Throttling the Goose

 Early this month Dr Clive Spash resigned from CSIRO following his making public criticisms of the use of the Emissions Trading Scheme favoured by the Australian government to reduce the nation's atmospheric pollution and the subsequent public threatening posture by CSIRO's top administration including its Chief Executive Dr Megan Clark because Dr Spash was voicing disagreement with promulgated governmental policy.

The question as to whether or not Dr Clark's remarkably heavy-hand approach was countenanced by the federal government and in particular Senator Kim Carr, the minister responsible for CSIRO, is not known. He certainly has remained remarkably quiet, but Simon Grose, writing in the Jan/Feb issue of Australasian Science reports: "CSIRO’s mismanagement of this issue was a mess. It has angered the Minister and alienated CSIRO staff for whom academic freedom is a matter of high principle. It showed an organisation that is timid in its relations with the government and rigid in its procedures."

However, whether it has usefully "angered" Senator Carr is debatable, and while it undoubtedly alienated a number of CSIRO research staff, it is also likely to have intimidated a goodly proportion of them from making valuable public scientific assessments if CSIRO administration could consider that they might be seen to contradict governmental policy. The path Dr Clark is following in her administration of the organisation will do nothing to enhance its reputation or the quality of its research staff. Quite the opposite.

Why should able researchers who are in world demand and short supply opt to join a CSIRO which "is timid in its relations with the government and rigid in its procedures"? Indeed why should the Australian tax payer support an organisation that will devolve into a group of timid second raters?

To suggest that today's CSIRO holds a position of scientific prestige comparable to that of the CSIRO of the 1950s-1960s is not sustainable. And the problem is straightforward to state: the government of the day -- for whatever reasons -- has installed chief executives lacking the intellect, force of personality and prestige to bring CSIRO back to being a first rank scientific and industrial research organisation.

How does Geoffrey Garrett compare to Steven Chu, or Megan Clark to Jane Lubchenco.

But the problem lies not with the individuals chosen but with those who have chosen them.