Stability is crucial for Australian scientific success
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Funding uncertainty makes it much harder for Australia to attract and retain research talent. One story about a disappearing job very nearly put me off ever coming to this beautiful country, writes Nobel laureate Brian Schmidt.
The potential carnage of turning off Australia's science research infrastructure has been postponed for at least another year.
Amid a great clamour from the research and business communities, Education Minister Christopher Pyne agreed to not make funding for the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) program contingent on savings from his proposed higher education reforms.
It's a win, but it's not the first time we've had to fight to continue advancing knowledge, and it almost certainly won't be the last. Do we really want the nation's brightest scientists wasting their time and energy on repeatedly convincing governments it's worthwhile to continue to invest in projects and work that's reaped significant economic rewards for Australia and made huge improvements to the lives and lifestyles of people the world over?
There is a better way.
To reap the benefits of science, society needs patience. While political change can rise and fall in a day, the circle of research and development runs on a multi-decadal timescale between when a discovery is made and when society directly benefits. It is for this reason that the single most important part of science and research policy is stability.
And yet, in my 20 years in Australia, I and other researchers in businesses, universities, and government agencies have faced a continually changing landscape of short-term programs, strategies, and political emphases. Uncertainty caused by this haphazard approach leads to huge inefficiency by stranding investments, making it impossible to strategically plan, and ultimately making Australia a less than preferred option for researchers from here and around the world. It's why clever Australians like evolutionary biologist Danielle Edwards are leaving their home country to work elsewhere.
Because science is so international, and so connected, stories like Danielle's spread fast and wide. They make it much harder to attract talent from the rest of the world, and retain the talent we have. A similar story very nearly put me off ever coming to this beautiful country: one of my great astronomy professors at Harvard accepted a position in Australia in 1975, but the position disappeared just before he was to arrive, when the Whitlam government fell. Nineteen years later, his experience still coloured my view, and became one of my principal concerns about emigrating to Australia. Fortunately I had an Australian wife who could reassure me - but for many people, the story of that bad experience would have been enough not to come.
Stability is one cornerstone of good policy. Supplying sufficient resources to areas to ensure they are internationally competitive is another. By resources I mean funds to enable researchers to work, state-of-the-art equipment, and time.
Australia isn't big enough to do everything, so we have to be strategic about what we fund. Good policy means funding fewer things, but funding them thoughtfully and doing them really well. This is a point that has been made loudly and repeatedly by Australia's Chief Scientist, who has just announced his draft research priorities for Australia.
To achieve both stability and critical mass, most researchers benefit from being in strong institutions. In Australia, research is concentrated in the universities, CSIRO, and other government agencies. Keeping these organisations strong is crucial.
CSIRO has long been Australia's secret weapon within the research sector. It has had the structure and expertise to do R&D involving many disciplines and at a scale that simply cannot be achieved by a university.
But somewhere over time, CSIRO's mission has become blurry. Its funding and prestige has decreased, its relationship with industry has been compromised by it being judged on how many royalties it collects rather than how much it has empowered Australian industry, and it finds itself in competition with universities as often as it collaborates with those same institutions.
Despite all this, CSIRO remains a great national treasure, and it is vital that the Government, the research community, and CSIRO itself agree on its mission. With national strategic goals and revitalised relationships with universities and industry, CSIRO can and should be built up to ensure it remains a powerhouse of advanced research and development.
While much science starts out being done for the sake of increasing our knowledge, rather than for a specific economic outcome, it is the translation of this knowledge to economic benefit that justifies the more than $9 billion the Australian Government spent last year in R&D. A recent analysis by University of New South Wales economists found there are significant productivity spillovers from government investment in the research agencies and higher education research, but no measurable benefit from expenditure in things like R&D tax concessions for business. It seems the government is getting decent bang for its buck when it spends money in universities and CSIRO, but current business R&D programs are not particularly effective.
This finding does not mean we should abandon government programs to support R&D within business. In fact, it means our current programs are poorly directed. Australia is among the OECD's worst performers when it comes to extracting direct business benefit from our university research. A grown-up R&D policy needs to bring together the cultures of businesses, universities and research agencies. Solving this problem is the Holy Grail for Australia's R&D sector, and given its potential effect on the long-term productivity growth of our nation, it is a place where the Government should focus policy development resources.
