I found this article interesting. Thought, I'd throw it out there for discussion. I don't buy all of it, but perhaps its a valid question to ask whether the scientific community should expect constant ever-increasing funding even in times of scarcity.
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PUBLICATION: National Post
DATE: 2009.05.14
EDITION: National
SECTION: Issues & Ideas
PAGE: A21
ILLUSTRATION: Black & White Photo: Reuters /;
BYLINE: Michael Bliss
SOURCE: National Post
WORD COUNT: 913
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Beggars in lab coats; Canadian scientists are politicizing research in a way that could come back to haunt them
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The government of Canada and elements of our scientific community are embroiled in a nasty little struggle about the future of research support, which seems likely to produce only losers.
Ever since the budget was announced in January, we have been treated to media stories retailing scientists' complaints about the impact of receiving less support than was expected. First we were told that genomic research is not being adequately funded. Then we heard about scientists having to shut down programs, about scientists deciding to move to the United States -- where the free-spending Obama administration is pouring billions more dollars into scientific research of all kinds. Some 2,000 scientists signed a petition asking Ottawa for more money. In passing, The Globe and Mail -- in which most of these stories had heavy play -- gave front-page coverage to a nasty bit of "gotcha" journalism implying that our Minister of State for Science and Technology, Gary Goodyear, may not believe in evolution -- in other words, he must be an anti-science dumbbell.
Other stakeholders in Canadian science policy, beginning with the board of Genome Canada, have countered these stories by pointing out that Ottawa's current restraint in funding our major granting agencies (the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council and the Humanities and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council) is quantitatively gentle, and has been far more than balanced by increases in support for research infrastructure inside and outside our universities, and by billions spent on new programs to try to foster applications of research that will actually benefit the Canadian economy and human beings around the world. At a time of serious recession, it's surely not unreasonable to begin to use our research capacity in more focused, more targeted, more practical ways.
The problem seems to be that a fairly powerful coalition of pure scientists -- who resist any attempt to steer the direction of research -- plus disappointed grant applicants, plus a handful of scientific superstars willing to auction themselves to the highest bidding government, is trying fairly transparently to manipulate public reverence for science to bring pressure on Ottawa to abandon its priorities and just spend more and more. If the Americans are spending big bucks on big science why can't Canada?
A campaign like this politicizes research in a way that will harm Canadian scientists in the long term. It seems to reflect an over-developed sense of entitlement (akin to that demonstrated by the arts community in Quebec in the last election), and an unwillingness to accept restraint at a time when millions of Canadians are having to adjust to straightened circumstances. Add the anger and offence created by the use of threats and slurs and other bare-knuckle lobbying tactics, and the danger is that politicians, instead of caving in, will respond by washing their hands of Canada's science community.
Ottawa's spending on scientific research is not likely to affect Canadian voters one way or another. An annoyed government, however, that comes to believe that the science community is insatiable and unreasonable, can wreak serious long-term damage on its critics. We saw this happen with medical research in the early 1990s, when Liberal Ottawa became convinced that the old Medical Research Council of Canada was a mouthpiece for researchers with their hands always out and little notion of gratitude for years of support with other people's money. It took years of patient lobbying, and a sea change in medical researchers' attitudes, before the government altered course and signed on to the ambitions of the new Canadian Institutes of Health Research.
Canada will never be the United States when it comes to spending for research. Especially not at a time when American granting generosity is part of what much of the world, and certainly Canadians, see as the U. S. government's propensity for reckless public spending that may well be endangering the future for generations to come.
By and large, Canadian researchers have not had a bad inning in recent years. Some observers think that the research community has actually had an easy ride, never having been forced to show exactly what benefits are being generated for the Canadian people by the money given researchers. If the government of Canada ever decided, for example, that this country should lead the world in demanding hard accountability from researchers who live off taxpayers' largesse, today's discontents would seem like extremely small beer.
It's time that responsible leaders of the Canadian science and research communities began thinking of ways to cool down their more hot-headed colleagues. The strategy of declaring war on a government because some of its policies are temporarily inconvenient and vexatious can generate cheap short-term applause and support in some quarters, but in the long run tags its adherents as unreliable and unworthy, or worse. Eventually doors get shut in their faces, and/or they're left to wither on the vine.
It's a sad way to tarnish what often has been and still could be one of the success stories of Canadian public policy.
-Michael Bliss is University Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto.
