You have to applaud our scientific institutions for how they have risen to the challenges thrown at us by the coronavirus pandemic.
Crown Research Institute ESR has done a great job with lab diagnostics, waste water testing and surveillance for Covid-19. The vaccine alliance, led by the Malaghan Institute’s Professor Graham Le Gros, has made enough progress to begin trialling a Kiwi-made vaccine booster shot early next year.
Our universities have stepped up to offer valuable virus modelling and public health research and advice. The response to this crisis and previous ones – including the Christchurch earthquake and the Rena oil spill – show the country’s science capability can serve us well when we most need it.
But the Government’s latest snapshot of the science sector, released last week, flags some worrying issues. We still lag most other small advanced nations in spending on research and development. Our scientific workforce is fragile and not very diverse.
“I’m not going to sugarcoat the areas we can improve on,” research, science and innovation minister Dr Megan Woods admitted last week, pointing out that our system is not geared up to quickly adapt to changing priorities.
There are glaring examples of this everywhere. Our R&D efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are fragmented and underfunded. We should be a leader in genetic-based technologies, but a lack of strategic direction and our distaste for genetic modification has seen us largely miss out on the biotech boom.
Our science isn’t living up to its potential and the Government knows it. It has long planned a revamp and its Te Ara Paerangi Future Pathways green paper released last week is the start of that process.
The elephant in the room will be the status of the Crown Research Institutes (CRIs) that were created 30 years ago. It has never been entirely clear whether their priority is to make money or undertake cutting-edge research.
“This creates a tension and a strong focus on individual CRIs’ commercial performance that may impede collaborations that would contribute to the national benefit,” the green paper notes.
Our core research infrastructure, such as laboratories and crucial databases and collections have suffered from a lack of investment and support. Our Centres of Research Excellence at least get Government funding, but many researchers have to constantly hustle to win grants and private funding to stay afloat. Expensive projects, such as the National Science Challenges, need a serious rethink.
Our workforce development is lacklustre. Early career researchers, in particular, face a precarious existence. We are losing some of our best scientific minds to better-paying jobs and more prestigious institutions overseas.
Ultimately, the pot of money we devote to science isn’t big enough. Politically, it’s a tough ask to increase it when there are so many problems to fix. But without doing science in a smarter way, we’ll fall further behind anyway.
What we need then is not a reshuffling of the deck chairs. We have an opportunity to reimagine a science system that will help us address the challenges and opportunities ahead.
Originally published on stuff.co.nz
PETER GRIFFIN 