Disclaimer: Mentioning Lysenko is perhaps the scientific equivalent of Godwin’s law but, for the recent arrivals to the party, I enjoyed this article from the Conversation: https://theconversation.com/the-tragic-story-of-soviet-genetics-shows-the-folly-of-political-meddling-in-science-72580
MBIE is busily rounding up all the decision-making in administering science funding. The Marsden Funding has been taken off the Marsden Council and the Health Research Council Funding is being taken off the Health Research Council, only delayed because, in what seems an inexplicable failure of core expertise, MBIE Science and Innovation is totally incapable of getting legislation passed (see the GM Bill, the PRO Act, dissolution of Callaghan Innovation, and merger of the Metservice with NIWA – no, now Earth Sciences NZ the new PRO that’s still really a CRI until the new leg…FFS…sorry, you lost me there for a moment: back to the subject at hand.)
This rounding up of decision-making is being done in the name of ‘simplicity’ and aligning with ‘Strategy’ and absolutely not by way of a Ministerial power grab. And it absolutely, absolutely, is not so the Minister doesn’t get bothered by the Tix Player’s Onion about funding projects that have ‘Lesbian’ or indeed ‘M?ori’ in the title or abstract, stamping out humanities research seemingly not having done the job.
Keeping individual research funding decisions away from the political process is vitally important. The political time frame is too short and the political enthusiasm for wishful thinking is too high, not to mention lack of enthusiasm for research that gives the ‘wrong’ answer, to make good research investment decisions. Independence and expertise matter. Research costs a lot of money, takes a long time, and is subject to the laws of nature which are not amenable to that political wishful thinking. The two billion odd dollars that the New Zealand Government spends on research is quite a chunk of money to waste chasing politically popular unicorns, and, given that the time from discovery to research is some 30 years, it’s even more wasteful if we spend three years running after green ones and the next three years after blue. If you want to know what this looks like you can ask the people of Taranaki about Are Ake, New Zealand’s Energy Innovation Centre.
Ultimately New Zealand needs to invest in research to build knowledge that will benefit us in the long term, not research that fits the current government agenda.
And so, decision making is not being put directly in the hands of MBIE, but in the totally independent hands of Research Funding New Zealand. RFNZ is a group of very smart, very capable and experienced people who I am sure understand the issues as well as anybody and I am equally sure they will do their best. But I am worried for them. I can’t see how the current structure even remotely allows for any independence. RFNZ won’t have the resources of time or independent staff to drive their decision making. The whole of the process from writing the Gazette Notice from Cabinet authorising the spend of the funds through to the way proposals are assessed (currently a maximum of three ANZRIC and the =AVERAGE function in Excel) are managed by MBIE. All the information flowing to RFNZ will be via MBIE staff. They will write the documents.
In its report the Science System Advisory Council recommended that:
“The Marsden Fund, the Endeavour Fund, the Catalyst Fund, the Health Research Council (HRC), and other contestable or allocative Crown funds (including components of the Strategic Science Investment Fund (SSIF)) are merged into a single National Research Council (NRC). The NRC assumes the role of balancing different types of research investment to allocate available funding across individuals and research programmes.”
And in the detail said:
“The governance of the NRC is critical. It needs an experienced and astute governance board. Its Board must have highly respected individuals who understand the scope of public research and its potential. A mix of academics and innovation leaders is needed.”
In amongst the general cherry picking and lip-service in implementing the SSAG recommendations we lost the NRC but kept the board [and sorry, not wholly central to my argument here, SSAG also pointed out “The most obvious downside of having a single funding agency would be if the Crown mistook this merger as a reason to shift the balance of research investment to the innovation end of the spectrum at the expense of discovery science, perhaps in response to an understandable but misplaced desire to see a faster payoffs to research.”]
An unresourced oversight board, no matter how competent, experienced and astute, cannot manage a whole funding system. New Zealand needs an independent research funding body, like Ireland’s, Denmark’s, Finland’s or Australia’s. RFNZ would make a very good board for it, but they need the machinery fully in their hands or they will just be window dressing, desperate to show some sort of impact without the ability to make it stick.
Epilogue
And then this. I got busy and as this was piece waiting for attention, I got an email from MBIE telling me that, as well as the Sector Investment Plan, as advised earlier (already published so we can match proposals up with the opportunities presented), the priorities and investment signals in the Pillar Investment Plans (soon to be published, although a little later than promised) will be taken into account in assessing this year’s proposals for research funding. On the advice of RFNZ to the Minister.
We need to do this at the last minute in a transition funding year? To respond to documents that are not out (officially – I’m looking forward to them BTW) in the middle of a process that has had the initial round of assessment dropped on the institutions at their time and cost, in a falling real funding environment, as institutions are reorganised, as deadlines shift around us, and Gazette notices announcing further Gazette Notices accumulate in our Downloads folders? No, we don’t.
And the fact that anyone thinks this is a good idea, and thinks a grant proposal can be rewritten to meet new priorities in a few weeks shows a real problem: a disconnect in the reality between the proposal and the work. Sure, I can rewrite a proposal for a team to reflect new priorities in a day or two. Can they put in place the new connections and expertise to make the work meet those priorities? Will we waste a lot of money and time that could have produced useful results to meet a few Copilot derived buzz words?
I’ll leave that with you.
