On line forums are fascinating places - anonymity masks our knowledge of the backgrounds and achievements of many fellow posters. The hint of unworthy sarcasm in your reply is mildly irritating but not especially surprising - enquiring about a potential knighthood or Nobel Prize is a bit like asking Alan Shearer to prove that he was a successful footballer by inviting him to reveal his Word Cup Winners medal. Needless to say that I'm not in line for either a knighthood (although one of my close colleagues was awarded an OBE for our work) or a Nobel Prize. It would be insensitive to recommend anyone who has suffered under the Allam regime to look at a CV but I'd gladly give you more details if you care to PM me. Terry in The Likely Lads used to point to his mysterious "war" injury and say "
I don't like to talk about it" and I tend to be with him on that, however, avoiding all pretence of false modesty, I think it might even knock Assam's into a cocked hat.
You ask me to cite relevant peer reviewed articles or research findings to underline my low opinion of Innova's lateral flow test - easy enough - BMJ2020; 371doi:
https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.m4469 {Published 17 November 2020). The test kits purchased on our behalf had not, as far as I can see, previously been subject to an extensive trial with results published in a western peer reviewed journal. The results published in the BMJ in November have been widely circulated and I'm surprised you haven't been aware of them. In assessing them Prof. John Deeks (department of biostatistics at Birmingham University) wrote "in a population of 100,000 where 400 are infected the test would show 630 infections but with actually just 230 of these being (true) infections" So, the test would miss 170 of the 400 actual cases - a false negative rate of 42.5% - and it would provide a false positive result in a staggering 400 cases where the people affected and their immediate contacts would now have to (wrongly) self isolate. The effect of such high numbers of false positive tests on work attendance would have a dire effect on economic recovery. Prof Deeks echoes the published findings when he states "The test is thus entirely unsuitable for the claim that it will allow the safe test and release of people from lockdown and students from university."
Now concerning Innova, they are basically a distribution company and are marketing tests developed and manufactured in Fujian Province, China. For details of their company structure and rather worrying history of their founders I would cite the article amusingly titled "Innova their heads", page 20 Private Eye issue 1536, December 2020.
I fully appreciate the need to make speculative research investments or to pre-purchase tests. There is an obvious need for the urgent access to rapidly developed and developing technology. Spending on vaccine research is certainly an apparent success for this approach. However, these are calculated risks which depend upon the full knowledge of the companies and research institutions' experience and expertise in the field. The emerging concerns relating to Innova are that contracts seem to have been placed without the supporting evidence of relevant experience or expertise and also in the absence of reliable field trials - it appears that we may have been sold an expensive pup on this one.
