The following Letter to the Editor in regard to "A Nation Worth Defending" is reprinted from  Australasian Science, June 2003 with permission.

There is a body of independent, reliable and easily accessible information about Australia's research performance that, on any objective interpretation, comprehensively negates the alarmist views presented by Dr Alex Reisner (AS, April 2003, p.43). Dr Reisner refers to a claim by the Group of Eight Universities that "support for Australia's R&D sector will decline to 1.39% of GDP by 2005–06, compared with the OECD predicted weighted average of 2.45%".

In fact, the OECD does not make predictions about the likely future R&D intensities (total public and private expenditure on R&D expressed as a percentage of GDP) of its individual member countries or the OECD as a whole. The research intensity of the OECD as a whole has barely changed in the past 15 years. It rose from 1.95% of GDP in 1981 to 2.26% of GDP in 1985, and was 2.24% of GDP in 2000, the most recent year for which comparable statistics are available.

According to material on the Group of Eight Universities web site, its 2005–06 projection for Australia is based on the assumption of no real future growth in business expenditure on R&D. This is an unrealistic assumption. Over the period from 1981–82 to 2000–01 Australia's business expenditure on R&D in real terms (expressed in constant 1995 US dollars and purchasing power parities as provided in OECD statistics) increased at an average annual compound rate of 9.5%, compared with 4.4% for the OECD as a whole. Through Backing Australia's Ability the government put in place in 2001 enhanced R&D Tax Concession measures and venture capital initiatives to further foster business expenditure on R&D.

Australia's research intensity has increased from 0.95% of GDP in 1981–82 to 1.53% in 2000–01. It is reasonable to expect that Australia will further converge on the OECD average in the years ahead taking into account the business R&D initiatives outlined above and the continued growth of government support for R&D under Backing Australia's Ability more generally.

Dr Reisner claims that "a table recently published by the US National Science Board shows a worrisome decline in the importance, relative to population size, of our scientific literature over the past decade. In 1990 we ranked ninth in the world. By 1999 we had slipped to 14th."

In fact the table referred to, in the National Science Board's Science and Engineering Indicators 2002, does not show an index relative to population size. It is a relative citation index, which is the ratio of a country's average citations per publication, to the world average citations per publication. Australia's index is shown as being 0.94 in 1990, 0.84 in 1994, and 0.87 in 1999.

Another time trend published by the Australian Academy of Science in 2001 using the Institute for Scientific Information's National Science Indicators database showed that Australia's index remained largely unchanged at around 1.0 between 1981 and 1999. In other words, the results of such studies depend on the methodology used, and the full range of available information needs to be carefully considered before any conclusions are drawn.

Finally, Dr Reisner has claimed that there has been an alarming decline in the staffing of the enabling sciences (mathematics, physics and chemistry) during the tenure of the Coalition government. Again, Dr Reisner's claims are not consistent with the facts.

Australian Bureau of Statistics surveys of the number of academic researchers in Australian universities show that (in terms of person-years engaged in research):

        •   in mathematics the number fell from 404 in year 1994 to 317 in 2000;

        •   in physical sciences the number rose from 398 to 414; and

        •   in chemical sciences the number rose from 436 to 480.

As the surveys are taken each two years, 1994 is the closest year prior to the tenure of the Coalition government for which statistics are available, and 2000 is the most recent year for which statistics are available. Clearly numbers in individual disciplines will fluctuate but there is no evidence of a systemic decline across the three disciplines.

Informed debate on Australia's science and innovation funding and performance is to be encouraged. However, the case for greater public funding for research in Australia is discredited, not advanced, by strident claims based on inaccurate or selective use of statistics.

Peter McGauran is Federal Minister for Science.