Written evidence submitted by Stephen Foote (COM0131)
The issue i wish to raise involves the public accountability of science, to critical questions about scientific practices.
I am an experienced English systems engineer, and independent researcher. I have an interest in the evolution and function of physiology at the systems level
There are many people who have expertise in technical occupations, that may not be regarded as "scientific". These people may on occasion have cause to question some of the claims, and indeed omissions made in the published scientific papers. It seems that there is currently no established pathway for such legitimate enquiries, and scientists can just refuse to comment on such criticisms.
Having contacted many scientists about such an issue, so far this is the case with my enquiry. This response from the Physiological Society sums up the situation quote. "I have discussed with colleagues and we agree that this is not a subject matter that we should directly comment on".
My particular enquiry is very simple, and the facts of the matter can be confirmed by any sensible person using the internet. I strongly recommend people do check the facts here for themselves. The problem is this issue is not in the interest of the current research in the field.
There are accepted spatial growth controls that restrict all normal tissue growth in-vivo. Only cancerous tissue growth fails to respond to the external pressure based controls described here.
http://phys.org/news/2014-04-room-tissue-growth-cell-response.html
If you do a google images search for "hair cycle" you will see that this involves the regular regrowth of the hair follicle within the dermal tissue. So hair follicle size must be subject to the spatial growth controls referenced above. Yet nowhere in the published studies about hair follicle growth restriction, is there any consideration of this very basic growth restricting factor.
Many may think this is a trivial subject, but this overlooked connection answers many of the outstanding questions in the field, and has wider more important implications in some serious gender related diseases. My article on the subject is here.
So i have been asking scientists in the field and general physiology, if there is any evidence that hair follicles are a special case and not subject to the normal in-vivo growth controls? I just get a consistent no comment.
This overlooked growth restriction upon hair follicles, has serious negative implications for the current lines of research in the field. Because of this you would expect that scientists in the field would be more than willing to point out any evidence against this. But it seems they just want to ignore the issue.
It also seems that scientists in general physiology, don't want to comment on an issue that is critical of other scientists.
I would welcome your comments on this situation.
February 2017