boilers for heating, and air conditioners and fridges for cooling that run on vapour compression, have been around for over a century. These technologies are inefficient and problematic, and efforts to solve one issue often lead to
new challenges.

Take CFCs, for instance: they were phased out after it became clear they were depleting the ozone layer. Their replacements — HCFCs and HFCs — do not harm the ozone but are significant contributors to global warming. Today, there is a push towards so-called natural refrigerants, such as butane, CO2, and ammonia, which have a much lower global-warming potential. However, these come with their own risks, as many are toxic, flammable, or even explosive.

Decarbonising heating and cooling involves more than just eliminating harmful gases. Refrigerant leakage accounts for only a third of emissions from vapour-compression systems. The other two-thirds come from energy use, and the energy efficiency of these systems is notoriously low.

That is why my research focuses on entirely cutting out gases and developing new technologies based on solid materials, known as caloric materials. Eliminating gases instantly reduces one-third of emissions, but the real potential lies in creating a system that is two to three times more energy efficient than vapour compression. It would be transformative.

Caloric materials have been around for a long time — NASA developed the first magnetocaloric cooling prototype in the 1970s. However, solids have always underperformed compared to fluids, which, due to the free movement of their molecules in the gas state, release a lot of heat when compressed. By contrast, it is much harder to manipulate solid materials in a way that produces similar results. Most research has focused on magnetocaloric materials, which release heat when exposed to a magnetic field. But after 50 years of research, the best magnetocaloric materials only achieve a temperature change of three degrees Celsius under magnetic fields generated by permanent magnets. By comparison, refrigerant gases in vapour-compression systems can easily achieve 40 degrees
on compression.

In 2013, we began exploring alternatives and identified new families of organic solids, where molecules sit in a crystalline lattice. Under normal atmospheric pressure, these molecules rotate freely. Two years later, we demonstrated that when applying pressure, the molecules stop rotating — and this achieves the same thermal changes as the gases that we use in vapour compression. This was a big breakthrough.

Our spinout company, Barocal, has already developed its second-generation prototypes based on our barocaloric solid refrigerants, which perform on par with the vapour-compression systems currently on the market. We are now working on the third generation, which will surpass these conventional systems. Developing a completely new cooling and heating system is both challenging and exciting: we developed new materials and tools, made mistakes, and learned from them.

The second law of thermodynamics tells us that you can’t achieve cooling without heating something else. The hotter the planet gets, the more people will install air-conditioning systems, which warm the planet further — so we need a solution, fast. My hope is that we will have these systems in your home, in your car, and in your fridge in three to five years’ time.

Originally published at https://www.alumni.cam.ac.uk. Interview: Pamela Evans

EPSRC-funded researcher Xavier Moya is Professor of Materials Physics in the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy at the University of Cambridge. Prof. Moya is a 2024 fellow of Breakthrough Energy, a foundation started by Bill Gates. This prestigious fellowship supports early-stage innovators from across the world who are developing transformative technologies to tackle climate change.

The need for evidence

For years I have attended meetings, events and conferences where colleagues (both academic and policy) simply did not believe that Arts and Humanities research could inform or influence public policymaking.

I knew that there were many success stories out there that showed otherwise, but they just weren’t visible. Not only was this perpetuating the myth of a gulf between policy and research: it deprived researchers of the inspiration to engage.

That’s how I set out to collect a set of case studies from researchers in diverse institutions, spread across the UK, which shared their recent, successful, experiences of working with policy professionals.

After an open call for contributions, 21 academics at various career stages shared their stories and advice from engaging with parliament, national government, devolved administrations, local authorities and policy-adjacent organisations.

The resulting publication, which I co-authored with undergraduate historian and Laidlaw Scholar Luke Sewell (Durham University), is free to read online. Below I share a selection of tips and success stories from the contributors that provide an insight into the policy engagement process for those working in Arts and Humanities disciplines.

Policy engagement tips for arts and humanities researchers

1. Agreeing expectations

Firstly, many respondents emphasised the importance of agreeing expectations with policymaking colleagues from the outset. Applying equally to scope and scale, policy-experienced researchers encouraged colleagues to delineate a) their time commitment for the collaborative policy project and b) what their research may and may not offer to developing ‘real world’ policies.

