Robert May and Robin Batterham -- Two Chief Science Advisors -- Two differing Points of View. (March 15, 2005)

    "Robert McCredie, Lord May of Oxford, OM AC Kt, is President of the Royal Society (2000-2005), and holds a Professorship jointly in the Department of Zoology, Oxford University, and at Imperial College, London, and is a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford. For the five-year period ending September 2000, he was Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government, and Head of its Office of Science and Technology."

So reads the opening paragraph of Robert May's biographical sketch on the Oxford University Department of Zoology web site.

    The Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering for its November 2002 Symposium -- which had as its theme Owning Innovation from Idea to Delivery -- invited the expat Australian to give the keynote address. May chose for his subject "Innovation from Knowledge to New Products".

    Other speakers at the Symposium included the other keynote speaker the Minister for Education, Science and Training, Brendan Nelson, and Australia's Chief Scientist, Robin Batterham.

    Below are some views expressed by May with regard to the role of universities as to their place in the innovative scheme of things. Judging from what has since transpired under the dictation of Australia's Prime Minister, John Howard, with Dr Nelson as point man the views expressed by Robert May has had no positive impact on the government's approach to higher education.

May told his audience twenty-nine months ago:

[T]he reason why governments invest in basic science (defined broadly to include engineering and medicine) is threefold. First, for the new knowledge thus created. Although this knowledge is a classic 'Public Good', the producing country or organisation does usually have potential advantages of first acquisition (as shown by necessarily imprecise economic studies). Second, and more important, to buy a ticket in the wider club of knowledge-producers. The smaller the country, the more important this is, because indigenously-created knowledge represents a necessarily smaller fraction of the global total. Third, and most important, such investment produces successive cadres of trained young people, some of whom cycle back into the knowledge-producing process, while others carry its fruits out into business, industry, the City, public service, and elsewhere. Because most advances beyond the current frontiers of science are inherently unforeseeable and unownable, such investment in the science base always has, and I believe always will, come mainly from public money. As Alan Bromley, a past US Presidential Science Advisor, has said: 'industry invests in the present; the Government invests in the future'.

May went on to refer to the tensions that can and do arise "when well-intentional bureaucrats seek to direct funding to projects which look like being tomorrow's commercial winners, rather than responding to the self-set research agendas of the best scientists and engineers." And goes on to ask the rhetorical question:

So, how does the science base relate to competitive success with innovative products?
    This question, I think, often gets an answer that is too simple. My view, formed by conversations with many people during my years in the UK Office of Science and Technology, can be extravagantly caricatured as follows: for every $1 spent on basic research, it takes something of the order of $10 to begin to explore an innovative idea about a possible project, and it takes of order $100 to bring a costed proposal to a business' Board before even beginning to tool-up for a product. These ratios are, or course, rough and can vary from sector to sector, but they capture essentials. There is -- certainly in the UK, but I believe fairly generally -- much misunderstanding: the '$1 academic' lumps together the subsequent $10 and $100 stages, which are quite distinct, often blaming 'business/ industry'; the $100 business-industry sector often lumps the $1 and $10 stages, blaming 'ivorytower academics'.

Then Lord May of Oxford ventures to do battle with the bureausaurs and governmental control freaks:

[H]ow should a country's academic and other institutions manage research in basic science, and indeed in the humanities and elsewhere, so as to stimulate creativity and obtain the best value for their money. My personal conclusion -- which has drawn interesting debate from some of those major scientific countries ranked relatively low on this list* -- is that the most important thing is to create institutional cultures in which the best young people are free to express their creativity and set their own agendas, rather than being entrained in hierarchies of deference to their seniors, no matter how distinguished these may be. Such cultures are, I think, most easily maintained on university campuses, thoroughly infested as they are with the irreverent young. A related component of such 'management of creativity', and one which is easier to state than implement, is that finite funds must be distributed selectively, rather than by egalitarian formulae. The devil is in the details of how selective to be; how to make sure that selection focuses on current performance rather than reputation legitimately based on earlier achievement; and how to recognise newly emerging areas (when committees too often reflect sub-communities grown from yesterday's breakthroughs). I also see it as a philosophically uncomfortable fact that too much security, particularly if attained too early, can often work against energetic and adventurous use of creative talent.

But he also cautions that:

The above analyses, and indeed my earlier quote from Alan Bromley, might be misread as suggesting that innovation flows from publicly funded basic research to product-developing and privately-funded industry. The networks and links which bring public and private, researchers and industries, together are, however, complex and subject to a variety of market failures. The UK White Paper thus recognises 'That is why public funding can play such a critical role. Government can facilitate such links to help turn scientific ideas into innovation. This means examining new public-private partnerships to bring businesses and university, ideas and finance closer together, as well as initiatives to create regional clusters. Government cannot and should not attempt to manage these networks but it can play a critical role in facilitating their creation'^†.

Yesterday the Australian Financial Review ran an article by Sophie Morris reporting that Australian "Chief Scientist, Robin Batterham, wants universities' efforts to establish links with local businesses to be formally recognised and rewarded with funding as part of an overhaul of how Australia distributes its annual $5.4 billion in research funds. He declared it a "no brainer" that research funding should be concentrated on the top-end research rather than on propping up 'also rans', but he said there was an important role, particularly for regional universities, in reaching out to their local business communities." And Dr Batterham went on to tell Ms Morris, "It is activities over and above research and teaching which in a nutshell are targeting outreach into local business."

It would appear that the Chief Scientist is suggesting that there are research projects receiving Australian Research Council support which are "also rans". An interesting view regarding the quality of research proposals put forth to the ARC considering that less than one in three proposals get funded. In no way does he suggest that extra funding should be found for the outreach programs rather he envisions there would be a redistribution away from the current mix of ARC funding and one suspects that basic research would be further down graded.

To emphasise the government's narrow focus, Morris sees Dr Nelson's recent address at the National Press as suggesting "proof that a university was actively pursuing the market potential of its research could be a prerequisite for its academics securing competitive funding from the Australian Research Council or the National Health and Medical Research Council."

It would seem safe to conclude that Robert May's address to the ASTE in November 2002 has been summarily dismissed by the Coalition government and ignored by the states' Labor governments.  

*For some of the debate generated by these suggestions, first aired in R M May, The Scientific Wealth of Nations, Science, 275, 791-796 (1997)., see: G R Barreto, Science, 276, 882 (1997); S Bauin, ibid, p883; I Gomez, M Bordons, J Cami, ibid, p884; P C White, ibid, p884; S Herskovic, ibid, p884; R M May, ibid, p885. Also J Grant, G Levinson, Science 278, 878-879 (1997); R M May, ibid, pp 879-880.

 

^†Anon. Excellence and Opportunity: A Science and Innovation Policy for the 21st Century. HMSO (UK), July 2000 (Ord TJ2064); Ch 3, para 6 (p28).