the future of science
Science in New Zealand, say a number of leading New Zealand scientists, is dying.
We're losing our good people (and their big brains) to more supportive overseas countries and we are the poorer for it. The reason, apparently, is that New Zealand scientists are being increasingly driven to demonstrate short-term commercial applications for their research. No profit in the immediate future? No funding.
The scientists are understandably growing weary of this approach. They point to many of the world's great scientific discoveries and the many years of research that preceded them. They claim, quite rightly, that many commercially successful applications of scientific discoveries were the result of serendipity; the product of true scientific exploration and not some profit-driven linear process.
Play-Doh, fireworks, Saccharin, Post-it notes and microwaves. All discovered by accident by scientists doing what scientists should do - experimenting and exploring. Focus purely on short-term profit motives, they assert, and you can kiss real discovery and scientific progress good-bye.
The funding bodies, one imagines, are sympathetic. They do tend to be staffed by people, who have an affinity for science after all, and not merely 'policy wonks' or 'bean counters'. They seek to balance scientific 'purity' with political and economic imperatives.
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