2. Avoiding academic language

Another commonality in advice offered by our respondents was that academics need to ‘translate’ their research into a form which is useful to the policymaker. Avoiding academic jargon and verbosity, consideration of the audience as recipients of research, and accessibly formatting recommendations to policymaking colleagues are all vital.

3. Relationship building through listening

Other nuggets of advice included making a deliberate effort to build relationships with policymaking colleagues, as well as accepting that it is best to ‘pivot’ towards the questions asked by stakeholders, and away from those which prioritise academic curiosity. Not only this, but it is important to remember that there is no ‘correct’ way of doing research-policymaking collaboration, and each academic’s experience will be different, and require different action.

Policy engagement success stories

Fourteen Arts and Humanities disciplines are represented in the publication. I provide here a summary of just four case studies to give a flavour of the breadth covered.

Expanding Classics education

I shared my own experiences of collaborating with the Department for Education on the provision of classical subjects in the school curriculum. I identified a) regions experiencing ‘Classics poverty’ and b) the particular benefits for ‘disadvantaged’ students.

The £4m Latin Excellence Programme was launched in 2021 to expand access to Latin and Classical Studies to students in state-maintained schools outside London and the South-East: the first major government investment in Classics for more than a decade.

Heritage Infrastructure Funding

Dr Ben Edwards, Reader in Heritage and Archaeology at Manchester Metropolitan University, informed the scoping phase of the Research Infrastructure for Conservation and Heritage Science scheme (RICHeS) through his AHRC DIGILAB Policy Fellowship.

The scheme, which aims to build the capabilities of the UK heritage science sector through a range of initiatives, was funded by HM Treasury at £60m. Ben’s specific recommendation for a digital repository for heritage science data was funded at £14m.

Pride in Place

Dr Joseph Owen, Research Fellow in the Arts and Humanities at the University of Southampton, led the ‘Feeling Towns’ project, a strand of the AHRC Pride in Place programme that explored the correlation between people’s emotional attachment to places and the health of local culture.

Policy impacts ranged from supporting Southampton City Council’s successful bid for £20m from the Levelling Up Fund, recommendations for the Department for Culture Media and Sport (DCMS) on how culture can reanimate public spaces, and co-designing the High Street Heritage Action Zones project with Historic England.

Dealing with Electronic Waste

Dr Michael Stead, Lecturer in Sustainable Design Futures at Lancaster University, received funding from the AHRC Impact Acceleration Account to establish ‘Generation Fix’. This is a local repair service for smart tech and electronics to reduce e-waste in the community and locally redistribute fixed devices to increase digital inclusion. His research has informed policy decisions at a local level in Blackburn but also nationally via the Green Alliance and DCMS.

Next steps

The UPEN Arts and Humanities Sub-Committee highlighted the value of this report, noting how ‘the geographical range of case studies presented, as well as the diversity of university type and career stage of researchers, demonstrates that the policymaking community is open to collaboration with Arts and Humanities researchers across the sector. We hope that colleagues will, like us, feel uplifted by the outstanding work that is already taking place, and inspired for future research-policy interactions’.

Whether you are a knowledge exchange professional or a researcher, we hope that you can use this advice to establish and deepen your relationships with policy colleagues and generate your own success stories. And should you meet a sceptic on the matter, I hope you’ll know where to direct them!

Arlene Holmes-Henderson is Professor of Classics Education and Public Policy at Durham University. She is a member of the AHRC Peer Review College and has led several AHRC-funded projects which have created connections between Humanities research, policy and practice. She is Vice-Chair of the Universities Policy Engagement Network with national responsibility to champion Arts and Humanities research with the policy community.

Reliable data can improve government decision-making, facilitate impactful research and dispel fake news. With an ever-expanding library of facts and figures, projects like UK Data Service are unlocking the power of information to improve people’s lives.

The UK Data Service (UKDS) is one of the largest data libraries in the UK. Since 1967, it has been collecting and storing information from trusted providers — including government departments, the NHS and the Office for National Statistics — and holding important data sets, such as the Census and Labour Force Surveys.

