Hard News: Climate science and the media
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Frankly more concerned with Steven Joyce continuing to claim that the whole rail system including urban passenger services should be profitable when they aren't anywhere else in the world. Strangely enough he's not making similar noises about truckers paying for their fair share of road damage (ie: nearly all of it). Another smug suit who knows about cost but nothing much about value.
Oh, and Mike Lee has a go at putting him right about who has paid for Auckland's rail.
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3410,
Strangely enough he's not making similar noises about truckers paying for their fair share of road damage (ie: nearly all of it).
while increasing the max. tonnage again.
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Which is nothing more than a subsidy from every other road user and taxpayer to big trucking companies.
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Steven Joyce made the weird claim the other day that the new bigger longer heavier trucks that he had approved would mean fewer trucks on the road.
Does he mean that the big companies will bring in big new trucks and squeeze out all the current independent operators?
It is more likely that there will instead be a lot more trucks on the road while the railway lines alongside the roads remain underused and neglected. Until peak oil hits of course.
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Gluckman does seem to know what he's on about. As said earlier, would be nice if people were listening.
They might, if they had something to listen to.
Amount of coverage in today's Herald on the Gluckman speech: zero.
Amount of coverage on Stuff: zero. In fact, front page story yesterday afternoon on Stuff: this.
I did get the impression from Russell's write-up that this speech was a reasonably big deal? So where's the coverage?
Steven Joyce made the weird claim the other day that the new bigger longer heavier trucks that he had approved would mean fewer trucks on the road.
i have this weird memory of someone recently making the claim that bigger, heavier trucks were A Good Thing, because they created more repair work for all the road gangs and thus kept them in work.
I must have dreamt that, surely?
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JLM,
Re the bigger trucks, we live fairly close to both the railway and SH1. A few times a day, the trains go past, pulling anything up to 30 wagons and containers. Often, on the way north, those wagons are empty, being pulled back for their next load. All pulled by one loco.
It occurred to me the other day, when I was being overtaken by a monster truck going up the Kilmog, that most of the trucks going north are probably empty also. Each with their own engine and huge dose of intimidation...
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but the commissioning of the CRI review and the speedy adoption of its conclusions is something for which the current government deserves praise.
Yup I agree. Labour basically abandoned RS&T to the bureaucrats in FRST. National are paying attention and Professor Gluckman does seem to be trying to do the right things.
I don't want to seem churlish about what Professor Gluckman was saying. I get that there isn't much spare money and also that the Government might be reluctant to put more money into CRIs when they don't believe CRIs are working how they would like them to work.
I do think the changes sound good. The key shift is from seeing CRIs as a business which should make money to seeing them as RS&T institutes who generate ideas and transfer them to the relevant sector. That's a good change.
It will be hard to achieve because we've had 10-20 years of establishing CRIs as businesses and much of the management has understandably adopted that mindset. So changing management (and science staff) thinking is the biggest and most difficult task.
No there really isn't that much of a problem between Universities and CRIs. We do collaborate and quite well. Sometimes contracts take a while to get signed but the science gets done.
So all of the above is good. BUT the elephant in the room is a simple lack of funds. We simply don't invest enough money into RS&T. That means staff aren't paid really well, that mean projects are starved for resources, that mean good ideas compete with each other often to the detriment of all the ideas, that means projects have to prove their value before they get funded (which if you think about it is daft), and a whole host of other issues that simply result from not enough funds.
Our best and brightest young minds choose a career that pays better (because they can). We can't attract the best from overseas because our salaries and more importantly our funding is crap.
And the only solution to that is more funding. Everyone who is in the business actually knows that. Yes restructuring will help but not enough. Until our government actually makes the decision to increase RS&T funding, by at least double, we are simply rearranging deck chairs, yes the view will be better for a while but it won't change the underlying issue. The idea that we can do more research with less money is nonsense and always has been.
Sorry another wall of text and even more sorry that I really come across as negative about this stuff. I really will try my best to make this work as well as it can, that's a promise.
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that means projects have to prove their value before they get funded (which if you think about it is daft)
Well not necessarily. Research is often multi-staged over time, so a researcher might get a small grant or some time to explore something, and then once it looks promising might go for a larger grant to do a three year study on it to turn it into reality.
