Scientific Integrity and COVID-19

"I will make no apologies for this: in my opinion, both NEIDL (Boston University) and Philips Lighting have done the UVGI research and engineering communities a grave disservice in releasing the scant details of NEIDL's research that only confuses the issue."

From the earliest days of The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge with such exalted members as Robert Hooke and Isaac Newton, scientific research has been a collaborative effort. This is embodied in the society's rather cheeky 1663 motto, Nullius in verba, which literally translates as "no words," but colloquially says, "Take nobody's word for it."

Prior to the current pandemic, it was generally understood that a scientific discovery would invariably be subject to scholarly peer review before being accepted. The less-than-cordial disagreements between Robert Hooke and Isaac Newton aside (such as who discovered the laws of gravity), scientific discoveries above all else had to be reproducible by others skilled in the field of inquiry.

One of the difficulties of peer review is that it takes time, with the publication of important results delayed by months to years. Another aggravating factor is that the sheer volume of scientific discoveries has completely overwhelmed the academic journals that publish the results as peer-reviewed papers. This has given rise to such valuable websites as Cornell University's arXiv.org, an open-access archive of nearly two million academic articles that have not been peer-reviewed, and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory's bioRxiv preprint service for biology and medRxiv.org for the health sciences.

medRxiv offers a cogent disclaimer for these papers: Caution: Preprints are preliminary reports of work that have not been certified by peer review. They should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information. Fair enough, but bioRxiv is more specific: bioRxiv is receiving many new papers on coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. A reminder: these are preliminary reports that have not been peer-reviewed. They should not be regarded as conclusive, guide clinical practice/health-related behavior, or be reported in news media as established information.

Given the pace of scientific research into the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus strain that is responsible for the current pandemic, preprints are a necessary evil for other researchers in the field. This has been made even more essential due to the cancellation of conferences where researchers might otherwise compare notes on their activities and foster collaboration.

So far, so good. We now come, however, to a situation where the principles of scientific integrity are being stretched beyond reason, if not outright violated, for commercial gain.

The topic is ultraviolet germicidal irradiation (UVGI), or the use of ultraviolet radiation to inactivate viruses. UVGI has been a mainstay of hospital disinfection techniques since the 1930s, when low-pressure mercury-vapour lamps where first used to irradiate airborne pathogens such as tuberculosis bacteria. Companies such as Philips Lighting have been manufacturing UVGI lamps - basically fluorescent lamps without phosphor coatings and with fused quartz tubes - for many decades.

The public's focus today, of course, is exclusively on the SARS-CoV-2 virus and how to eliminate it ... and where the public's interest leads, companies great and small follow, seeking market opportunities. Unfortunately, scientific integrity can become a victim in the process.

With this, allow me to quote from the footnotes of Philips Lighting's web page titled "Disinfection for Air, Surfaces, and Water":

UV-C radiation is a known disinfectant for air, water and surfaces that can help mitigate the risk of acquiring an infection and has been used extensively for more than 40 years. All bacteria and viruses tested to date (many hundreds over the years, including various coronaviruses) respond to UV-C disinfection. In laboratory testing, our UV-C light sources inactivated 99% of SARS-CoV-2 virus on a surface with an exposure time of 6 seconds. A clear indication that UV-C light can play a valuable part in your protection strategy.

These are interesting claims in that there are as yet no peer-reviewed reports of the susceptibility of the SARS-CoV-2 virus to ultraviolet irradiation. There are published reports on the susceptibility of the SARS-CoV-1 virus that causes the 2002-2003 epidemic, and also on the susceptibility of other human coronaviruses that were aerosolized and exposed to 222 nm (far-UV) radiation. However, while these studies are indicative of the susceptibility of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the results of formal studies concerning the virus have yet to be made public.

... which leads to one of the footnotes of the above web page:

Data made available to us by the National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL) at Boston University, which has been collected from a laboratory experiment conducted by Dr. Anthony Griffiths (Associate Professor of Microbiology at Boston University School of Medicine) and his team at the premises of the NEIDL (such data will be the subject of a forthcoming scientific publication by Boston University), shows that Signify’s UV-C light sources irradiating the surface of a material inoculated with SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes the COVID-19 disease) at a UV-C dose of 5mJ/cm2 (exposure time 6 seconds) resulted in a 99% reduction of the SARS-CoV-2 virus present on that surface. This study determined that a UV-C dose of 22mJ/cm2 results in a reduction of 99.9999% of SARS-CoV-2 virus on that surface (exposure time 25 seconds). Research variables are available upon request.