This invaluable pool of accurate, trustworthy facts and figures is used by researchers, policy makers, organisations and charities to inform decisions that improve people’s lives and create a better future…

Improving social science research

UKDS data covers virtually every aspect of our lives. It has information on people and places, work and wellbeing, crime and the economy — it even collects insights into how people feel about the world they live in.

As well as breadth, there is depth to UKDS data, and this provides a rich resource for academic researchers, particularly in economics and social science. “We have what’s known as longitudinal studies, which revisit the same people over periods of time. There’s a cohort from the 1950s, for example, and another for children born around the millennium, that show how people’s lives have changed and also give a picture of how society is changing,” explains UKDS Service Director for Impact, Finn Dymond-Green. “Researchers can use this information in all sorts of ways to learn about our country, how things have developed and how they might change in future.”

Such insights can help government and organisations identify important issues and how they might be addressed. Researchers from Heriot Watt University, for example, used UKDS data to better understand what homelessness looks like in the UK. “Their research supported the broadening of what constitutes being homeless, moving beyond rough sleeping to also include people in temporary accommodation, sofa surfing and so on. Their work helped the charity Crisis to better focus resources,” says Finn.

Informing government decisions

From the impact of social media on teens to whether working from home affects productivity, there are many important questions about society and the economy to which the government is seeking answers. UKDS’s impartial data can help here, too — leading to better, evidence-based decisions about policy and where to spend taxpayer-money.

Local and national government can access UKDS stats to inform changes to policy, as well as draw on research that is based on UKDS information. The data is increasingly used by the charity sector and thinktanks as well. “The Children’s Society uses UKDS data to produce The Good Childhood report, which has informed policies surrounding the support of children’s mental health and wellbeing in schools,” says Finn. “And the most recent Crime Survey for England and Wales has triggered discussions about what can be done to tackle rising rates of phone snatching.”

Numbers can only tell part of the story, so UKDS also collects qualitative data through interviews and observations. These provide a more in-depth understanding of behaviours, beliefs and attitudes, which is particularly important for complex, interconnected issues, such as the impact of COVID-19.

“The COSMO study is the largest of its kind, capturing the experiences of young people through the pandemic and beyond. Among other data, it’s using questionnaires with children and their parents to assess the impact of the pandemic on education, wellbeing and life chances. This type of data provides an important, big-picture understanding for policymakers.”

Dispelling fake news

As we have seen in recent events around the world, the spread of false information can threaten democracy, and damage people’s lives and livelihoods, so it is increasingly important to have trustworthy sources of news. UKDS not only holds information that can verify claims, it provides tools the media can use to access these important datasets quickly and easily.

“Our data is used by organisations such as Full Fact, a charity that fact checks claims made by politicians, public institutions, the media and viral online content. It’s important that bad information is challenged and corrected as quickly as possible, so they use our tools to get to the bottom of claims at pace,” explains Finn. “UKDS data has been used to fact-check political speeches, cut through spin on knife crime, and dispel false narratives that have the potential to stir up racial tensions.”

Evolving data collection to reflect society

As the world changes, the data collected about it needs to evolve, too. Take the Census: in 1971 people were asked if they had an outside toilet, questions about ethnicity didn’t appear until the 1990s, and in 2021 a section on gender identity was included.

“By adapting the questions being asked over time, the data better reflects society. But also, by including new questions, such as around long-term illness or sexuality, we create a new pool of information that can reduce bias and lead to positive changes in policy or behaviours,” says Finn. “It means the data not only contributes to addressing today’s challenges, but identifies those that might arise in future, too.”

Want to know more?

We are UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), the body that allocates government funds for research. If you’re a UK taxpayer, your contributions help fund the work we support. You can read more about what we do here.

UKDS is funded by UKRI the Economic and Social Research Council.

And if you liked this article, follow us on Medium, Instagram, Facebook or YouTube — or sign up for our weekly newsletter!

The way we grow and eat food is changing as our climate changes. Researchers are already working to ensure that the food on our plates is sustainable, healthier and resilient to weather and disease.

Sharing healthy food through research and innovation

Stella Peace, Interim Executive Chair of Innovate UK and UKRI Food Champion, said:

Food is at the heart of so many cultures, bringing people together to share traditions and create new memories, as well as delivering nourishment and health.

