News & Views - March 2002
Beware the
Jabberwock
My Son! (March 31, 2002)
The media exposure accorded the Education, Science and
Training Minister, Brendan Nelson, last week
has presaged directions that the government intends to take in regard to higher
education. It has also brought an important reaction from Labor's deputy
leader and shadow minister for Education, Jenny Macklin.
Though a virtual cliché, it's nevertheless all too true, an
acute disaster such as the Port Arthur massacre brings instantaneous shock and
immediate response, chronic wasting tragedies tend to be all but ignored and
unchecked before they become all but irreversible. From the portends of statements by
Dr. Nelson and Ms Macklin, and the inability of Australian
Democrats' leader, Senator Stott-Despoja to perform incisively, the best we seem
able to expect for Australia's
higher education and research and development sectors is palliative care.
How so? First, Dr. Nelson was having a bet each way saying,
regional universities needed to be supported at the same time as advocating that "one or two"
elite universities must be developed over the next 20 to 30 years to "compete with the
world's best." One of his staff later amplified Dr. Nelson's observation saying
that no Australian university was represented in the list of the world's top 50
[Alan Gilbert V-C University of Melbourne puts the figure at 75-100],
mainly because universities like the Ivy League institutions in the United
States had large amounts of private funding for academics and research, thereby
perpetuating by implication a myth useful to the Government that all top flight
research universities were private
institutions with rich endowments. We've pointed out previously that of the top
63 North American research universities listed by the
American Association of
Universities (AAU) 34 US and the 2 Canadian are public. What's being ignored
is that while the highest ranked of the public research universities do have
modest endowments, they have sound government support and their research staff
reasonable to excellent access to research funding from public as well as from
private foundations. Dr. Nelson seems to
be saying, "My department's doing enough, find your resources elsewhere." That
said, we are also told Australia's 38 universities are in a sound position with
$20billion worth of fixed assets and $4.4billion in liquid assets.
Another comment of the Minister, one he has made several times in the
past couple of months is that it will take 20 - 30 years to develop one or two
institutions able to "compete with the world's best." Is the world to run
on the spot for a generation while we get our act together, and apparently with minimal additional
federally allocated resources?
Since the Minister tells us that all our public universities
are in a sound position, presumably the schools to be chosen to be our elite
institutions rest on a sound foundation on which to base improvement to bring
them excellence. Perhaps then it might be worth bringing to his attention
that Brandeis University was founded in
1948, named for Louis Brandeis,
associate justice of the United States Supreme Court. Classes began on the site
of the former Middlesex University, in Waltham, Massachusetts, with 107 students
and 13 faculty members. In 1985 it was admitted to the AAU thereby gaining the
accolade of one of the outstanding North American research universities.
That took 37 years. You'd think with the relative head start that say one or two
of the Group of Eight universities would have, we ought to be able to do better than say
25 years to get into the major league.
A few Brandeis University facts and figures:
Undergraduates: 3,150
Graduate students: 1,083
Minorities: 16%
From abroad: 11%
Male students: 46%, Female students: 54%
Undergraduate student/faculty ratio: 9:1
Number of buildings: 96
University endowment: approximately US$400 (A$753) million
[Harvard's endowment = (US$19,000; A$35,760) million]
Oh yes, it is a private university but you would think that somehow somewhere the mavens at DEST and the Treasury could find the resources to uplift at least one of our institutions of higher learning to the point where the AAU might consider that they would be worthy of inclusion were they on North American soil.
And Ms Macklin, Labor's Deputy Leader and Shadow Education Minister?
In contradiction to Dr. Nelson's view she believes that
regional universities are under serious financial pressure and could suffer
further if funding was skimmed off for elite universities, "I am very concerned
it will mean that only some students will be able to go to these universities.
One of the strengths of our higher education sector is we have excellent
universities in the cities and regions."
Apparently she does not subscribe to the Senate report,
Universities in Crisis, to which her Shadow Science Minister, Senator Kim
Carr, was a signatory.