There are several disturbing issues with this announcement (which has been preceded by rather breathless press releases and television interviews from Philips Lighting with claims that it has developed new technology to combat the SARS-CoV-2 using ultraviolet radiation, but without providing any details).

First, I am aghast that the National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL) at Boston University has apparently consented to allowing Philips Lighting use of their ongoing research for commercial purposes. (The aforementioned press releases strongly suggested that Philips Lighting's contribution to the research was a stock germicidal ultraviolet lamp, likely no different from those manufactured by their competitors Osram, Ushio, and others.)

Second, I am astounded that NEIDL has apparently consented to allowing Philips Lighting to provide Boston University's research variables "upon request." In return, Philips Lighting receives valuable marketing information regarding potential customers. What NEIDL receives in return is a mystery.

Third, the rudimentary information provided above is, in the immortal words of the quantum physicist Wolfgang Pauli, "not even wrong." It should be an acute embarrassment to NEIDL to have their research misrepresented (as it also was in prior Philips Lighting press releases).

Here is the problem: "... at a UV-C dose of 5mJ/cm2 (exposure time 6 seconds) resulted in a 99% reduction..." In other words, the virus was exposed to 0.82 mW/cm2 of 254 nm UV-C radiation for six seconds. This could be very useful information for UVGI hardware manufacturers designing products ... if they knew for certain whether the virus was aerosolized, cultured in a Petri dish, or suspended in solution.

But now we have this: "... a UV-C dose of 22mJ/cm2 results in a reduction of 99.9999% ..." The problem here is that if 5 mJ/cm2 results in a 99% reduction, you would expect 10 mj/cm2 for 99.9%, 20 mJ/cm2 for 99.99%, 40 mJ/cm2 for 99.999%, and 80 mJ/cm2 for the clinically disinfected 99.9999% ("six logs") reduction, regardless of the exposure time. (This is the classic single-stage exponential decay model for UVGI applications.)

It gets worse, however. As noted for example in Kowalski, W. 2009. Ultraviolet Germicidal Irradiation Handbook. Heidelberg, Germany: Springer ...

It is commonly observed in most methods of disinfection that a tiny fraction of the microbial population exhibits a higher level of resistance, and the same is true in UV disinfection (Chick et al. 1963). When the exposure dose is sufficient to cause several logs of reduction (i.e. 99% disinfection or higher) in the microbial population, the surviving population is often an order of magnitude more resistant to UV. That is, the UV rate constant for the resistant population may be ten times lower than for the first stage. This effect will, of course, only be apparent if the disinfection rate is very high, sometime as much as six logs of disinfection. In effect, most microbial populations behave as if two separate populations were present – one relatively susceptible and one relatively resistant.

Is this true for the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus? The likely answer is yes, but the information provided in Philips Lighting's footname quoted above implies the opposite -- an improbable decrease in resistance of four times between 99% and 99.9999% reduction -- 22 mJ/cm2 versus 80 mJ/cm2.

This issue extends beyond scientific integrity, however, as NEIDL's unpublished results are being used to justify the performance of Philips Lighting products, such as this screenshot from a Signify Philippines video recently posted to LinkedIn with the caption, “In laboratory testing, Signify’s UV-C light sources inactivated 99% of SARS-CoV-2 virus on a surface with an exposure time of 6 seconds. Here's info-video of our UV-C Desk Lamp.”

This is at best an unconscionable use of laboratory research results to market a product with questionable performance. To imply that it is based on unpublished research is simply inexcusable.

I will make no apologies for this: in my opinion, both NEIDL and Philips Lighting have done the UVGI research and engineering communities a grave disservice in releasing the scant details of NEIDL's research that only confuses the issue. If nothing else, it will ensure that NEIDL's published results will be subject to withering peer review to ensure that they are reasonable and correct. In the meantime, the above information released by Philips Lighting only confuses the issue.

Nullius in verba.