As friends and families come together in the coming weeks, our opportunity is to make sure that the food we share is healthy, nutritious, and sustainable through research and innovation.

The starters

SuperSoup

Start your festive feast with a unique ‘SuperSoup’, supercharged to support your metabolic health, helping to maintain healthy cholesterol and blood sugar levels over the festive period.

SuperSoup was launched in 2022 and developed by Smarter Naturally, a spin-out company from the Norwich-based Quadram Institute.

The company was founded by Professor Richard Mithen following over 30 years of research.

SuperSoup includes a special type of broccoli with increased levels of glucoraphanin that improves the way our cells work, helping to maintain healthy cholesterol and blood glucose levels, a key risk factor for developing diabetes.

The main course: alternative turkey with all the trimmings

Roast turkey

The main ingredient to a Christmas dinner is of course the roast turkey, but new scientific advances are helping to find new and exciting ways to provide your Christmas protein.

A team of researchers is on a mission to develop sustainable, affordable, healthy and tasty alternative proteins that in the future we might all be enjoying as part of our Christmas dinner.

The team includes researchers from the National Alternative Protein Innovation Centre in Leeds, Cellular Agriculture Manufacturing Hub in Bath and the Imperial College London-led Engineering Biology Microbial Food Hub.

Roast potatoes

In Lincoln, B-Hive Innovations is developing the ‘super-spud’ by harnessing the power of engineering biology through its TuberGene project.

They are developing improved potato varieties that are healthier, bruise resistant, and faster cooking.

They’re also working to keep potato farming sustainable, so that there will be potatoes on the table for decades to come.

Pigs in blankets

Researchers at Queens University Belfast’s Institute of Global Food Security are studying how animals fed with seaweed have a reduced need for antibiotics.

Feeding farm animals seaweed could help fight antibiotic resistance and climate change

Brussels sprouts

There’s no excuse not to eat your Brussels sprouts either. The effects of wild weather threatening the sprout supply could be combatted through research at the John Innes Centre in Norwich.

Their work is helping to reduce the vulnerability of our brassica food supply chain, including our traditional Brussels sprouts, to fluctuations in climate change.

After dinner: cheese from peas

‘Cheese from Peas’ has been developed by researchers from the University of Nottingham spin-out company The Good Pulse Company.

These innovators are using new techniques to turn yellow peas grown in the UK into a sustainable plant-based cheese.

This alternative has similar properties to dairy cheese without the need to use high levels of fat, resulting in a healthy, tasty vegan cheese to put on your crackers.

Meanwhile, wheat varieties, being developed as part of the Delivering Sustainable Wheat programme, will be more resistant to climate change to ensure we still have crackers and bread for our cheeses.

The drinks: AI saving wine

Artificial intelligence (AI) company Deep Planet is working with Sussex-based Rathfinny Wine Estate to use remote sensing and AI to help wine growers better predict the health, yields and maturity of their crops.

This should improve supplies and bring down costs.

The company is also working with wine growers around the world to help improve the health of wine grapes across several key wine-producing regions.

Helping us to make informed food choices this Christmas

How we interact with food is central to delivering a healthier and more sustainable diet for all.

Bristol based Consumer Lab is one of six UKRI funded innovation hubs as part of the Diet and Health Open Innovation Research Club.

The hub aims to help support our real-world healthy food choices by studying dietary choices and behaviour.

Want to know more?

We are UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), the body that allocates government funds for research. If you’re a UK taxpayer, your contributions help fund the work we support. You can read more about what we do here.

Projects in this story are funded through the Technology Missions Fund, the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and Innovate UK.

And if you liked this article, follow us on Medium, Instagram, Facebook or YouTube — or sign up for our weekly newsletter!

Top image: Credit: JohnnyGreig, E+ via Getty Images

Originally published at https://www.ukri.org on December 16, 2024.

Dr Jim Donaghey, AHRC Creative Communities Practitioner (2023–24) at Ulster University, highlights some of the transformative impacts of his research relationships with key partners Slaine Browne (independent videographer and skateboarder) and Rose Smyth (Causeway Association of Urban Sports campaign group).