There isn't a lot of money going around so most of what there is has to go towards stuff that looks likely to work. Marsden funds are the exception, they go towards blue sky research which may or may not produce something valuable at the end.
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JLM, I think one of the biggest costs in transport is the unloading and storage at end points, which is what makes trucks a winner - this only has to happen once. With trains you've always got to get stuff to the train, and then get it back from the train. It's amazing that this cost drowns out most of the obvious efficiency of trains during the phase where the stuff is actually moving.
It's rather similar to public transport, actually. Standing around waiting for a bus or train comes at a high cost to anyone who gets paid more than a few dollars an hour. Which is, of course, most commuters.
Most assuredly, there are solutions to both problems. But first, you have to acknowledge they are problems.
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Gluckman's other speech yesterday -- to the A J Park 2010 IP Round table -- shared themes and passages with the lecture at NIWA:
Studies by the OECD show a remarkable relationship between a nation’s investment in science and innovation and productivity: nations that invest more in knowledge generation and exploitation are the most productive. While in the past it has been argued by some that this relationship reflects the fact that more productive countries can afford to undertake more RS&T, the strong international consensus amongst economists is that the causal relationship is in the other direction, namely that investment in RS&T is a strong driver innovation and productivity.
That is why despite tough economic times many nations including the UK, USA, Denmark, France , Germany, Australia, Japan, Korea, Singapore and China have in the last 12 months announced marked increases in their public investment in research, science and technology. As a whole, New Zealand spends only 1.2% of GDP on research, about half of that from the public sector, and half of that from the private sector whereas comparator nations spend somewhere between 2 and 3 times that amount.
And what has happened, at least in part because of that investment gap, Denmark’s labour productivity more than doubled while ours has risen by only 40%, Denmark’s GDP has remained well above the OECD average while ours fell from 120% of average to only 75% of average.
We need to consider why we a have such a low investment both from the public and private sectors. Of particular concern to me is the dismally low expenditure from the private sector. We need a frank and urgent national discussion on addressing this problem. At the heart of it we have a very deep cultural issue. Have we have been seduced by our national mythology – myths like the number 8 fencing wire, punching above our weight, we think New Zealand is highly innovative when the report of the OECD and the recent report from the New Zealand Institute show that we are not as good as we presume to be.
And this is interesting:
Parenthetically this type of approach drove a wedge between CRIs and industry. Collaboration suffered when CRIS become dominated by the need to capture IP at all costs. This should now change.
Recently, wearing an academic hat – I was involved in discussions with one of the world’s major pharmaceutical companies about a drug target discovery project they want to undertake. I assumed that in writing the contract they would want all the standard clauses about locking up the data, delaying publication etc.
I was surprised when they wanted the exact opposite: a contract which required that all the data be made available on a publicly accessible database as soon as it was collected. Indeed the company said they did not have any interest in actually trying to patent the targets, that is the gene sequences that emerged from this research.What they said follows: Firstly we don’t believe that natural system patenting is particularly valuable. Secondly we actually want other academics and indeed other drug companies to be working on these biological systems. The more they find out the more we know at the same time, the more we can focus our effort. We will rely on our cleverness, our ability to develop drugs against the target, our ability to develop our screening efforts, and our ability to build patents that surround the drugs and the manufacturing of those drugs to protect our position. If one looks at the move to open access software, one sees again a very different approach emerging in terms of concept in terms of open and closed innovation.
He has a lot to say. Understandably, he was pretty tired by the time he arrived at the Media7 recording, but he was good value for us too.
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Marsden funds are the exception, they go towards blue sky research which may or may not produce something valuable at the end.
I liked Martin Rees's comment that there are two kinds of research - 'applied' and 'not yet applied'.
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And after all that, Prof Gluckman's official speech notes.
ta for the link - needed it for work today and wasn't sure if the official website would have the notes up so soon.
