Opinion- 14 April 2005 |
Lies, Damned Lies and 223 Extra Statisticians |
The
Australian Government’s Innovation Report
for 2004-05
is just out. Its executive summary will make uplifting bedtime reading for
the nation's scientists and engineers, who apparently have seldom had it so
good.
How fortunate we are to live in a country where science and technology are so
healthy. "Numerous government agencies are reporting progress in achieving
long-term strategic research [goals], often in areas of public good," observes
the Innovation Report's executive summary. "The Australian Government invests in
human capital at every level, including schools and the higher education
system." From 2000 to 2002, Australia's higher education expenditure on research
and development increased by 23%. Investment by business in university
research shot up by 29%. The decline in participation by school students in
science subjects, which dates "from 1976" and so is not the government's fault,
is today "partly offset by increasing participation in other sciences, such as
psychology." Indeed, according to the executive summary, in our universities
"the number of science and engineering graduates rose rapidly as a percentage of
total graduates over the last few years."
However, if you want to know what is really going on you'll have to dig another
80 to 100 pages deeper into the Report, and dissect the data and graphs. There
you'll find a very different story. In fact, "the fall in numbers of [school]
students undertaking specialised mathematics and science subjects in senior
years is a cause for concern." You'll wonder how the rapid rise in numbers of
science and engineering graduates, noted in the previous paragraph, sits with
the "decline in the proportion of year 12 students, and participation at the
undergraduate level in university, in the physical sciences... [This] suggests
that the long-term sustainability of Australia’s skills base in the enabling
sciences could be under pressure."
Moreover, you'll discover that by 2002, "participation (as a proportion of total
year 12 enrolments) in both physics and chemistry had fallen to below 20 per
cent (17 per cent for chemistry and 16 per cent for physics)." See the Figure
above.
You'll notice too that whoever wrote the executive summary missed the fact that
in science and engineering, "PhD graduates as a proportion of total PhD
graduates have dropped from 46.9% in 1989 to 37.2% in 2002." That's a fall of
20%, during a period where Australia became more reliant on technology than ever
before. It's very hard to reconcile such negative data with the executive
summary's upbeat report on "strengthening our ability to undertake research,
accelerating the commercial application of ideas [and] developing and retaining
Australian skills."
You could well wonder how such misrepresentation of data was possible, given
Australia's "net gain" of "223 mathematicians, statisticians and actuaries."
Some of the more creative of these must have been put to work by DEST. However,
you'd realise that those net-gain data are based on nothing more reliable than
jottings on arrival cards at Australian airports. In fact, the shortfall of
statisticians in Australia is so acute that it provoked a recent, DEST-backed
enquiry by the Statistical Society of Australia. (The enquiry has still to
report.)
You might conclude that the Innovation Report's executive summary puts a
disingenuous, selective spin on data that the body of the Report correctly
labels as causes for concern. And you could wonder why your tax dollars
were spent on that exercise.
Professor
Peter Hall is at the
Mathematical Sciences Institute, The Australian National University,
Canberra