Collaboration and connectivity are at the heart of the Creative Communities mission — as a Community Innovation Practitioner (CIP), this meant developing meaningful research relationships on the ground, and including my research partners in co-design, co-creation and co-evaluation.

Research relationships — what difference do they make?

During the course of my research with the skateboarding community in Portrush, on the north coast of Ireland, it has been gratifying to see numerous research relationships emerging from our interventions — and these relationships have been hugely beneficial to the quality of the research too.

Two of the relationships that were foundational to the CIP project were those with key partners Slaine Browne and Causeway Association of Urban Sports (CAUS).

Slaine’s collection of video footage documenting skateboarding creativity in Portrush dating back to the 1990s was the basis for the whole research idea, and he put in considerable work to sift through archive material and shoot new footage, to produce the film outputs shared by the project on our ‘Skate Stopped Portrush’ channels (Instagram and YouTube).

Research relationships — a two-way street

CAUS have been campaigning for skatepark facilities in the area for more than 15 years. Their experience of community organising and lobbying was essential in shaping the project’s interventions and thinking strategically about how to leverage our academic ‘kudos’.

My Community Innovation Practitioner project simply wouldn’t have been possible without their support and encouragement. But, as with any relationship, this research partnership is a two-way thing, and their involvement with the project has changed how they view their own creative work and activism.

For Slaine, his engagement with the project has renewed his creative confidence, and the opportunity to make connections between contemporary and historical skateboarding practice has been an inspiration:

“I’d been filming skateboarding in Portrush since the late ’90s. Getting into this research project, I was asked to go through my own skate footage and put that together again, 20 or 30 years after I filmed it. So basically my job was to go through something like 215 hours of footage. It was great to go back and revisit it … it feels like yesterday when I started skating here.

“Making new material for the project has opened up other pathways, with people seeing the videos and asking me to make more stuff for them. It’s been great to suddenly have a lot more confidence in what I’ve been doing since I was a kid, which is playing with video cameras.

“A lot of the older ones like me, we’ve come back to the skateboarding scene in Portrush, because we saw there was a new generation coming through.

“In all this community stuff that we’ve been doing with the skaters, I’ve noticed that the younger ones are fully into it. They all want to know more about making videos, they want to learn how to build ramps. It’s just great seeing the reaction. You see how many people are coming down. It’s good to know that we’re all here together.”

Rose has been working with CAUS since its inception. She values the transformed perspectives that the CIP project has brought to their long-running campaign:

“I think with the research project coming along, you’ve provided us with a lot of energy and a bit of validity. You’re coming from an academic perspective, so that’s different, that’s fresh for us. It gives us a bit of a context, seeing what we’re doing fits in somewhere, in terms of a journey.

“When you’re bogged down in the middle of campaigning, it’s hard to think that, actually, there is a bigger picture here. You’ve taken the time to look through the issue and get that overview. It’s just really important in terms of morale. But also giving us space to ask questions like: ‘are we on the right track?’ ‘Are there better ways we could have done this?’ And you’ve helped to recognise other issues at play, like gentrification.

“For us, we embrace you coming along, because it gives us a validity, and it places us.”

Celebrating DIY culture and community empowerment

The Do-It-Yourself energy of the skateboarding community in Portrush has been at the heart of our Community Innovation Practitioner research collaboration.

This is partly a practical necessity, given the local Council’s failure to provide urban sports infrastructure, but, crucially, DIY is also a ‘virtue’ that helps to build community self-empowerment and collective consciousness.

Our CIP research activity, working together to refurbish ramps at Station Square in Portrush, or getting together to organise public film screenings that highlight the heritage of skateboarding in the town, all contributes to this community self-empowerment and has helped to transform the community’s own sense of themselves as legitimate users of public space.

From this newly confident perspective of the skateboarders, the entire struggle to ‘Get Portrush a Skatepark’ is transformed, with grassroots action now setting the policy agenda (in contrast to 30+ years of unheeded appeals to the local Council).

This Community Innovation Practitioner project has come to an end (as of August 2024), but the long-running campaign for a skatepark in Portrush has been re-energised, and our research relationship will continue to celebrate the skaters’ determined campaign.