I'm no policy wonk, but I can see some simple and powerfully effective ways to ensure our scientists spend more time on knowledge generation and less time on fighting for the resources they need to get their work done. Improving science policy in Australia is not rocket science, but getting it right will empower rocket scientists (and everyone else within the sector) to shape a productive and prosperous future for Australia.
Professor Brian Schmidt AC FAA is Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow and astrophysicist at the Australian National University's Mount Stromlo Observatory. In 2011, he won a Nobel Prize for his work showing that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. He is a member of the Commonwealth Science Council and the Council of the Australian Academy of Science.
Topics: research, research-organisations, medical-research, university-and-further-education, budget
Comments (43)
Comments for this story are closed, but you can still have your say.
Ben Nallay:
20 Mar 2015 3:04:32pm
Brian, hear this, people are dying. Nothing much more stability fostering than death, you might hopefully discover as soon as possible. I'll worry about the stability of your decades of research when I've finished worrying about staying alive.
I am sorry for putting the value of human beings ahead of the value of your precious scientific research that takes decades to prove worth nothing. I must have read the wrong book on ethics when I was at school.
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Dan:
20 Mar 2015 3:23:13pm
Ben, hear this, scientific research has lengthened the average lifespan of humans from 30 years to 80 years, while greatly improving the quality of life (by wiping out polio, mumps, TB etc).
I am not sure who is threatening your life so dramatically but I'm sure that if it is medically related, then science is your friend not your enemy.
Professor Schmidt - you are a national treasure, along with Prof Chubb and CSIRO. Keep up the good fight.
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Ben Nallay:
20 Mar 2015 4:00:17pm
You watch too much tv Dan. You write the same fiction that they always like to put in the commercials and documentaries. It's feel-good 1st world rubbish.
People are dying. Dying of poverty. Ban scientists from public money would be a possible improvement. If you can't justify your research, then get a REAL job or go on the dole and save the taxpayer all useless the fancy toys that mostly amount to nothing.
TB is extant. Polio is extant. Mumps? I've had both cheeks. I was told in my second lecture in Web Science 101 how 90% of what is on the web is crap, and that was in 1998. There were many went before you Dan. You're standing on the droppings of giants.
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John Coochey:
20 Mar 2015 5:09:26pm
Ben you are very close to the mark I note the professor in quesion i is an astro physicist I fail to see any benefit other than satisfying idle curiousity from this activity, Likewise CSIRO is a far from efficient organisation which needs much more focuus and discipline. I would like to know what the professor'
s solution is other than more public money for his own chosen profession, but then everyone would like that!
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Taylor:
20 Mar 2015 5:33:20pm
Hi John,
Your comment shows your lack of understanding about how science works. Prof Schmidt mentions it briefly in the article but basically it takes general research to provide the basic understanding that then (often decades later) translates into technology that helps improve quality of life.
As for astrophysics not being useful, there's a myriad of inventions that stem from it but there's one that you're probably using to access this article. Ever wonder how it was that we got the internet and so soon afterwards came Wi-Fi?
Australian Astrophysicists, that's how. Without their work we probably would still need a physical hook up to access the web!
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UnKnown:
20 Mar 2015 6:14:50pm
So he is looking for the next big rock to come through and do to us what was done to the dinosaurs to0 save lives.
Stop giving money to religions instead of science.
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Ann:
20 Mar 2015 5:41:25pm
Wow, the internet is 1998 is identical to the internet today?
I don't know how I missed that?!
Also, 90% of what's in books is crap too. The medium is unimportant, the same skills of recognising accurate reporting and verified facts apply.
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Ben Nallay:
20 Mar 2015 6:22:22pm
Ann, I am not your private tutor. It was 90% in 1998 according to the professor, BEFORE Twitter. Now it's 99%, free FACT on the house compliments of me, no charge.
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Mr Zeitgeist:
20 Mar 2015 3:26:26pm
Ben Guess what?
Scientific Research is what gave us penicillin, the Salk vaccine, cured smallpox and is close to a malaria vaccine - These Save Lives!
Scientific Research is proved that lead in paint and petrol caused brain damage in young children, asbestos caused cancer and CFCs made holes in the ozone layer. Much odf this research was repressed as long as possible as people's lives were not as important as the corporations profiting from lead, asbestos and CFCs.
