Wellington
There’s only one word really to describe the winners of the National Science Challenge –'wow' writ small.
Or, perhaps it is just me that is completely underwhelmed by the announcement of 10 researchareas that can comfortably be binned as business as usual.
Though, pity the team tasked with coming up with an overview of the NSC considering there wereonly 200 entries from greater New Zealand on where and what we should research.
Right from the get-go the challenge lacked direction, had a sort of what is it all aboutnon-rationale.
As chairman of the NSC, the prime minister’s chief science adviser Sir Peter Gluckman isobliged to put a positive spin on the challenge.
As he
“The intent is to invigorate the science system, allowing it tobecome more collaborative and strategic in its approach.”
As the Tui billboardssay,
‘Yeh, right’
But firstly, a reminder of the challengesselected.
They’re all worthy, but.
The trouble is, they’re just another ad-hoc add-on to a science and innovation system that hasno clear idea of what we, NZ Inc, are trying to do, or of what particular piece(s) of a very largepie we should/could concentrate on.
At the same time (and I appreciate this is dirty-type talk) – these challenges don’t addresswhere and how are we going to make more money for our country by clever use of R&D, and takingsuch new products and services to market?
There’s no connectedness between science and the economic health of our country. It means therea lack of relationships and countrywide partnering linking everything.
The NSC will achieve nothing. The public will have no more engagement with science, business isnone the wiser, scientists will simply keep on keeping on.
Amongst comment, from my point of view, the best came from Prof Shaun Hendy – who wascourageous enough to call a whole lot of nothing exactly that. Shaun’s a professor at VictoriaUniversity’s School of Chemical and Physical Sciences, as well as deputy director of theMacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology. He also a regular answer-provider onNational Radio’s evening show. Original story is
"Of the 10 science challenges selected, only one really addresses one of the keyeconomic challenges our country faces: namely the over-dependence of our economy on the primarysector," he said.
"Our government invests far less in physical sciences and engineering than those of other smalladvanced economies, leaving our economy perilously exposed to volatile commodity markets."
Having one of the challenges "simply aimed at making better use of physical science andengineering research is disappointing, given that we have just created a new organisation, CallaghanInnovation, to do exactly this",
Prof Hendy said.
Exactly.
We have MBIE, Callaghan Innovation, the Marsden Fund, these challenges – but no clear idea ofwhat we’re doing.
Certainly is business as usual.