Death of evidence and too much meddling of government in
science
For the first time in my career, I’ve seen scientists taking
to the streets to lobby the government. These quiet behind the scenes people
aren’t normally spotted on mass in public.
http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/behind-numbers/2012/07/scientists-protest-death-evidence-parliament-hill
Given the number of scientists in
Canada, relative to that of other jobs, just to see a few in public is akin to
a mass demonstration in the oil and gas or forestry industries.
The Harper government is laying off scientists with the goal
of saving money or directing “research” into areas of company generation and
product development. This isn’t research. This is engineering new devices and products.
One of the stated reasons for doing this is that Canada has been good at creating
new knowledge, but relatively poor at protecting ideas and creating new
knowledge based industries. Solution--make the scientists do something more
akin to business, without improving job security, job satisfaction or support. Scientists
may not be working for big bucks, but they aren’t stupid. If we are going to
have to operate like a business, let’s not get into science at all—let’s just
go into business from the getgo. Also, product development is like a pyramid.
Only the tip gets developed. If you lop off the base, there are no new ideas
moving up the chain to the top and translation to product will dry up.
I find it interesting that Canada has grants for scientists
to collaborate with companies, but these grants don’t allow the scientist to be
part of the company in any way. I ask myself, why would I spend my precious research
time just to make someone else wealthy? In the USA, the SBIR grants encourage
the scientists to start their own companies. These get a lot of support.
Another aspect of the new product oriented research is the
underlaying premise that since the problem (lack of product development)
relates to science, it must be the scientists who are doing something wrong.
Hmm, this seems to be a business problem. Can we get the business people more
engaged. Can they be more accepting of the enormous risk, and the enormously long
lead times between idea and income. Canada’s business community is not keen on
supporting startup concepts. There is more of a culture of this in the USA, and
so the USA has a better track record.
One of the things that makes me particularly sad about the current
government’s plans is that they seem to look forward only a few years: perhaps
to the next election. Science looks ahead decades. As an example, it took over
20 years for the National Research Council to grow their MRI development arm
into a group that was both world class and that was beginning to spin off
companies (as requested). One of these, IMRES, makes intraoperative MRI systems
in Winnipeg. This is Canada’s most successful MR hardware company. A second,
MRITech, is just getting off the ground. Yet in the past months the NRC
announced the closure of the Institute for Biodiagnostics—the institute with
the MRI scientists who came up with these products. The government can’t change
their mind 4 years from now. All of the accumulated hardware, the buildings in
Winnipeg and the highly trained staff will be long gone. I note too that when a
scientist looses their job, they are so specialized that they often have to
leave the country to get another position. Someone else will benefit from the
years of accrued knowledge these scientist will carry with them.
I heard long ago that governments have a hard time picking
winners in business. In the case of all of these scientific layoffs, how can we
hope that the government can be making educated decisions. For a start, the
quick action is giving academic institutions only a few months to make plans to
absorb these staff. Canada is laying off
scientists across the country, and silencing them so they can’t contribute to
the international body of evidence. These policies put at risk Canada’s
academic strength in the international community, they make it harder to
recruit new good people and they send a message to young Canadians that a
career in science is not valuable.
