Posts by Bart Janssen
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the pool of money for science needs to get bigger
And most of the increase should come from the private sector by world standards. How do we make that happen?
Yeah that's what the government has been saying for about 20 years.
And yes our private sector RS&T investment is low. But our Government funded RS&T is still less than half that of the OECD average! So yeah sure it's fine for the government to say the private sector should step up. But it doesn't abrogate the governments failure to support science in New Zealand.
The governments of New Zealand have for the last 20 years or more chosen to stop spending money in RS&T. That is something we are paying for now with reduced productivity and lower GDP. Blaming the private sector is cheap politics.
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Russell said
And yes, the losers from the change are probably the universities.
And Lucy said
More specifically: those who are research-only staff at universities, whose livelihoods are dependent year-to-year on the grants they can get. Less money floating around, more people dropping out of research altogether - and there's a lot less money floating around right now, and maybe less, if more goes to the CRIs.
But it shouldn't be that way. Back in the day the DSIR actually paid Universities to do some of the research, because some of the university labs were better at it. The competitive funding model damaged that relationship. But the biggest damage was the idea that because we were plucky kiwis we could do better science with less money so the government stopped increasing the money in RS&T. As the pool got smaller and smaller the competition got more and more vicious. Universities fought to get access to traditionally DSIR money CRIs fought to get access to vote education. And everyone suffered.
The changes proposed will help but the most important change that needs to happen is that the pool of money for science needs to get bigger ... a lot bigger, 2 to 3 times bigger just to get us to the average of OECD and if we want to lead the world ...
My hope is that after seeing some sign that the changes to the CRIs and the system have improved the structure then the government will say "yes now you've got it right we'll give you more money". As John Kirwan says "you've got to have hope".
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There isn't a lot of money going around so most of what there is has to go towards stuff that looks likely to work.
Kyle I find this kind of statement scary. This is the kind of logic that led FRST to where it is today, they stopped assessing quality of science (mostly) and tried instead to pick projects that would succeed in increasing NZs wealth. Which is laudable. But it hasn't worked.
That's why I would shy away from trying to pick success. Instead I would focus on picking quality of science. All the while being aware that high quality science is also high risk and hence will often fail.
Marsden doesn't fund "blue-sky" research, that is a misconception. Marsden simply says the only criteria we will use to select is the quality of the science. Marsden make (almost) no judgement of where that science might lead. So applied science if it was very high quality could get Marsden funding as well.
It turns out that Marsden funded science is actually pretty good at generating ideas and discoveries that lead to patents and commercial ideas.
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but the commissioning of the CRI review and the speedy adoption of its conclusions is something for which the current government deserves praise.
Yup I agree. Labour basically abandoned RS&T to the bureaucrats in FRST. National are paying attention and Professor Gluckman does seem to be trying to do the right things.
I don't want to seem churlish about what Professor Gluckman was saying. I get that there isn't much spare money and also that the Government might be reluctant to put more money into CRIs when they don't believe CRIs are working how they would like them to work.
I do think the changes sound good. The key shift is from seeing CRIs as a business which should make money to seeing them as RS&T institutes who generate ideas and transfer them to the relevant sector. That's a good change.
It will be hard to achieve because we've had 10-20 years of establishing CRIs as businesses and much of the management has understandably adopted that mindset. So changing management (and science staff) thinking is the biggest and most difficult task.
No there really isn't that much of a problem between Universities and CRIs. We do collaborate and quite well. Sometimes contracts take a while to get signed but the science gets done.
So all of the above is good. BUT the elephant in the room is a simple lack of funds. We simply don't invest enough money into RS&T. That means staff aren't paid really well, that mean projects are starved for resources, that mean good ideas compete with each other often to the detriment of all the ideas, that means projects have to prove their value before they get funded (which if you think about it is daft), and a whole host of other issues that simply result from not enough funds.
Our best and brightest young minds choose a career that pays better (because they can). We can't attract the best from overseas because our salaries and more importantly our funding is crap.
And the only solution to that is more funding. Everyone who is in the business actually knows that. Yes restructuring will help but not enough. Until our government actually makes the decision to increase RS&T funding, by at least double, we are simply rearranging deck chairs, yes the view will be better for a while but it won't change the underlying issue. The idea that we can do more research with less money is nonsense and always has been.
Sorry another wall of text and even more sorry that I really come across as negative about this stuff. I really will try my best to make this work as well as it can, that's a promise.
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So there is no foreseeable new investment in RS&T. Certainly not this year anyway.
Instead we will get more productivity out of CRIs by changing their performance indicators.
It will be interesting to see if this is a successful approach.
Personally I think that unless the Government increases RS&T funding by about double then it is difficult to imagine any significant improvement. But that's just the jaded view of a bench scientist and I'd love to be proved wrong.
I think the key is going to be the external scientific advisory boards. If those boards have real power and are able to sidestep internal CRI politics then we could see real changes. During the last 20 years we have drifted further and further away from testing the quality of the science and that I think is one of the major problems we face. The advisory boards appear to be the only true test of CRI scientific quality in what is being proposed.