"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"
Where Peer Review May Be
Considered Anathema. (March 30, 2002)
Physicist Robert Park is a past chair of both the physics and
the astronomy departments at the
University of Maryland, but he's probably best known to science policy insiders,
members of the media, and the interested public for his weekly e-mail bulletin "What's
New". His March 29th issue has two items rather longer than
usual: the first titled, "Alternative Medicine: The Clinton Commission's
Catch-22", the second, "Alternative Publishing: Communicating Science by
Full-Page Ad". With regard to the former Park writes, "In 1998, the New
England Journal of Medicine pointed out the catch-22: 'There cannot be two
kinds of medicine, conventional and alternative. There is only medicine that has
been adequately tested and medicine that has not, medicine that works and
medicine that may or may not work.' In other words, if some [Complimentary
Alternative Medical] treatment survived rigorous testing, it would
no longer be CAM, it would simply be medicine."
As to publishing by advertisement, Park sites a full-page ad
placed in the New York Times at a cost of A$236,000 giving the appearance of a
scientific paper, "The Collapse of the Big Bang and the Gaseous Sun" by
Pierre-Marie Robitaille, professor in Radiology at Ohio State. Park notes,
"Robitalle didn't have to put up with peer review and he had full control over
timing. The timing raised eyebrows. Ohio is in the midst of a heated debate over
a move to put Intelligent Design on an equal footing with
Darwinism in the classroom. ID is the fallback position of the creationists, who
hate the Big Bang as much as they hate Darwin."
If the price of liberty is eternal vigilance it is also the
price of truth.
"We'll Put Them in a
Box and We'll Shake Really Hard and Hope That Some Fun Things Happen."
(March 22, 2002)
So said Andrew Murray, Director of Harvard's
Bauer Center for Genomics Research (CGR) which was inaugurated three weeks
ago.
In outlining its goals CRG states,
The 20th century put biology on a molecular footing. This was achieved by reducing problems to defined questions that could be isolated as much as possible from the complexities of living organisms. Biochemists purified proteins and studied them in vitro, crystallographers solved their structure and geneticists used mutations to focus on the role of individual genes. Although these approaches have produced enormous advances, they have not solved the ultimate challenge of biology: how can we explain the behavior, function, structure, and evolution of cells?
We believe that there are design principles to be discovered in biology, which will help us address the major questions of how living organisms work... CGR will tackle the problem of identifying and understanding general design principles at a number of different levels, ranging from the relationship between protein structure and function to the evolution of natural populations... All of these questions will require input from and collaboration between a variety of different disciplines, such as physics, computational science and population biology, as well as molecular and cellular biology.
[In addition] the Bauer Center for Genomics Research invites interested undergraduates to apply for research internships in the summer of 2002. Each internship will last for ten weeks, or longer by mutual agreement. Interns will work on research projects in the labs of the CGR Fellows, whose work spans many fields of science, from chemistry to biology (including genetics, cell biology, neuroscience, animal behavior and evolution) to applied mathematics and computation
Similarly on the US west coast,
"In May of 1998 a group of Stanford faculty organized a grass roots effort to initiate a bold enterprise, known informally as Bio-X, to facilitate interdisciplinary research and teaching in the areas of bioengineering, biomedicine and biosciences. The program operates across three Schools -- Humanities and Sciences, School of Engineering and School of Medicine.
The Bio-X mission is to stimulate interaction and collaboration among faculty and students with different scientific portfolios, by increasing the opportunity for new intellectual directions, and by bringing appropriate faculty from diverse departments together in a new facility, The Clark Center...[a] building that appropriately acts as a hub to facilitate interdisciplinary interactions in the Bio-X community at large. The building consists of ~225,000 sq. ft. for occupation by ~50 faculty.
The Minister for Education, Science and Training, Brendan Nelson, has been
quoted as saying he wants to see one or two universities of the calibre of
Harvard in Australia. From the initiatives in multidisciplinary biomedical
research alone, that are being undertaken at two of the world's leading research
universities, it would seem wise for him to put "the pedal to the metal" sooner
rather than later.
Jospin Woos Young
Researchers - It's Presidential Election Time. (March 21, 2002)
There may be many more researchers in France than you might
guess. Lionel Jospin, France's Prime Minister who is challenging Jacques
Chirac in one month's time for the French Presidency has promised the scientific
community that if he is elected he will give a new deal to doctoral candidates
with better stipends and more and earlier opportunities to obtain permanent
positions.