BTW @Kyle, Prof Gluckman is definately trying to say the right things - his talks etc, and position papers are widely lauded in the universities, and we're all really hoping he's got the PM's ear. But there's the worry that its more smoke and mirrors - make the intelligentsia think we're listening to them while we slash and burn behind the scenes. The CRI Taskforce, welcomed by the universities, has the potential to spiral out into changes at the universities - and the job losses in wool science announced yesterday are NOT what the economy needs. In five years time, when we want high-performing materials to sell to the world, who will design them for us?
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There isn't a lot of money going around so most of what there is has to go towards stuff that looks likely to work.
Kyle I find this kind of statement scary. This is the kind of logic that led FRST to where it is today, they stopped assessing quality of science (mostly) and tried instead to pick projects that would succeed in increasing NZs wealth. Which is laudable. But it hasn't worked.
That's why I would shy away from trying to pick success. Instead I would focus on picking quality of science. All the while being aware that high quality science is also high risk and hence will often fail.
Marsden doesn't fund "blue-sky" research, that is a misconception. Marsden simply says the only criteria we will use to select is the quality of the science. Marsden make (almost) no judgement of where that science might lead. So applied science if it was very high quality could get Marsden funding as well.
It turns out that Marsden funded science is actually pretty good at generating ideas and discoveries that lead to patents and commercial ideas.
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ta for the link - needed it for work today and wasn't sure if the official website would have the notes up so soon
Iz on the Twitterz:
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Russell said
And yes, the losers from the change are probably the universities.
And Lucy said
More specifically: those who are research-only staff at universities, whose livelihoods are dependent year-to-year on the grants they can get. Less money floating around, more people dropping out of research altogether - and there's a lot less money floating around right now, and maybe less, if more goes to the CRIs.
But it shouldn't be that way. Back in the day the DSIR actually paid Universities to do some of the research, because some of the university labs were better at it. The competitive funding model damaged that relationship. But the biggest damage was the idea that because we were plucky kiwis we could do better science with less money so the government stopped increasing the money in RS&T. As the pool got smaller and smaller the competition got more and more vicious. Universities fought to get access to traditionally DSIR money CRIs fought to get access to vote education. And everyone suffered.
The changes proposed will help but the most important change that needs to happen is that the pool of money for science needs to get bigger ... a lot bigger, 2 to 3 times bigger just to get us to the average of OECD and if we want to lead the world ...
My hope is that after seeing some sign that the changes to the CRIs and the system have improved the structure then the government will say "yes now you've got it right we'll give you more money". As John Kirwan says "you've got to have hope".
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Thank you for the well-informed discussion (now to find time to read those Gluckman speeches).
that means projects have to prove their value before they get funded (which if you think about it is daft)
Sounds all too familiar from other fields: you are expected to provide the business case before the underpinning work you are proposing has been done. Without any resources. So what do you know, only the largest most risk-averse established organisations can afford to apply. The Digital Strategy "Community" Partnership Fund was one such disappointing instance.
A lot of it seems to come down to those making the decisions not being good enough at assessing risk and potential and so setting the process up to offload that onto applicants.
We seem to refuse to embrace fast and reflective failure as an essential part of innovation in any field. Someone needs to underwrite healthy failure, but the system must also support it and ensure learnings are shared widely so everyone's performance and potiential is improved. It must be welcomed and understood by all participants and become part of the culture.
Well not necessarily. Research is often multi-staged over time, so a researcher might get a small grant or some time to explore something, and then once it looks promising might go for a larger grant to do a three year study on it to turn it into reality.
Good. I'm a fan of the resourced multi-stage approach used in some business innovation, where from a quick proposal stage (not three year risk and budget forecasts), the shortlisted entrants all get seed funding to progress their application to the next detailed proposal stage, as well as access to specialised support services for that.
Expert hand-holding helps make sure attention is paid to other factors like quality and sound partnering between organisations with different mandates and motivations including business and community.
I'd like to see that type of approach applied more to other fields like science and public policy, with suitable experts involved in assessment (which is a part that I think science probably gets right already, though I'm open to correction). We can not afford to have researchers and other workers spending most of their valuable time writing detailed applications.
I wonder if this approach might also be more attractive (staged risk and investment) to our laggard private sector?