More information and useful links

If you’re a UK taxpayer, your contributions helped fund this work, via UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), the body that allocates government funds for research, and the Arts and Humanities Research Council. You can read more about what we do here.

And if you liked this article, follow us on Medium, Instagram, Facebook or YouTube — or sign up for our weekly newsletter!

Useful links

Creative Communities Podcast — Skaters on Screen: Capturing DIY Skate Culture and Community Action with Jim Donaghey in Portrush (NI)

Creative Communities Grassroots Policy Paper — ‘Northern Ireland: Civic Identity’

Skate Stopped Portrush YouTube and Skate Stopped Portrush Instagram

Causeway Association of Urban Sports

From a forensic jeweller to a beekeeper and glassblowing to hair recycling, the opportunities are almost endless. Below we take a look at 10 jobs in science which you didn’t realise were jobs in science.

Glass design and fabrication facility manager

“People always say ‘you make it look easy’. Well, I should hope so, I have been doing it a long time.”

Terri Adams is the only scientific glassblower at the University of Oxford.

Her role involves working with researchers to design and create bespoke pieces of glassware for their experiments.

Instrumentation engineer

Jeff Benson and his team at the National Oceanography Centre (NOC) take care of more than 2,000 different types of scientific instruments.

This covers everything from temperature sensors to the famous autonomous underwater vehicle Boat McBoatface.

Although largely based at NOC headquarters in Southampton, Jeff often gets to join researchers out on their voyages.

Material design researcher

Sanne Visser recycles human hair, working with local hairdressers and barbers to see the problems of waste and opportunities this presents.

The PhD researcher was one of the Design Researchers in Residence at the Design Museum in 2021 to 2022.

“We have been using human hair for a very long time so in theory it is nothing new. What I’m interested in is actually looking at the infrastructure and the systems how we use human hair and how that actually is embedded in modern day life.”

Agronomist and Agri-Technologist

Farmer Andrew Christie works at crop, soil and environmental research centre The James Hutton Institute.

His role as an agronomist and agri-technologist includes making sure the institute’s farm, which covers 270 hectares, is maintained so that research can take place.

He also acts as the middleman between the scientists and farm team on site.

“I translate the science into a format that our Field Trials Officers can easily apply and put into practice, whether that’s trial layouts, seed or fertiliser rates, or testing different chemicals in different areas. It ensures what’s going on in the fields matches the academic side.”

Woodland conservator

Nigel Fisher is conservator of Wytham Woods in Oxfordshire.

His role includes coordinating the management of research within the 1,000 acres of ancient woodland.

Nigel can be trying to find certain soil types for researchers one day and showing schools groups around the estate the next.

Forensic jeweller

“I have taken two disciplines that are very much of interest to me — that would be jewellery design and forensic science — and really tried to explore what happens when those two intersect.”

Edinburgh College of Art lecturer Dr Maria Maclennan takes the principles that underpin jewellery, like hallmarks and serial numbers, to inform forensic and criminal investigations.

She has worked with anthropologists, forensic archaeologists, embalmers and police officers. This took her into a world that she did not know was possible with her existing skills and knowledge.

Honeybee researcher

“Now bees are a fundamental part of our food security ecosystem. If we harm them and if they collapse, we will be in huge trouble.”

Beekeeper Rui Gonçalves is part of a team at the Oxford Bee Lab investigating the nutritional needs of honeybees and bumblebees.

His work includes searching for the perfect artificial food formula to supplement a bee’s diet during the winter.

Partnership leader

Alice Purkiss brings people from the National Trust and the University of Oxford together to carry out research.

While the National Trust can apply for research funding directly, a lot of its research is done in partnerships, which would not be possible without Alice facilitating connections.

“The National Trust has an incredible collection of places, landscapes, collections, and all of those need to be researched.”

Livestock and field technician

“There’s no two days back-to-back that are ever the same, which is brilliant.”

Josh Misselbrook’s journey to his role as a livestock and field technician came after failing his A-levels.

He completed his agricultural apprenticeship while working at a dairy farm and now plays a crucial part of the research and innovation system.

At Rothamsted Research, Josh describes his role as being between what his father did as a research scientist and that of a full-time farmer.

