Silence is golden, NUS? I am disappointed.

Sometimes I wonder if the National University of Singapore (NUS) values good press above doing the right thing. I understand that managing the corporate profile is important, and that for a school such as the NUS that relentlessly chases the rankings, avoiding bad press is important. But there are other ways of managing your reputation than just avoiding difficult issues.

Here the imposed silence on student blogger Alvin Tan's punishment says a lot about NUS character and maturity. I am not interested in the sordid details about what the blogger did, but the consequences of what he did especially while he was a scholarship holder. Whatever NUS's disciplinary decision was, there are important lessons for everyone. Transparency in dealing with such a difficult issue will show to the world the heart and soul of the university. We need to know what value systems, the NUS stands for. If the disciplinary action was fair and honest, why is there a reluctance to make it known? There are lessons for everyone.  As a world class university aspirant, the NUS should not fear engaging in public discussions and debate, even about its own corporate decisions.

But I am disappointed. Because it seems clear that the NUS has opted to hide behind zipped lips and walls of silence rather than bravely engaging the public. This has been how the NUS has chosen to manage previous incidents - from research malpractices to spectacular lab accidents. To date, the public remains in the dark about what mistakes were made and what actions taken. Valuable opportunities to learn from these incidences have been lost. This over-reliance on the strategy of retreating behind walls of silence is very damning, and I believe in the longer term, will stunt the intellectual growth of the university. Perhaps some timely advice from the managing editor of the SPH who sits on the NUS Board of Trustees is appropriate here.

It's time the NUS grew up.

"You ignore me, how, how, how?"

Sounds like the plaintive cry of a woman scorned. And we all know enough to beware that woman scorned.

Yet, often we Singaporeans are made to feel like the woman scorned. By the gahmen (and their extensions) we love. Gigamole feels that way sometimes. Important issues brought up often meet that deadly wall of silence. The icy stare. The cold shoulder.

Issues that continue to bounce off the wall of silence::

a] Illegal street racing. All we hear are the Ferrari engines that continue to roar down our city streets in the dead of night.

b] Lab explosions in the NUS. A lab accident after another, yet the Ministry of Manpower, for all their new empowerment through the WSH Act, and the NUS, continue to maintain their walls of silence.
 
c] Research misconduct. The Alirio Melendez story came and went. Yet for all Singapore's vaunted push for research integrity, the Melendez related dirt seems to have been conveniently swept under the carpet.

d] Unregulated wacko medical devices. The HSA sweeps some more dust under the carpet as they maintain their wall of silence of some pretty disturbing information about medical devices let loose in Singapore.

e] Disbarred doctors who can practice in Singapore. The latest question mark that needs to be unmarked by the Singapore Medical Council. Don't hold your breath waiting for an ans They'll intubate you!

You ignore me, how, how, how?

The amazing exploding NUS solar cell laboratory

from Channel NewsAsia

Barely a day after the National Day parade fireworks, the NUS put up its own pyrotechnics display when a laboratory in Engineering Block E3A blew up. The lab was apparently involved in the production of solar cells. Will we ever know the reason for this massive explosion which thankfully did not result in any serious injury or death? I don't think so, given our local tendency to hide everything. Pity, because there are lessons in it for all.

The link between the manufacture of solar cells and the explosion may not be readily apparent to the uninitiated, but actually solar cell manufacturing is extremely dangerous because it deals with highly explosive materials. Those within the industry will know that the easiest and cheapest way of bonding layers of silica to make the solar cells is through the use of a gas called silane. Silane is actually a combination of silica and hydrogen, and is a very capriciously flammable gas. In chemical terms, the gas is termed pyrophoric, which means it can readily burst into flames even without any sparks to trigger it off. This explosiveness is quite unpredictable and can occur after a delay in exposure.

Over the last few decades, many spectacular silane related explosions  (Bangalore, Taiwan, Osaka to mention a few)  have been reported which have killed a total of at least 20 people. That there was no loss of life at the NUS explosion was more a result of good fortune than good lab practice.

Truth is, silane is a very dangerous gas, whose capriciousness needs to be managed extremely carefully. One of the most dangerous places to use silane, in fact, is in small enclosed spaces - like university labs, or fume cupboards. I need to point out that I have no inside info about whether silane was involved in the NUS accident, but everything I have read points to it being the reason behind the explosion. If so, one wonders how approval was obtained to store and use silane in a relatively common area university laboratory where students come and go.

I really hope the results of lab accident investigations can be made public, the way flight accidents are, so that we all can learn from any mistakes made. But in Singapore, that may be too much to ask.

Recommended reading:
ANSI standards on how to store and handle silane - CGA G-13

The exploding laboratory....who is responsible?

In 2008, an accident in a University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) chemistry lab claimed the life of a young research assistant Sheri Sangji. An inflammable chemical she was working with had burst into flames. Not even wearing a protective lab coat, her sweater caught fire. Her lab colleagues didn't even know how to put out the flames, and she didn't even know well enough to get under the safety shower in the lab.

In the aftermath, UCLA and the Principle Investigator of the lab were charged as there was evidence of negligence with respect to lab safety procedures and training. Just a week ago, the university reached a settlement and had charges dropped after agreeing to put in place extensive corrective measures for lab safety, and also setting up a half a million US$ scholarship in Ms Sangji's name. Charges against the investigator Prof Patrick Harran, however, remain. At least for the moment.

Meanwhile, the outcome of the investigations into the NUS lab accident last year remains unclear. I hope there is no intent to sweep the proceeding under the carpet, because there is so much for us to learn from the accident. The WSH Act has yet to be clearly applied to lab safety in Singapore, and it is instructive for all involved in the labs to see how lines of responsibility are drawn should accidents occur. This is not a matter to be played out behind the scenes but a lesson to be placed in the public domain. Safety in our research labs is an important message to drive home.

The Workplace Safety and Health Act - Safety in the lab

One of the great things the Ministry of Manpower has been doing over the last decade has been the increasing legislative muscle to ensure workplace safety. The Workplace Safety and Health Act that came into force in 2006 was a major milestone in this direction. Although obvious directed at industrial workplaces, there has been an increasing impact of the Act felt in our research laboratories. Without doubt, our labs are far safer than the labs of old where pretty much anything was possible. Now all labs are covered by safety SOPs, and both students and staff are definitely more aware and safety conscious in all that they do.

However we are still pretty much on the learning curve and there is still some way to go before the safety culture becomes internalized, and people do something because it is actually safer, and not because it was mandated by a line in the SOP.  

The NUS Office of Safety, Health and Environment has actually done a good job in translating and applying the WSH Act to the research labs. In this translation the responsible person in the lab for safety is the investigator in charge of the lab. For more general aspects of lab safety, the employer or the laboratory/institution may be responsible. Even so, things still do go wrong, and when they do sometimes it is difficult to be clear about who the responsible person is.

Many of us have been watching for the outcome of investigations surrounding a lab accident which occurred almost a year ago at the Centre for Life Sciences in the NUS. The accident was apparently a chemical explosion occurring in a lift which resulted in injuries to two men. Technically the WHS and the OSHE interpretation would identify the Principle Investigator as ultimately being responsible for any lapses in safety procedure that resulted in the explosion. But I think there is some shared responsibility with the Centre management.

Investigations have been going on for almost a year without any public statement about the progress of the investigations. According to the WSH Act, penalties can be quite serious. If guilt is found, this may be the first case where a researcher is charged for a lab safety offence.

So we are watching very intently as to how this will play out. The situation may be complicated by the fact that both the investigator and the Centre management involve high profile foreign talents.