He also promised to try to increase the amount of French
gross domestic product that is spent on research and development to 3%, in line
with a promise made by European leaders last week in Spain. Well, it must be
admitted that it is an election promise, but that 3% figure is interesting. It
stems from the meeting in Barcelona of the European Council (March 15-16) and if
the EC come anywhere near that projection within the next decade, it would be a
giant leap over the projected OECD mean which is estimated to reach about 2.2%
of GDP about 2005-06. Australia's commitment to R&D is currently projected to
fall to 1.35% of GDP by then.
Gentle CPR for Russian
Science, but It Just Might Get Legs. (March 21, 2002)
There was a hint last week according to the current issue of
Nature that Russia's President Vladimir Putin has begun to comprehend
some of the growing anguish being expressed in Russia concerning the "dire state
of
the
country's science." He announced that 600 scientists under 35 years of age will
receive through competitive awards supplementary grants of 24,000 rubles
(A$1,450), with their supervisors receiving the same amount. Certainly by
western standards the amount is tiny; nonetheless they are worth as much
as a typical Russian researcher's salary. And if moves in the Russian Parliament
come to anything, Russian science really may be getting off the mat. According
to Nature, "Russian politicians are slowly turning their attention to the
collapse of science in the country. For example, Sergei Mironov, speaker of the
upper house of the Russian parliament, is backing a budget proposal that would
more than double federal funding for science, from less than 2% of the country's
total budget to about 4%. 'If the government doesn't focus attention on the
fundamental sciences, they will soon die out,' Mironov told an Earth sciences
meeting in St Petersburg on 5 March."
By comparison Australia's 2001-02 Federal budget allocated
$4.7 billion of the $161.4 billion total to science, 2.9%. There is little
indication that our government intends to increase this proportion significantly
in the foreseeable future.
CSIRO's Role as Seen From the Top. (March 20, 2002)
The Federal Government appointed Dr. Geoff Garrett to become
CEO of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO)
in January last year having been lured away from South Africa's CSIR where he
built a reputation for his marketing and business development abilities. Shortly
after taking over at CSIRO, he instituted an extensive and critical review of
the organisation. Recently he outlined to the Senate's Employment, Workplace
Relations and Education Legislation Committee (EWRE) his "business model" for
the Organisation.
[T]he business model -- and it has gained significant acclaim, I think -- clarifies for the organisation that we are in three separate businesses. We are in the strategic research business, we are in the specialised consulting and testing business, and we are in the business of capturing and exploiting intellectual property. They are different businesses that need to be managed in different ways. In the domain you are talking about here [Senator Schacht, "going back to a dedicated structure within the organisation to handle and bring together the intellectual property and development to boost the licence income"], we have pulled in some skills from the private sector and we are building our commercial group. We are of the view that they need to be working hand in hand in partnership with our scientists, developing skills all the way through, as opposed to putting in place some form of structure. [21 Feb.2002, EWRE, 169]
It is evident that basic/pure research is not seen as the province of CSIRO by Dr. Garrett and in fact the term arose only once with regard to CSIRO and that was a comment made by Senator Schacht. Fundamental research per se was not commented on by Dr. Garrett.
Senator Schacht (Labor): The real issue here is that universities do more of the pure research and you do more of the applied research. You have divisions that do pure research, of course -- radio astronomy, Antarctica -- which are not very commercial; I accept all of that. But, by and large, I always thought the definition was that ARC grants went to more pure research and, hopefully, very rapidly they would get good ideas that would become commercial and make quids for Australia. And, by and large, you are the applied research and your research is applied to get outcomes that create products, wealth and jobs. The edges are always blurred. I have always been a bit intrigued that universities, under pressure of their own finances, are starting to move too much into the applied research rather than sticking to some of the pure research, because if we get pure research obliterated it is like we have got a hole in the doughnut. You do need good pure research to build into applied research. That is why I think your collaborative work is to be given a big tick. [21 Feb. 2002, EWRE 175]
Perhaps it ought to be pointed out that Senator Schacht was not returned in the
recent election.
