Shades of the Bush Administration? (December 15, 2004)

    Over the past couple of years the administration of US President George W Bush has accumulated a well earned reputation for politicising science. Now, whether in emulation or not the Minister for Education, Science and Training, Brendan Nelson, and to whom the Australian Research Council (ARC) is responsible has overridden the assessment of ARC peer reviewers and canned several approved research grants.

According to The Australian's Dorothy Illing who broke the story in today's Higher Education Section, "It is not clear why Dr Nelson used his powers to reject the ARC's advice on several research projects in the last round or what those projects were. Dr Nelson was unavailable for comment yesterday. But it is understood grants in question were in the social sciences and humanities areas."

Not only has the redoubtable Dr Nelson gone to ground, the newly appointed head of the ARC, Professor Peter Høj was lyin' low and saying notin'.

Meanwhile, ARC chairman Tim Besley appears to have taken the view that a bellicose defence was appropriate. He told Illing:

[Why the] huge hue and cry? That's the minister's prerogative. If he doesn't believe that taxpayers' money should be spent on that kind of research, that's his decision at the end of the day. It doesn't happen a lot. But that procedure [ministerial intervention] is there and one shouldn't get one's knickers in a knot. People don't seem to focus on the 99.9 per cent [of grants] that aren't upended.

Of course the ARC doesn't give out several  x 1,000 discovery grants per annum but let that pass. When grant proposals are reviewed by individuals chosen by the ARC to be competent to judge the soundness of  those research proposals, it would be reasonable to expect that were their assessment overturned by a layman, minister responsible or not, he or she would not only have exceptionally good reasons for doing so but would be prepared to justify publicly why that course of action was taken. It remains to be seen just who if anyone will will be prepared to fess up, but don't hold your breath.

Stanford University's professor of biological sciences, Paul Ehrlich in a recent conversation with ABC science programmer Robyn Williams had some pithy assessments of the politicisation of US science and what he saw as Australian sycophancy. The behaviour of Dr Nelson, Professor Høj and Mr Besley may not support Professor Erhlich's view, but then, why the lack of candour?