Specialist archivist

As keeper of archives and special collections, Gary Brannan works as part of a team at the Borthwick Institute for Archives at the University of York.

They care for the vast collection of historical material dating back to the 11th century.

Gary’s responsibilities include helping all manner of researchers, students and even members of the public to access material in the archives in person and online.

If you want to find out more about the many roles that contribute to research and innovation in the UK, check out our 101 Jobs That Change the World playlist on YouTube.

Want to know more?

We are UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), the body that allocates government funds for research. If you’re a UK taxpayer, your contributions help fund the work we support. You can read more about what we do here.

And if you liked this article, follow us on Medium, Instagram, Facebook or YouTube — or sign up for our weekly newsletter!

We started with a simple question: what if we flipped the usual approach to funding public engagement with research and innovation?

Could giving funding directly to community groups help us achieve our goal of breaking down the barriers between research, innovation and society?

It feels like a long time since our first round table with community leaders, researchers and public engagement professionals to scope out our approach. Yet we’re still at the start of our journey. With a lot of help, we designed and launched the Community Knowledge Fund and Community Research Networks programmes. In the first phase of both of these programmes, we funded a fascinating set of projects from places that don’t feature heavily in research funding call announcements: from Scarborough to St Ives, rural Durham to North Wales.

Recently, we were happy to announce 12 projects that are receiving funding for phase two of our Community Knowledge Fund. Projects include using citizen science as a tool to improve local water quality in Cornwall and co-creating health impact assessments. The fund, while more of a traditional project focused approach, has radical intent, asking the question, who should be eligible for research and innovation (R&I) funding? We hope to demonstrate the value of empowering under-represented communities, from the potential to unlock new ideas and knowledge to creating stronger relationships between communities and R&I.

The whole programme is supported by our learning and implementation partner, The Young Foundation. We have found that communities see huge value in having support to develop their applications, build skills and make links with other projects. This also creates the opportunity to share learning across the R&I system and we will be hosting events and sharing blogs and reports about the programme over the coming year.

Project funding helps us demonstrate the value of working in new ways. Through the community programmes we fund such as the Citizen Science Collaboration Grants, Community-led Research Pilot and Community Leaders programme we have funded over 200 community-based projects over the last five years.

Our colleagues in research councils have also pioneered new approaches to community engagement, from AHRC’s Being Human Festival to NERC’s Engaging Environments programme. Alongside demonstrating impact, project funding gives thousands of people the opportunity to engage with R&I and helps to create a network of researchers, innovators and community groups committed to working in this way.

Alongside project funding, our scoping review and engagement with community groups has shown us that community based networks, organisations and brokers are an important intermediary between the R&I system and grassroots communities. They can help communities engage in ways that will benefit them and help to ensure that issues that matter to them are part of the R&I agenda. This thinking led to the development of our Community Research Networks programme.

Over the next six years we will invest a further £8 million to create Community Research Networks around the UK. All the networks in the first phase of funding have started with a topic, from eco anxiety to the STEM opportunity gap. However, the longer-term goal of the networks is to build the capabilities of communities to engage with, use and influence R&I.

This might mean more equitable partnerships between universities and communities or it might look like local communities having more influence over the research agendas of universities. It could also help influence the thinking and funding of organisations like UKRI, for example the next time we need to respond to a national emergency.

Next steps

These programmes are all designed to deliver the vision outlined in UKRI’s public engagement strategy. They sit alongside our public dialogue programme, Sciencewise and youth engagement work such as the STEM Ambassadors programme. We look forward to sharing the lessons that emerge from these programmes as we continue to implement our strategy.

We are also excited to announce that we are looking for a partner to support the delivery of phase two of our Community Research Networks programme. The tender for the programme is open until 13 November.

Written by: Tom Saunders, David Chapman and Steve Scott, UKRI Public Engagement Team

Want to know more?

If you’re a UK taxpayer, your contributions helped fund this work, via UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), the body that allocates government funds for research. You can read more about what we do here.

And if you liked this article, follow us on Medium, Instagram, Facebook or YouTube — or sign up for our weekly newsletter!

With festival season upon us, music fans are heading out to revel in the joy of hearing and seeing their favourite performers up close.