But the real issue is that the Dr. Garrett and Senator
Schacht together clarify the point that pure or basic research in Australia is
virtually the sole province of our universities. Unless they are adequately
resourced, they will be unable to sustain the layers of strategic and applied
research dependent upon basic science. At the moment adequate resources are not
being made available.
Which Nation Sports a Per
Capita GDP of A$4,000 and has a Government Pledged to Spend 2% of GDP on
R&D? (March 15, 2002)
The Indian government's new science budget, includes a
doubling of funding for academic infrastructure.
The overall
A$577 million increase, to A$2.9 billion, brings the 2002-03 R&D funding to just
below 1% of GDP. That's considerably below Australia's 1.4% of GDP but of
significance is Prime Minister A. B. Vajpayee's pledge to raise it to
industrial-world levels of 2%. In contrast even with the funding increased
promised by Backing Australia's Ability, Australia's level of
R&D funding will remain static over the next four years.
What is difficult to fathom is the emphasis that countries
with per capita GDPs as disparate as India's at A$4,000 per annum and Canada's
at A$47,000 place on resources being allocated to research and development --
approaching or exceeding 2% of GDP while Australia at 1.4% will remain almost a
third lower. The comment by the president of the Indian National Science
Academy, Martanda Varma Sankaran Valiathan, makes the point, "It's a very
welcome sign and long overdue."
Meanwhile we seem mired in acute wrangles both divisive and
counterproductive and a government and opposition increasingly preoccupied with
them.
While Australia Fiddles,
Talks of UK University Mergers Get Serious. (March 14, 2002)
Just over a month ago Aban Contractor reported in the
Sydney Morning Herald that the University of Technology, Sydney, RMIT
University, the University of South Australia, Queensland University of
Technology and Curtin University are considering linking as a single institution
with more than 100,000
students in five states. Contractor states, "The plan is seen by senior
academics as a way of curbing the power of the older, elite, sandstone
universities, known as the Group of Eight." Whether or not such a widely based
confederation would result in anything other than an additional layer of
administration would seem debatable.
It is considerably different from the proposed merger by the
two Manchester universities, the University of Manchester and its neighbour, the
University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology which announced
merger plans last week. The two schools are less than two kilometers apart and
already share a number of common facilities. In a plea reminiscent of that put
forward by the Group of Eight, Sir Richard Sykes, Rector of Imperial College,
London among others argues that efforts to compete internationally should be
focused on just a handful of UK research universities and the Manchester merger
is seen as a response to such suggestions. It would place it fifth with respect
to UK universities' research income (see chart). As Nature reports,
"Their aim is to claim a place at this international high table." The
journal goes on to point out, "The universities of Glasgow and Strathclyde, for
example, formed a 'strategic alliance' in 1998, through which researchers share
equipment, lab space and teaching resources. Looking abroad, Cambridge set up a
joint institute with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2000, and
Oxford and Princeton announced an alliance last year."
While the suggestion of an alliance of the five universities
of technology may be problematical, there's a lot to be said for 'strategic
alliances' being formed for example by Sydney and UNSW, Melbourne and Monash so
that they could begin to be considered serious international players, but
whether or not the egos that would be involved could ever come to terms does
raise doubts.
Is Science Funding Becoming
Over-Commercialised? (March 9, 2002)
A couple of months ago The Royal Society -- the UK’s
independent academy of science -- commissioned the Market & Opinion Research
International organisation (MORI) to
interview a representative quota sample of 1,001 adults aged 16 + across
Britain. Interviews were conducted by telephone between 15-17 February 2002. The
data were weighted to the known national population profile. The table below
shows that Britons are disquieted by the extent commercialisation is affecting
scientific research, are not overly impressed by the media's coverage of
scientific matters and would like to feel that they had some say about what
scientists should be actively interested in.
The
RS' full release is available online.
It's possible that Australian's would show a similar distribution in opinion and
here would be an opportunity for representative bodies such as the Federation of
Australian Scientific and Technological Societies and the Australian Academy of
Science to undertake a comparable survey of Australians to assess their views
and then act appropriately on the findings through wide dissemination of the
results to the public -- including our federal and state parliamentarians. What
suggestions those surveyed might have to address the problems, should they be
seen to exist, would seem worth considering as well.
