Opinion-30 January 2001


 

Choose Your Discipline – Pick a Winner?

  Former Chairman of CSIRO and renowned biochemist Dr. Keith Boardman recently stated in the final section of his review for the ABS Year Book, "Australia, with its small population, cannot hope to mount an internationally competitive science and innovation effort in too many areas[;] ...urgent attention needs to be paid to selecting priority areas for the concentration of resources." He advised federal and state governments to target a specific area, such as biological science.

Such advice if followed narrowly and slavishly can lead to undesirable and serious consequences. To site an extreme example of many decades ago; a British advisor to the Australian Government when asked to comment on Australia's research and development in the field of digital computing counselled that there was no mileage in digital computing, the future lay with automated analogue computation. His advice was followed and Australia's R&D effort in digital computers virtually ceased.

That's not to say that judicious husbanding of the Nations resources isn't required, but it should be remembered that having a small population doesn't necessitate narrow vision. Just below is a short list of a few countries, their populations and gross domestic products to make a comparative point. It should not go unnoticed that the per capita GDP for the United States is half again that of Australia. That's significant in any comparative statistics in which Australia is represented as being on or above par relative to US figures on the basis of GDP alone. That taken together with our decline relative to the "small" countries listed must be taken into consideration if we are to gain lost ground in science to say nothing of engineering, technology - and innovation in general.

Country 

Population - July 2000, est.

GDP - 1999 est.

Per Capita GDP - 1999, est.

  Finland     5,167,486 $US    108.6 billion $US 21,000 
  Switzerland         7,262,372 $US    197.0 billion $US 27,100
  Sweden       8,873,052 $US    184.0 billion  $US 20,700
  Netherlands   15,892,237 $US    365.1 billion $US 23,100
  Australia   19,169,083  $US    416.2 billion  $US 22,200
  Canada    31,281,092 $US    722.3 billion $US 23,300
  United States 275,562,673 $US 9,255   billion $US 33,900

[Figures obtained from The World Factbook 2000]

So when Dr. Boardman writes in the ABS year book., ``Australia is well below advanced industrial countries in the production of high technology goods and services that constitute the fastest growing area of world trade," followed by, ``Australia, with its small population, cannot hope to mount an internationally competitive science and innovation effort in too many areas," we should pay careful attention to the contributions the nations listed above make to "the production of high technology goods", to say nothing of their contributions to basic research and high tech product development.
   Having said that, it is also of interest that the science and engineering sectors in each country, although significantly better maintained than ours, have criticised the lack of support for R&D. The promises made by the re-elected Canadian Liberal Government were a clear reaction to the criticism and warnings that were voiced in Canada; it remains to be seen how well those promises are realised.

Designating Priorities.

Determining priorities is by its very nature a hierarchical exercise, but one thing is absolute, second guessing is a certain path to mediocrity. Currently, the hot areas are information technology, genomics, proteomics, photonics, and nanotechnology. How do we know – because the rest of the world has told us. Half a dozen years ago proteomics was a glint is a few Australian researchers' eyes. Significant funds were requested, a pitiful sum was given. The result? Despite the rhetoric, Australia is in fact far behind not only efforts in the United States, but it lags pitifully behind the Swiss initiative in the field, which currently has backing well in excess of $A100 million.  The fact is that the probability of Australia reaping significant economic benefit from proteomics is very unlikely. It is in fact an exquisite example of putting the boat in the water with a couple of oars when your competition have been supplied with jet boats.

Citing another example, to say that modern experimental and theoretical physics is under represented in Australia is an understatement. Why bring that up here. Because some of the most important contributions to molecular biology have come from physicists who became proactively interested in biology. Without the contributions of physicists as well as physical chemists and mathematicians to creating the discipline of molecular biology, the fields of genomics and proteomics simply would not exist.

Scientifically and technologically it is an interdisciplinary world in which we live, and if we don't recognise it and can't cut it, perhaps we ought to collectively sell our birthright take the proceeds and move elsewhere.

What is necessary is that at the very least the so-called hard sciences should be encouraged to determine priorities within their disciplines. The approach has been applied by US astronomers and seen to be successful to the point that other basic research sectors are in the process of similar efforts. This is a far cry from imposing national priorities by government. The increasingly restrictive policy toward basic research being practiced in Australia will progressively strangle strategic and applied Australian research. Whether or not developments being foretold in the Government's policy paper Backing Australia's Ability come to fruition remains to be seen.

Alex Reisner
The Funneled Web