But what is it that makes live music special? What is different about the way we experience live music from the way we experience recorded music?

To answer these questions, researchers at the Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM) and the University of Manchester are looking at what happens in our brains when we listen to music. The answers may also provide hints as to how music can help sufferers of lifelong medical conditions.

What happens in our brains?

To study how live and recorded music affect our brains, the researchers brought a local orchestra into the neurology lab. Over a weekend, 20 keen concert-goers watched the Manchester Camerata perform a piece under 3 conditions: live, a pre-recorded live performance, and a pop-music-style video.

While they watched, the audience’s brain activity was measured on an electroencephalogram (EEG) — a technique using sensors placed on the scalp to pick up electrical signals from the brain.

During the live performance, the researchers saw more activity in EEG waves associated with sensory processing and attention, implying the audience were more engaged when the music was live.

“The data showed with statistical significance that a live music experience is different,” says Dr Michelle Phillips, Senior lecturer in Music Psychology at the RNCM, who led the research. “There’s something about live music in people’s brains that could indicate that it’s more engaging, or attracts more attention, or people are more focussed.

“And this matches what people say: that live music is more enjoyable and more immersive.”

“Having those musicians in the lab and watching them was absolutely fantastic. It was the best weekend of my scientific career,” says Jason Taylor, Lecturer in Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Manchester and a collaborator on the project. “Then watching the same thing again on video, I thought ‘Oh, that’s nice, but it’s not quite the same.’ So that’s what we’re trying to capture: what the brain is doing when we have those different experiences.”

A unique experience

So why do people enjoy live music so much? What makes it different from simply watching a recording?

The researchers believe it is a combination of 3 factors: being physically present and immersed in a concert environment, sharing an experience with others, and the sense of occasion.

“Live music is a shared experience,” says Dr Phillips, “There’s a lot of evidence that what people value in a live performance is feeling like they are sharing the experience with other people in the room, both the performers and the rest of the audience. And this ties into the idea of music as a social communication tool.

“But the other thing that came through really strongly in that data was that people value the sense of occasion. They like to go out for a drink beforehand, and get dressed up.

“People value live music in a very special way, and they value it for specific things that aren’t to do with the music.”

Music as medicine

With music having such a profound effect on an audience, there may be ways to use it to help those suffering from lifelong medical conditions, such a Parkinson’s disease. In the next stage of their research, Dr Phillips and her colleagues plan to study how music affects the brains of Parkinson’s sufferers.

“If you talk to people with Parkinson’s, and you say, ‘What’s the role of music in your life?,’ they say, ‘It’s totally vital,’” says Dr Phillips.

“I spoke to an accordion player with Parkinson’s a couple of weeks ago, and he said, ‘If I go to my music-making group on a Wednesday afternoon, my tremors stop until Thursday morning.’ At the moment there’s no research which captures that.”

With the incidence of Parkinson’s expected to rise to 1.2 million by 2030, finding new approaches to managing the condition will become increasingly important.

Making music better

The music industry can also benefit from understanding the role live performances play in people’s lives. Musicians at the RNCM are already being taught to make their performances more interactive, to improve audiences’ sense of shared experience.

Knowing what is important to people about live performances — immersion, shared experience, and sense of occasion — can help improve the experience of recorded music too. Facebook live, for example, can create a feeling of immersion by showing multiple camera angles, and a sense of shared experience through the ability to see who is watching and post reactions.

It is clear, though, that what people really want is to be there, in person, with the musicians, and surrounded by the music.

“Post-covid, the live music industry is very much alive and kicking,” says Dr Phillips. “I think we all wondered whether it would get back on its feet. And it has, because people still want it, because it’s special.”

“We want live music, we need live music, and there are lots of things in live music that you can’t get elsewhere.”

Want to know more?

If you’re a UK taxpayer, your contributions helped fund this work, via UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) — the funding body that allocates government funds for research — and the nine research councils. You can read more about what we do here.

The research in this article received financial support from the Centre for Cultural Value, which is funded by the UKRI Arts and Humanities Research Council, Arts Council England and Paul Hamlyn Foundation.

And if you liked this article, follow us on Medium, Instagram, Facebook or YouTube — or sign up for our weekly newsletter!