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Iz on the Twitterz
Yay. Followd
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the pool of money for science needs to get bigger
And most of the increase should come from the private sector by world standards. How do we make that happen?
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That's why I would shy away from trying to pick success. Instead I would focus on picking quality of science. All the while being aware that high quality science is also high risk and hence will often fail.
Totally. It's high risk, high return stuff. So long as there's investment in enough different things, the overall return should remain high, but the risk drops.
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This is the kind of logic that led FRST to where it is today, they stopped assessing quality of science (mostly) and tried instead to pick projects that would succeed in increasing NZs wealth. Which is laudable. But it hasn't worked.
I didn't say anything about wealth, I said 'likely to work'.
That is, the assessment that determines who gets money in the NZ research environment is pretty harsh, and proposals have to meet a high standard of 'looking likely to lead to something significant', because the funding is limited.
It's the nature of a limited pool, if proposals are at all ranked in terms of quality, then you have to be pretty high quality to get funded.
Most of the academics I have anything to do with get Marsdens, and much of their research has zero possible financial implications, they still have to be able to prove that they're likely to turn out something good at the other end.
Marsden doesn't fund "blue-sky" research, that is a misconception. Marsden simply says the only criteria we will use to select is the quality of the science. Marsden make (almost) no judgement of where that science might lead. So applied science if it was very high quality could get Marsden funding as well.
I didn't say "only funds blue sky", I said it funds blue sky research. A fair chunk of its money does indeed not go to blue sky research, but if that's your research field, it's the only large fund in NZ to go for for many researchers.
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the pool of money for science needs to get bigger
And most of the increase should come from the private sector by world standards. How do we make that happen?
Yeah that's what the government has been saying for about 20 years.
And yes our private sector RS&T investment is low. But our Government funded RS&T is still less than half that of the OECD average! So yeah sure it's fine for the government to say the private sector should step up. But it doesn't abrogate the governments failure to support science in New Zealand.
The governments of New Zealand have for the last 20 years or more chosen to stop spending money in RS&T. That is something we are paying for now with reduced productivity and lower GDP. Blaming the private sector is cheap politics.
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Regarding failures.
Professor Gluckman made that point as well. We need to stop demanding every project succeed. Failure should be expected and accepted if you are doing high risk work. If you never fail you probably aren't trying hard enough.
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And most of the increase should come from the private sector by world standards. How do we make that happen?
But this is part of the problem, not the solution. Independent research requires funding without the vested interest and conflict of interest that now controls the budgets of most university based R & D. I've seen first hand where the response to a suggestion for new research was rejected because it could compromise an existing Patent application, and cost a University research money. Is this research for the sake of research, or universities being exploited by unscrupulous Global Corporates because they get inadequate funding from the public purse?
As Gluckman mentioned, or was it Russell, anyway, in Singapore for example the A*STAR makes it's investment money available for innovative research in health and High Tech fields. Sure they may benefit from some great discovery at some stage, but some of the motivation and requests for tenders are as broad as 'Cancer'.
The Agency for Science, Technology and Research of Singapore (A*STAR) and the Health Research Council of New Zealand (HRC) seek to allocate funds to enable research teams from Singapore and New Zealand to conduct collaborative research into cancer.
A total funding pool of up to approximately NZD$1.8M (exclusive of GST) is available through the HRC’s International Investment Opportunities Fund (Objective 2) and A*STAR for this joint initiative.
From Gets.
There is some un-sullied money out there, but it is the exception, not the rule, IMhO. The private sector hasn't done a great job of allocating money to areas of greatest public need, but certainly of greatest profit potential. Is that science, or marketing?
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JLM,
Hi Ben, you mean solutions such as this one?
(Kiwirail ink refers to building of logging loading facilities at Tangawai)http://preview.tinyurl.com/22p2xej
Can't remember where, but I'm sure I heard recently that it had already paid for itself.
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And yes our private sector RS&T investment is low. But our Government funded RS&T is still less than half that of the OECD average! So yeah sure it's fine for the government to say the private sector should step up. But it doesn't abrogate the governments failure to support science in New Zealand.
You could kill both those birds with one stone through a R&D tax credit. Both govt and the private sector would be contributing.
Oh wait...
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