The neo-liberal book-burners want two things:
1. Suppress scientific research that does not enhance the dollar value of their investments.
2. Disenfranchise public education by funding only private corporations.
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John Coochey:
20 Mar 2015 5:41:53pm
Zeitgeist, you are equating medical reseach with a defined objective with scientific research which may have obscure or non existent objectives they are not synomymous.
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Pete:
20 Mar 2015 6:45:52pm
Oh my goodness! Really John? I assume you are just trolling but just in case.
I can assure you that every piece of published science has a well defined objective. I am actually not quite sure what you are trying to say. Is it that the scientific method applied in medical research is different to that applied in chemistry, physics, ecology? I'll think you'll find the scientific method is the same across disciplines.
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John Coochey:
20 Mar 2015 7:07:50pm
Pete get real, in 1998 the National Health and Medical Research Council had to withdraw a report for the first time in its history, the report was on abortion and was riddled with fauls which no one else except myself seemed to be able to detect even the Catholic Church, and I am a lifelong atheist, that research was advocacay driven from start to finish and was ideologically driven which is why it was flawed. Get real
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The woman next door:
20 Mar 2015 3:53:26pm
Ben, have you ever heard of medical 'science'? The reason why people are living so long these days, is probably largely due to advances in medical research. Your statement will only make sense if you have never popped a pill in your life, as there are probably times when doing so may well have saved or elongated your life.
And I hope you aren't a farmer, because advances in the various fields of agriculture are due to research and scientific discovery.
I could go on and on, but if you aren't intelligent enough to appreciate all the advances that science and scientific research have given to society, then I see little hope of convincing you.
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Lisa Meredith:
20 Mar 2015 3:57:32pm
Dear Ben,
Without science there would be no computers, no internet.
Your voice would not be heard the way it is today.
The ethics of science is thus: "Don't believe me, find out for yourself".
It is what we as a species choose to do with the knowledge we attain through science that I suspect you might be actually questioning.
I believe that if we as a society choose to use the tools and technology that science gives us, then it is incumbent upon us to understand science, lest we contradict ourselves when we appeal to ideology.
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Keith Lethbridge Snr:
20 Mar 2015 4:31:40pm
G'day Lisa.
Many things were invented because of a need. Necessity is said to be the mother of invention. Although we might refer to the inventor as a scientist, he or she may have been an ordinary person, not toiling away in a laboratory for years, and with absolutely no expectation of public funding.
Regards,
Cobber
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Ann:
20 Mar 2015 5:44:10pm
Well, most of our great ideas have come from public funding, or private funding that was more like artistic patronage than investing.
The internet? Public funding.
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Kevin:
20 Mar 2015 5:48:46pm
I do find it funny that we are having a argument about the merits of public funding of science via the internet....developed by scientist...and you most likely are using wifi...developed by the CSIRO...actually a bit scary really.
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MamabaDave:
20 Mar 2015 6:07:32pm
Yes Keith, but every inventor has benefited from the body of knowledge known as Science with a big 'S' and has used the thinking tools known as science with a little 's'. Science is no more than enhanced commonsense and to discount science is to discount everyday commonsense.
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Ann:
20 Mar 2015 5:42:21pm
Ben, I hope whatever work you do contributes to helping these poor people stay alive! Otherwise maybe we should cut your wage too.
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Ben Nallay:
20 Mar 2015 6:15:12pm
Thank you. Have a good frugal weekend and see you Monday.
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DeepFritz:
20 Mar 2015 3:06:17pm
It's rather amusing to see that the qualified scientists that are in parliament do not site within the LNP ranks...
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James:
20 Mar 2015 3:21:09pm
Well said Professor,
It is absolutely vital that we put aside the petty politics in relation to our ongoing research and development. With the mining sector slowing down and manufacturing industry a shadow of it's former self we need to be looking to the future.
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jack44:
20 Mar 2015 3:27:00pm
I have some sympathy to your position Brian, but I ask you to consider this.
There are many important sectors of Australian society. Arts people argue they save our culture. Medicos argue they save our lives.
Me - I am in manufacturing what is usually called "elaborately transformed" goods. I happen to think thats equally important for Australia, and, by the by, for me.
When I left university, 37% of the population was involved with manufacturing. That level is now below 10%.
So, in the full knowledge that no political party was ever going to save me, I took myself overseas in 1998, and did exactly the same job in another country. Now I send the same products into Australia from a foreign country.
