Our motivation for cooperative theoretical TSE research Dr. Ingrid Schütt-Abraham and Roland Heynkes 27.12.2007, CC BY-SA-4.0 DE

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The problems - the motivation

• Medical and experimental TSE-Research have published at least ten times more than a single person could manage to read, analyse and comprehend during his entire working life.
• So many new scientific publications are daily pouring out from TSE-research that even entire institutes are overwhelmed by this flood of information.
• Knowledge will only sprout from information by their connection and critical evaluation. Without a systematical evaluation of the available information a great deal of the potential knowledge will remain undetected.
• The existing TSE-relevant knowledge is disseminated in many persons. By traditional means nobody would be able to convert this disseminated knowledge into a commonly acknowledged state of TSE-research.
• Without precise and comprehensive knowledge of the state of TSE-research the most innovative and far-sighted experiments will only be thought of and drafted by chance.
• Without a clear distinction between knowledge accepted by virtually all experts and thus maximally substantiated and unproven hypotheses clearly marked as such trustworthy and reliable scientifical consulting of politics will not be possible.
• The experts capable of building this knowledge from their TSE-relevant competence are working geographically apart from each other and are much too busy to meet for longer times.

Prerequisites for a solution as derived from the task

• The collecting, digesting, connecting and analysing of published information has in the long run to be accepted as important productive and autonomous research also by biology and the German Research Community (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft). Such literature work requires cooperative and interdisciplinary organisation and financial support.
• The knowledge gained and created by literature work has to be sorted, checked and compared in the sense of a TSE-risk assessment with the current praxis of medicine, animal husbandry, recycling of material and processing processes. Likewise all factors have to be investigated which promote or prevent TSE infections.
• The theoretical TSE-research requests participation of the most experienced experts of different disciplines. As these experts cannot be assembled for a longer period at one location the work needs to be decentrally organized.
• As nearly all experts capable and competent for theoretical TSE-research have to carry out important other tasks they can donate only part of their time for this purpose. Accordingly theoretical TSE-research has to be generally organised as part-time work and undertaken by as many participants as possible.

Suggested solution

• The ideal solution to cover the urgent and increasingly pressing need for theoretical TSE-research consists in founding a virtual institute for theoretical TSE-research. Membership to this institute located all over the country should be open to all experts which are capable and willing to participate.
• Tasks of this institute would comprise the literature work, TSE-epidemiology, developing of new research projects, drafting of experiments which are important for creating models as well as establishing a generally understood and acknowledged state of research pointing out the existing gaps of knowledge.

The Hypertext Project theoretical TSE-research as step towards a solution

• Until now the goal of implementing an institute for theoretical TSE-research could not be achieved due to ignorance and disinterest and accordingly lack of financial support. However, at some time in the future such a virtual institute will have to exist unless one is content with a low efficiency of the financial investment into the experimental TSE-research and the resulting inadequacy of political consulting in this area.
• Therefore the Hypertext Project Theoretical TSE-Research coordinates and promotes on a voluntary basis the theoretical TSE-research of those who are dedicated to this work even without additional financial incentive. In the wake of the problems emerging in practice the techniques required for cooperation in a network of independent part-time members with sometimes vastly incongruous views are developed.
• With the so far extremely low number of participants the project works very well. However, we shall be delighted if others would join.