Certainly Professor Gluckman's comments suggested he was keen to see dramatic changes in the management of CRIs and also in the activities of the scientists themselves (although the latter was less clear). Personally I hope like hell it works.
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confidence in a scientist's predictions after he has admitted throwing away his raw data?
While I was working in Davis California we had to move the lab to the new biology building. Of course in the process we went through all the drawers and cupboards in the lab. Amongst all the things from our own lab there were many bits and pieces from previous occupants most of which we simply had to discard.
But one drawer held hundreds of microscope slides with thin sections of plant tissue on them. We weren't really sure where they were from until we noticed initials scratched on some of the slides. It turned out that we had a drawer full of Katherine Esau's original samples. For us those were pretty special samples and gave us a warm fuzzy feeling of being connected to a piece of the history of plant biology.
There wasn't much we could do with them so we kept a few and threw the rest away :(. That sadly is what happens to original data sometimes.
The fact that those samples had been abandoned by her does not make Katherine Esau's insights into plant development and anatomy any less valuable. It simply is the practical side of doing science.
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Look! my ideology trumps your data!
Um no. You used more data (identification of a flaw in the detection device) to determine the original interpretation of the data was incorrect. The original data however was still valid data.
A better analogy would have been
"Emma says the sky is blue but I have signed affidavits from 100 respected accountants saying the sky is red - therefore Emma has been corrupted by corporate overlords to try and deceive me that the sky is blue" -
I have come across an awful lot of people who really struggle to separate scientific facts/theories from personal criticism of the choices they make
Myself included. It is a very very hard thing to do. Also it is very hard to realise what you were sure was right, isn't.
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As laypeople, who do you believe, and why would you believe them?
Ask a scientist. Really you are no more than 2-3 degrees of separation from a genuine expert, who is a real friend of someone you really trust. Most scientists will absolutely answer genuine questions.
It's not something to blame on anyone.
Yes and No Ben.
You make good points. If you take my advice on new surgical methods well lets just say I have this bridge I'd like to sell you.
And yes when I step even slightly outside my speciality I rely on finding papers from people I know/trust and if I'm further outside my field I find reviews.
But that isn't the same as reading a web page because my sources are from scientific journals where the papers and the reviews are peer-reviewed. Which simply means checked by experts for accuracy.
If I'm so far outside my field of expertise that I can't understand the language any more eg organic chemistry then I'm forced to find a real person who I can talk to who will explain it to me. That person will be a scientist, it won't be the manager of the institute or the CFO or the COO because none of those people are actually experts in the science. They might be good at their jobs but still not qualified to make decisions or comment about the actual science.
The analogy is you don't ask the electrician's accountant how best to set up your garden lights, you do however hope the electricians accountant is making sure the electrician's suppliers are getting paid.
BUT
Some of this loss of trust is not accidental. There are people who benefit if scientists are not trusted, they benefit if policy is not based on the best science, they benefit if research is directed into areas that are not the best science. Some of those people are actively undermining science credibility.
So yes there is some blame to get chucked around.
And there are simply some people who can't bear the thought that someone else knows more than they do about something and they react by attacking the person. It would be like me saying Emma is just a geek because she knows more about Star Trek than I do and you can't trust geeks can you?
Note no offense to Emma intended in the above statement, I am of course a certifiable geek myself, I just know Emma Star Trek knowledge exceeds my own.
Apologies another wall of text :(.
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the loss of trust in science
grrrr
I used to believe it was our fault (I'm a scientist). People told me it was our lack of skill in communicating/arrogance/whatever.
I now don't believe that anymore at all. There is a strong vested interest from those who would like to control the money in making sure that scientists are not allowed to make, or contribute to, decisions. Thus funding must be allocated by MBAs because scientists can't be trusted to do valuable science - they will simply "play at the bench". That's an actual phrase from an actual bureaucrat.
There is an even stronger vested interest from policy makers in making sure that scientists and science itself has no role in policy - because if science had a role you'd kind to need to understand it to have a job in policy making - instead of of just wearing a nice suit. Bitter moi?
Scientists can't even be trusted to run scientific research.
So many people have been actively undermining the value of science and the trustworthiness of scientists that yes the public now think science isn't anything important.
If we scientists have failed at anything it is that we've failed to adopt the culture of misinformation that is so often used against science and you know that's not something I'm not interested in changing. Some solutions are just not worthwhile.
It isn't that we are smarter than anyone else (well maybe smarter than a couple of folks) it's mostly that we've spent 5, 10 , 20 years learning everything we can about a particular field. It is simply that knowledge that lets us see some things that others don't see. The same way Emma knows more about Star Trek than most folks.
That's no different than expecting your electrician to know things you don't. Would you let your accountant rewire your house? Of course you don't want your house rewired even by an electrician without a safety inspection - by an expert electrician not by an accountant.
By all means have oversight of science. By all means ask questions of scientists and question the science if your are interested. But if the experts come back and say yes this is real then listen to them and yes trust them.