Either way Brian, my work is useful and paid for - it's just that the Australian government doesn't pay me - another government does. And the Australian population still benefits from my work.
Personally I applaud you because you are clearly a person of substance. But I would remind you that the CSIRO has had a chequered career, including the introduction of the cane toad, which wasn't exactly bright. And their insistence on condemning GM products, including golden rice, bears some scrutiny.
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drjones:
20 Mar 2015 4:06:54pm
Scientific discovery is the ultimate wellspring of long term wealth and prosperity. It is the engine by which we lift our economies, and with it our societies and our people into better lives. That is the history of humanity.
It is especially galling to see science under attack right now in Australia when we are seeing mining shed jobs (50,000 last year and counting), and manufacturing disappearing. Our political and business 'leaders' seem to think Australia can survive on a giant real estate-superannuation-financial services bubble. It can't!
We need desperately to be using our true competitive advantage- our smart, well educated, global population- to its maximum. Supporting science, and importantly the early commercialisation of that science, is the key.
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0kensai0:
20 Mar 2015 4:14:22pm
Manufacturing is extremely important. Guess what, the only way for Australia to compete in manufacturing is for major innovation in engineering and science so we can produce high technology goods as opposed to competing for low tech industries where the cost of labour is prohibitive against countries like China. Countries like Germany have realised this many years ago and their manufacturing industry is still sustainable...
Research is a part of the solution to the manufacturing woe in this country...and research isn't done just by CSIRO, it's done by universities and industry. All of which will cease to exist if children grow up thinking scientific research is not a viable career...
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fredn:
20 Mar 2015 4:14:55pm
I presume you know, or you wouldn't have said it, but did the CSIRO introduce the cane toad? Wikipedia, not the last word I know, says it was the Bureau of Sugar Experiment Stations. Were they associated with CSIRO? And if you want to have a dig at CSIRO, do you need to go back 80 years to 1935? And "And their insistence on condemning GM products", is this true?
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Stephen:
20 Mar 2015 5:01:46pm
jack44 -
I don't know if you're being mischievous or are just ill-informed, but:
1. The CSIRO had nothing to do with the introduction of cane toads to Australia; and
2. The CSIRO does NOT have an "insistence on condemning" GM products. It has its own GM programs for modification of wheat and sheep.
What Brian and others are trying to promote is science in Australia. They can do as you did and take their knowledge and skills overseas, but that does nothing for this country.
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Kocsonya:
20 Mar 2015 5:05:34pm
> And the Australian population still benefits from my work.
Well, except that you do not employ Australians, you employ foreigners. You don't pay Australian taxes, you pay foreign taxes. You benefit a foreign economy, not the Australian one. In fact, you are not more beneficial to Australia than any other foreign company that happens to export things into Oz. It doesn't matter whether you have an Aussie passport or not, you are a foreign manufacturer, like any other.
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Ann:
20 Mar 2015 5:46:13pm
Exactly. He takes money out of the economy, and while he puts value back in, in some form, one doubts this does not depreciate over time as the goods lose value. Ultimately its a one-way relationship.
Paying an Australian manufacturer keeps the value circulating in our economy.
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Jack44:
20 Mar 2015 7:12:06pm
I am an Australian who paid taxes for 50 years, and at quite a hefty level. When I come to Australia, I pay GST like anyone else. I pay all the imposts that any other Australian pays. And your comment on income tax is sadly misplaced - I pay Australian tax although exactly what it gets me is debateable.
And next time you buy one of my products you will say "Gee...thats good. It's a good product and it's quite cheap" Like all the other consumers who bleat about industry disappearing and then promptly buy foreign made items.
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Regionalgranny:
20 Mar 2015 4:32:12pm
The scientific community is not alone in requiring stability to succeed. Every positive human endeavour does better in a stable environment from raising a family to balancing the Federal budget. The real problem is individual definitions of what constitutes stability. Some only see stability when their ideas and policies are in play and do their best to create instability when others ideas and policies are.
We need scientific minds to make and keep Australia as their home. There is not a bottomless pit of funds however and so judgments need to be made on the individual value of research projects.
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Ann:
20 Mar 2015 5:48:38pm
The difference, granny, is that while most jobs need stability to flourish, if they don't get that stability and are struggling, they don't have the option of easily packing up and moving overseas for easy money.
Only in-demand professions generally can do that. Scientific research is one of them.
So we won't lose all our plumbers if the market is rough. We will lose our scientists and they may not come back.