Would That It Were So.
(March 8, 2002)
The following snippet comes from the Proof Committee Hansard
(21/2/02) for budget estimates released by the Employment, Workplace Relations
and Education Legislation Committee. The Chair has the last word.
Senator Carr (Labor) - So when the minister [Dr. Nelson, minister for Education, Science and Training] told the House of Representatives that he had consulted 60 scientists, it was not these people [the group who suggested ARC priorities] because they are not all scientists.
Prof. Sara (CEO, Australian Research Council) - I think that is a confusion in terms. There were 60 researchers.
Senator Carr - That is fine. I presume it is the the same group that he was referring to.
Prof. Sara - I cannot answer for the minister, but there were certainly 60 researchers involved.
Senator Carr - I appreciate that. I would hate the House of Representatives to be misled that there were 60 scientists consulted when they were researchers.
Prof. Sara - Well, in reality 'science' comes from the Latin root meaning a search for knowledge.*
Senator Carr - Of course. Thank you very much, Professor Sara, we are all scientists then.
Prof. Sara - Good. I hope so.
CHAIR (Senator Tierney, Liberal) - We all follow scientific methodology in all disciplines.
----------------
*SCIENCE: Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French, from Latin scientia, from scient-, sciens having knowledge, from present participle of scire to know; probably akin to Sanskrit chyati he cuts off, Latin scindere to split.
Excerpt from an Op-ed by the
President of the Australian Academy of Science in The Australian.
(March 8, 2002)
The President of the Australian Academy of Science Brian
Anderson put forward in
The Australian
of March 4th a case for the nation's requirement for "a well
developed scientific skills base and scientific infrastructure". It is all very
well for the Government to direct the ARC to designate Nano and Bio-materials,
Genome/Phenome Research, Complex/Intelligent Systems and Photon Science and
Technology as priority areas but, "We must not forget the fundamentals upon
which a solid and sustainable knowledge-based economy is built. The foundations
of good research and innovation are still to be found in the enabling sciences."
The challenge for policy makers is to understand in a profound way that that the nation needs a well developed scientific skills base and scientific infrastructure if we are to benefit from the accumulating global stockpile of knowledge. Public and private investment in research and development is the only way to ensure Australia’s continued access to global knowledge. The Federal Government spends no more on ALL the Cooperative Research Centres per annum than in grants to firms in the textile, clothing and footwear areas. CRCs are likely, in the medium term, to create far more jobs and real wealth.
The science policy outlined by the Federal Government in the document Backing Australia’s Ability provides a fine set of programs that have been supported by the Australian Academy of Science. However, the Academy cautions that a close watch should be kept on business investment in R&D. The Government should respond rapidly if new initiatives in this area do not reverse the downward trend of Australian business investment in R&D. The Academy also would applaud the speeding up of increased expenditure on Australian Research Council programs, especially given the recent instructions with respect to research priority setting by the ARC.
We must not forget the fundamentals upon which a solid and sustainable knowledge-based economy is built. The foundations of good research and innovation are still to be found in the enabling sciences. We should not be too self-congratulatory that more than 60 per cent of Australian households have access to mobile phones. Our information technology tools and toys are largely imported; we have not created the right foundation to underpin vigorous indigenous industry.
Perhaps Dr. Nelson might like to comment through one of his
media releases.
They That Taketh Away Also
Giveth -- Marginally. (March 7, 2002)
That's not quite true, i.e. it's more a case that the
Federal treasurer, Peter Costello currently has a potential loss in the
neighborhood of $4 billion of public money through currency swapping
rationalised on the assumption of the Australian dollar markedly rising in value
against a basket of foreign currencies. Events over the past eighteen months
suggest that's most unlikely. Two items crossed TFW's virtual desk this morning
which gives pause.
Kenneth Davidson in his column in the Melbourne Age wrote:
Peter Costello became Treasurer in March, 1996... Why did he overlook the 1996 [Union Bank of Switzerland] consultants' report that said there was no rhyme nor reason for continuing with the high-risk policy of currency swaps? If he had acted to close out the currency swap book in June 1996 he would have realised a cumulative profit since 1987 of $2billion...
