Editorial-08 February 2002

If there is one thing as close to absolute certainty in politics as it is possible to get, it is that ministers heading governmental departments want to control those sectors which fall to their responsibility in as authoritarian a manner as they can marshal.

So for example we see both scientific weeklies, Science and Nature, reporting this week that the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS, the French equivalent of CSIRO) has received a damning report from the Cour des Comptes the nation's governmental auditors. CNRS is taken to task for:

• having had no strategic plan for the past six years ,

• organizational rigidity,

• lackadaisical efforts to promote the careers of young scientists.

However, what the auditors don't mention (it wasn't part of their brief) is that "its lack of strategic direction" is to a significant extent the result of successive politicians striving to make a name for themselves through manipulating and remolding the National Centre.

CNRS by no means rejects out of hand the points made by the auditors. But the director-general, Geneviève Berger, points out that already significant steps toward improvement are in place to correct poor mobility for staff in order to enhance collaborative projects and to address the lack of autonomy for young scientists. Berger also noted that CNRS researchers author or co-author more than 70% of all scientific papers published in France; she believes the nation is getting reasonable value for the A$4.3 billion annual budget. On a per capita basis CSIRO would have a federal allowance of A$1.4 billion.

Nature's (February 7^th) succinct view is:

The CNRS has long been caught in an unhappy ménage à trois between the universities, which host its labs, and its paymaster, the research ministry.

 If French science is to be freed from this tug-of-love, each partner needs a better-defined role. Equally important to revitalizing the CNRS, and perhaps more challenging, will be the need to get the universities to address the twin themes of mobility and autonomy, and to lessen the teaching demands on top university scientists. Only then can the universities and CNRS labs begin to interact in a more productive way.

A new minister for research is to be appointed following the June elections; it remains to be seen if he or she is able to rise above using the ministry as a vehicle for self promotion.

Not that the French have a monopoly on misdirection from the top. US President Bush has just sent his 2003 budget to congress which among its recommendations allots US$27.3 billion to the National Institutes of Health, a 17% increase over 2002 Almost US$3 billion of which is to go to finance NIH's intramural programs.

Now although President Bush has been in office for over 13 months, the appointment of a new NIH director has yet to be made. The post is currently being filled by acting director Ruth Kirschstein who has been with the Institutes for 25 years. While there may be any one of several reasons for the vacuum; the fact is that if it has been offered, it's been refused. This has allowed the Secretary for Health and Human Services, Tommy Thompson, former governor of Wisconsin, to insinuate himself into matters of micro-management, something which the NIH has been able to pretty much avoid over the years and which is credited with much of the reason for its overall success in doing what it's designated to do. Thomson's meddling is the cause of increasing unrest. He gives the impression of stomping on a golden-egg-laying goose with hobnailed boots.

None of these observations is to be taken as suggesting that such public institutions are not responsible to the representatives of the people. But there is an appropriate and consultative approach to running them in order to obtain maximum benefit for a nation's investment. Self-serving short sighted maneuvering for perceived immediate personal and/or political gain isn't it.

To bring the matter onshore we now have the example of the new Minister for Education, Science and Training, Brendan Nelson, showing signs of following the trend, if the manner of his declamation of Australian Research Council priority areas^{1, 2, 3} is a clue to future trends. A comment passed by him to Nature's Australian correspondent Peter Pockley last month may be indicative. "The universities have been reviewed to death we know what the problems and challenges are."  And while eschewing yet another review per se he intends to set up a consultative panel which will "propose concrete changes in university governance, working conditions and the way in which specialist strengths are split between universities." As yet, who will make up the "consultative panel" has not been revealed. It's to be hoped that those most effected will be represented.