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Regionalgranny:
20 Mar 2015 6:09:48pm
Indeed that is so, however, that does not mean we need to finance every research project. You would not pay a plumber to incorrectly instal your toilet system just because you are afraid he or she may refuse to do further work in your house and in fact may do the same work in your neighbours house.
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Philip Howell:
20 Mar 2015 4:46:50pm
Thanks for the article; much appreciated. We need to keep this on the political agenda. At some point, Abbott will fall, and there will be a chance of bipartisan support for rational investment in science.
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Rick:
20 Mar 2015 5:03:43pm
Well if Pyne had not linked the research fund to the university issue then there would have been no issue.
In a child like tantrum he linked the two to try to force the senate do do what he alone wants. They did not buy it and he then the next day claim a victory for funding it, pretty lame!
So as usual the LNP have caused an issue of their own making.
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CRC Chair:
20 Mar 2015 5:42:16pm
Thank you Brian for an articulate and insightful article. If people don't understand how science has transformed their lives in every aspect then I despair. And if we are to have a future economy that continues to deliver a good standard of living and quality of life to Australians then we have to invest in our science, from blue sky through to applied research.
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MamabaDave:
20 Mar 2015 6:02:09pm
Thank you Brian. I've looked at the other comments and am surprised that some are negative. For example, there are more important things than science such as the arts or staying alive. But, the way I see it, the future lies with a knowledge-based society and a knowledge-based economy. There is absolutely no other route to the expanded and sustainable productivity that will assist in staying alive or allowing for the arts. Scientists do need stability to be productive. Take the example of soil science, where advances in knowledge are based based on the cumulative experience and insights of the workers involved. Can we cope with the demands of the future without fostering soil scientists. No!
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Had to leave:
20 Mar 2015 6:17:53pm
Thanks for article and for others that are helping to raise awareness of just how poor the current state of research funding is in Australia.
I am an early career biologist who like many researchers I know have had to move overseas to find a long term job. There are simply so few jobs advertised and the ones that are are usually for one or two years only. It simply becomes too hard when you have a family to keep moving around every few years.
I really don't see how things will get better in Australia with little appetite by any side of politics for increasing funding. ARC success rates should be above 25% not hovering around the 15-18% mark.
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John Coochey:
20 Mar 2015 6:47:40pm
So Had what have you discovered and what has it earned your employer, i,e, the Australian taxpayer, and why have you not been snapped up by the privae sector?
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Modus:
20 Mar 2015 6:37:12pm
Stability of anything human isn't possible without accountability yet, no plan presented in preventing the obvious repeating.
In the US, helping to seed the GFC. R&D tax concessions enabled big business to outbid science industry in obtaining rocket scientists and physicists to work on algorithms for Enron's hysterical fraud games. If wall street freakshow fraud industry can just harvest public funded talent at will what is the economic sense of giving the next next generation a pile more debt in the first place?
Science is awesome, the system of funding science is well broken.
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Modus:
20 Mar 2015 6:37:58pm
Stability of anything human isn't possible without accountability yet, no plan presented in preventing the obvious repeating.
In the US, helping to seed the GFC. R&D tax concessions enabled big business to outbid science industry in obtaining rocket scientists and physicists to work on algorithms for Enron's hysterical fraud games. If wall street freakshow fraud industry can just harvest public funded talent at will what is the economic sense of giving the next next generation a pile more debt in the first place?
Science is awesome, the system of funding science is well broken.
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Jackie:
20 Mar 2015 6:47:05pm
During the gold rush, many people toiled for gold and found it sporadically. Riding high for a short time then back to having nothing again. It is like that for scientists living from one short contract to the next. Thr winners on the goldfields set up businesses supplying goods to the miners. That is what all the scientifically trained administrators are doing. My choice is that I can be ideological or I can accept this is how it is. Next job admin here I come.
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Jerry Attrick:
20 Mar 2015 6:56:44pm
As an enthusiastic scientist who has worked (from PhD completion) on short contracts (3 yrs max) from 1980 'til now, I would like to suggest that those "commentators" failing to see the value and importance of research in Australia should remove their heads from their fundamental orifices, learn to read, and check just how influential Australian research has been, globally.
Only a few make headlines. But the outcome of research is dependent on the volume of effort.
Lets hear how you detractors have contibuted to the development of the nation and the globe.
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