Over the first five years of Costello's watch, an unrealised gain of $864 million inherited from Labor had become unrealised losses of $3.8 billion - a turnaround of $4.7 billion
...at the same time as the Commonwealth [has been] savagely cutting spending on higher education and welfare in the interests of fiscal responsibility.
Then within an hour a media release arrived from the Minister for Education, Science and Training, Brendan Nelson.
SECURE PLANT FACILITY ENABLES WORLD CLASS RESEARCH
Australian researchers and scientists will benefit from a $6 million, world standard, plant research facility which has been opened today at The Australian National University.
The new Facility will help to ensure that the Research School of Biological Sciences is well positioned to benefit from the Government’s additional $3 billion investment [over five years] in research, announced last year in Backing Australia’s Ability.
The initiatives announced in Backing Australia’s Ability will boost Australia’s capacity to generate ideas, improve the commercialisation of research, and build a workforce with the right mix of skills for the future.
They will also ensure that Australia remains a dynamic, internationally competitive economy, able to attract and retain the brightest researchers and business professionals.
It might be worthwhile for Dr. Nelson to find out what it really
takes "to attract and retain the brightest researchers and business
professionals." A chat with the Federal Treasurer perhaps?
------------
Note 1: On March 9th the Melbourne Age published
the Treasurer,
Peter
Costello's reply which said in part. "Coming to the question of currency
swaps, Davidson then asks why Treasury overlooked a Union Bank of Switzerland
consultant's report from 1996 that said, according to him, 'there was no rhyme
nor reason for continuing with the high-risk policy of currency swaps'. This is
a good question. There is one problem. The UBS report said no such thing.
To the contrary, it recommended a benchmark exposure of 12.5
per cent to US dollar debt with the remainder in Australian dollars. The report
said the 'optimal exposure to the US dollar is 10 to 15 per cent of the market
value of the portfolio. This is optimal no matter what level of risk is
acceptable, and robustly so, for a wide range of market assumptions'".
It will be of interest to see what response Kenneth Davidson
has.
Note 2: On March 11th
Kenneth Davidson wrote his response which said in part: "When did Peter
Costello get wind of the fact that the currency-swap policy was an unnecessary
gamble that was likely to cost Australian taxpayers billions of dollars? It now
appears that the Treasurer had a number of consultant reports on the issue (as
well as the Auditor-General's report in 1999) before the Liberal member for
LaTrobe, Bob Charles, first publicly voiced his misgiving in May, 2000, and
again through the unanimous report of the JCPAA published in October and tabled
in November.
"The Treasurer needed no report. He had only to look at the
collapse on the Australian dollar/US dollar exchange rate in 1997, associated
with the Asian financial crisis, to realise that the first step in "firewalling"
the Australian economy from the financial "contagion" was to close out the
foreign-currency swaps to minimise future losses."
How Harvard Became Today's
Harvard. (March 3, 2002)
In 1933 James Conant became Harvard's 24th
President and began the transformation of the university into one of the
foremost research universities in the world. This thesis is put forth in a
new book by Morton and Phylis Keller (Making
Harvard Modern: the Rise of America's University,
OUD - ISBN
0195144570, 2001). It should be remembered that Harvard was founded in
1640 so the Kellers' analysis covers only the past 67 of its 362 years. But it
was Conant, the professor of chemistry, who began a revolution. Recruit the best
staff and students. Award scholarships for students, and pay staff high
salaries. Student selection criteria became standardised and rigorous while
staff recruitment involved committees made up mostly of highly competent
individuals external to Harvard. And Conant introduced the radical eight years
up or out policy for non-tenured staff. In short Conant was out to make Harvard
over into a scholastic meritocracy and he succeeded. Following his retirement,
Nathan Pusey took over until 1971 to be followed by Derek Bok (1971-91) and Neil
Rudenstine (1991-2001). Lawrence Summers is the incumbent. It's important to
realise that although each of these presidents placed his personal stamp on
shaping the university the drive toward Harvard becoming a top research
university was continued by them all. Rudenstine, for example, presided over the
great expansion of Harvard's endowment to its current US$19 (A$36.8) billion and
marked improvements to its physical facilities.
