The Roles of the Australian Academy of Science

 

Following is part of the Australian Academy of Science's (AAS) self description.

The Australian Academy of Science was founded in 1954... with physicist Sir Mark Oliphant as founding President. It was granted a Royal Charter establishing the Academy as an independent body but with government endorsement.

...It receives government grants towards its activities but has no statutory obligation to government.

 

The objectives of the Academy are to promote science through a range of activities. It has defined four major program areas:

• recognition of outstanding contributions to science

• education and public awareness

• science policy

• international relations

Over the past several years while the AAS has continued to realize the first and fourth of its stated objectives ably, it has been less than satisfactory in fostering scientific education, or the public awareness of science (and its importance) or in contributing usefully --certainly not powerfully -- to science policy.

It would seem reasonable to assume that when an organisation states It receives government grants towards its activities but has no statutory obligation to government, the resources provided to it originate from the Australian population (or at least the tax-paying part of it) and it is incumbent on the AAS to act without fear or favour in pursuing its stated objectives.

While still president of the AAS, Brian Anderson, an electrical engineer and Director of ANU's Research School of Information Sciences and Engineering, wrote in 2001 in The Australian "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."

 And in May 2002 in his valedictory to the Fellows of the Australian Academy of Science he closed with the following admonition.

Once upon a time in Australia, we had special bodies between the government and the universities, bodies with a very good knowledge of the sector because they were informed by part-time membership of their councils, and they were bodies which had decision-making power over the budgets for universities. Some time ago, that decision-making power was moved into the normal government structure. More recently, all the advisory mechanisms were swept away. Further, the number of people within the government structure oversighting the university sector shrank. The result has been a collapse of expertise, and this needs to be reversed.

It has also led to the use of a formulaic approach to funding which Lord Robert May, one of our Fellows... and currently President of the Royal Society, described as "daft". As you know, if University A produces two PhDs who go to MIT and Oxford as postdocs, and University B produces four who get jobs as taxi drivers, University A receives half the money that University B receives. And if University A has a professor who wins a Nobel prize and writes two papers, and University B has a professor who writes four papers, even four papers in a journal with very low impact factor, University A again gets half the money. It may sound very simple for universities to feed a bunch of numbers into a government computer, and have that computer print the cheque for the minister to sign, and it may mean that the salaries expended on directly supervising the university sector are at a record low in real terms. But it does not mean that the expenditure on the university sector is the wiser for it, or the country is better off. We must ensure that in the future, whether or not the university sector is to be run from a single government department rather than at least in part being returned to the States, that government department is not allowed to metaphorically stuff its fingers in its ears, and to use mechanistic formulae for funding which produce counterproductive behaviour in the universities.

Fellows of the Academy are blessed with a formidable array of talents. Many of them accept the challenge to put themselves at the disposal of their colleagues and fellow citizens. There is a particular challenge in front of us all at the moment, and that is to produce a set of outcomes in the forthcoming debate on universities which will not disenfranchise the less talented, the less politically astute, the less vocal and so on. Rather, we must be seeking the right outcome for all of Australia. But the right outcome does include a system that recognises, sustains and indeed rewards individual and institutional excellence, to a significantly greater degree than we have seen in recent years.

In the subsequent four years to May 5, 2006 the presidency of the academy was held by molecular geneticist Jim Peacock. During that time the Academy did next to nothing in making its voice heard in any debates in regard to the points raised by Professor Anderson.  It has of course dutifully made submissions to the various reviews instituted by the Minister for Education, Science and Training, but in so far as being a strong public advocate in support of rebuilding Australia's infrastructure for fundamental research, for meaningfully upgrading the teaching of science and mathematics in primary, but more importantly, in the secondary public schools, and in redressing the decline in teaching and research in mathematics and the enabling sciences at the tertiary level, a virtual Iron Curtain has been drawn between the Academy and the public.

And it is noteworthy that in his valedictory Dr Peacock was pointed in remarking:

Chief Scientist and immediate past AAS president, Dr Jim Peacock Tomorrow... marks the end of my four-year term as President of the Academy of Science. It is the custom for Presidents, when they come to the end of their terms to use this, the final Presidential Address, to give the government of the day some strong advice on science policy; a parting shot across the bows, as it were. So I thought that rather than spend this morning’s address telling politicians what to do, it might be more useful to reflect on what we, as an Academy of eminent Australian scientists, can do to contribute to the socioeconomic and environmental well-being of this nation. In order to better understand those areas where the Academy truly can make a difference, I’ll recount some of the Academy’s activities during the past four years of my Presidency. I’ll highlight some of those things we’ve done well and identify a couple of areas where I think we might do better. As The Sydney Morning Herald's Deborah Smith tells it, the Prime Minister, John Howard, once told Nobel Laureate, Peter Doherty that if you want to effect political decisions you should voice your concerns publicly.

Of course there is no requirement for the two to be mutually exclusive, but in any case there followed a digest of what Dr Peacock sees as his and the Academy's accomplishments during his tenure as president.

At the head of the list came:

As the President you have many national responsibilities, particularly in the area of communicating science based positions relevant to policy at the federal and even at the state level, and in presenting issues for public discussion. One such issue put forward by ourselves and the technical science academy recently was the discussion of the place of nuclear power in the global effort to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

So far as we know the proposition of performing a critical assessment in comparing and contrasting the utility to Australia of the development of renewable sources of energy as well as geothermal sources was not proposed. For example it might be interesting to air a series of public debates sponsored by the Academy. Perhaps something the newly installed president, Kurt Lambeck, Professor of Geophysics at the Australian National University might consider, regardless of any initiatives instituted by the Coalition government.

Incidentally, in the column that Julian Cribb, adjunct professor of science communication at UTS, writes for The Australian he quotes Dr Peacock, in his capacity as Australia's Chief Scientist, "There is enough evidence that Australians are interesting in science, but I think that we, the scientists, still need to explain better what we are doing. why we're doing it and why or how it is important. Public communication about science is another key for Australia."

Presumably we may now look forward to the Chief Scientist leading from the front.

A few days after Professor Lambeck took over the presidency of the AAS he said

New President of the AAS, Kurt Lambeck in front of the Academy's Shine Dome.

I will be working hard during the next four years to advance science at all levels – through school programs, at universities and, importantly, in the development of the careers of Australia’s young scientists.

Over recent years the Academy has expanded its policy advice to government. This needs to continue but at the same time we have to ensure that we maintain our independence.

I will be pursuing a personal interest in promoting Australian science in the international scientific arena and putting science into Australia’s foreign policy. Science is a global entity and Australia needs to expand its presence in international science to secure our social, economic and environmental future.

If nothing else, Professor Lambeck has hit the presidential turf running.

On May 10 following the Treasurer Peter Costello's delivery of the 2006-07 budget, the new president of the AAS told the ABC's Anna Sallah,  "As far as the medical research part [of the budget] is concerned I'd probably give it an 'A minus', But other than medical there's really nothing in it that I can find.
    "In particular what I find disappointing is that there is no long-term investment in people."
 

And he went on to say the new health and medical research fellowships may help stop the brain drain at the elite level, [but] there is still a major problem for most research scientists once they finish their PhD and post-doctoral training. Expenditure on infrastructure is one thing, says Lambeck: "But is it going to provide the intellect to drive that infrastructure?"

He says there should have been increased funding specifically for mid-career researchers, to provide the transition from the post-doctoral fellowships to long-term commitments.

The new AAS president was equally blunt talking to The Australian's Leigh Dayton, "I've been looking for anything in the rest of the sciences (besides medical research). I can't find it. For instance, where is the career path for researchers? How can we be competitive if we're not training our people? This must be addressed in the coming year."

And he pointed out that the new Early Stage Venture Capital Limited Partnership - geared to small innovators - would not bridge the gap from "research laboratories to something companies can pick up".

Having begun to talk the talk it remains to be seen whether he will walk the walk.

It might be an interesting exercise for the Academy to survey the Australian public to determine what percentage can recall ever having heard of the Australian Academy of Science, and then to determine what those who have think it does.

Just a passing thought.