Recently the Minister for Education, Science and Training,
Dr. Brendan Nelson, avowed that he wanted to see the development in
Australia of a "world-class" university along the lines of Harvard. He could do
worse than start by reading the Kellers' appraisal of just what it was and is
that shapes Harvard.
Canada Keeps on Getting a
Good Press but Have They Really Got the Wrong End of the Stick. (March 3,
2002)
Between Science, Nature and even the popular US
and Canadian media it's getting to be downright depressing with a few hundred
million here and one and a half billion there, the funding of 2000 (you read it
right, 2000) new research chairs and so forth and so on, all in the name of
making Canada one of the top five nations in research and development investment
by 2010 in order to obtain for the nation's citizenry the best possible overall
quality of life or so Canada's centre-left Liberal government would have the
voters believe. The brightest jewels in the crown are the
Canada Foundation for
Innovation (CFI), the
Canadian Institutes of Health Research, and the
Natural Sciences and
Engineering Research Council. The new Can$173.5 (A$210) million dollar
national synchrotron, the
Canadian Light Source,
was kept on track through funding from CFI and it's interesting to compare and
contrast the approaches of Canada and Australia to setting up synchrotron
facilities; perhaps the facility at
Monash University is as good an example as any of what's happening in
Australia in providing synchrotron light. Overall perhaps a couple of paragraphs
from Nature's February 21st "news feature" points up the
approach:
But perhaps the most significant move was the creation of the CFI in 1997. In his budget speech that year, finance minister Paul Martin announced: "The CFI is about investing in the future growth of our economy, making a down payment today for much greater rewards tomorrow."
That down payment now stands at Can$3.15 (A$3.81) billion, financed from the national budget surpluses of the late 1990s. With the latest round of funding announced last month (see Nature 415, 568; 2002), Can$1.55 (A$1.87) billion has so far been committed to 1,900 projects. The rest of the money is already banked -- so the CFI won't face budget cuts, whatever subsequently happens to the Canadian economy.
When one looks through the listing of the Major research facilities being supported by the CFI it's worth noting the allocation of $155 million being allocated through 2006 through Australia's support for Major National Research Facilities.
It may of course be the case that the Federal government has its sights set
somewhat differently to raise the common wealth of the nation if the Treasury's foreign
exchange speculations are any indication.
President Bush's Science
Advisor Finds it Advisable to Know Your Interrogators. (March 3, 2002)
Physicist John Marburger, George W. Bush's Science Advisor,
was asked recently by the US House of Representatives Science Committee why the
National Institutes of Health got a US$2.7 billion dollar budget boost for the
upcoming fiscal year while the rest of the science community received small to
negligible increases. Marburger's reply, "If you make the basis for funding the
complexity of the science, then the increase is justified. You may think there's
a big imbalance, but nature has a great imbalance." Vern Elders (R. Michigan)
also a trained physicist wasn't impressed, pointing out that astrophysics has a
brief to explain the behavior of every atom in the universe, therefore, on a
basis of complexity, it ought to come out as front runner. So much for facile
explanations. Now if astrophysics could produce a nostrum or two she'd be right
mate.
UK
Biologists Lobby for £50 (A$137) Million to
Automate Structural Genomic Research.
(March 2, 2002)
Last month, 102 UK biologists presented to
government research councils as well as the Wellcome Trust an analysis arguing
that limited access to robotic equipment which can rapidly express, purify and
crystallize proteins is leaving them behind the US, Japan and even the Europeans
in the scientific race to exploit gene-sequence information pointing out that
commercial gain to the country will suffer.
Nature reports that according to structural biologist
Neil Isaacs at Glasgow University, "If the UK community does not develop and
adopt new technologies within a relatively short space of time, it will lose
leadership in some of the most exciting and rewarding areas of biology."
The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC),
has already commissioned a review of Britain's needs for structural genomics
saying, "Given the size and scale of the requirements in this field, it is
obvious that a more considered approach is required." It remains to be seen if
the lobbying will have a positive effect, however, it does point out that a
significant group of biological scientists are prepared to go public on what
they see as a matter of national importance.
This sort of report portends what will be a growing gap
between what might be seen as the top 50% and the bottom half of the OECD
nations with regard to the quality of life that will be afforded to their citizens
in the coming decades.