KEY POINTS:
To study a field of knowledge no holds barred, to explore freely without an end goal in sight, is a coveted privilege enjoyed by a select few in New Zealand.
But while most agree "blue skies" research is an essential component of scientific endeavour _ the path from which new knowledge comes _ it's a practice increasingly under threat.
So say 460 of the country's top brains in an open letter to the Minister of Science pleading for a trebling of the Marsden Fund dedicated to basic research.
The scientists are exercised by the large number of promising new researchers turned down year after year. The fund has a disheartening 90-93 per cent failure rate. In 2007 just 93 out of 910 proposals received a share of the $44 million dished out. A trebling to around $120 million would fund 20-25 per cent of applicants, and would attract back the disillusioned.
"The current success rate of around 7 per cent is killing the New Zealand research flower at the seed-planting stage," said Professor Peter Hunter, founder of Auckland's Bioengineering Institute and a signatory to the letter.
Professor Hunter, who has assessed Marsden applications for five years, is at a loss to explain why the message, that properly funding basic research is the key to long-term economic benefit, isn't getting through.
He suspects an accounting mentality that finds it easier to deal with research of the applied or clinical kind _ proposals with specific aims that can be measured in short-term economic outcomes.
That's anathema to pure research, which allows ideas to develop in an open-ended process and usually takes about a decade for any discovery to translate into commercial reality.
Great ideas _ electricity, mobile phones, lasers, holograms _ all had little use when first discovered. Professor Hunter points out much in scientific discovery involves serendipity _ "an outcome that might be totally unrelated to what you thought when you started". In his own research _ mathematical modelling of the body to help in drug discovery _ a unforeseen upshot was application in computer animation.
The Government argues about 40 per cent of its research and development funding ($785 million in 2006) goes to basic research. How it arrives at the figure is unclear, but it is possible to get close to 40 per cent by summing Marsden with Health Research Council funds for clinical research; new economy research funds, mostly provided to Crown Research Institutes; and a portion of special funds provided to universities. In the scientists' view this is not just bad maths, but also misappropriated science because it mistakes targeted research, requiring specific outcomes in order to get funding, for pure research. Professor Hunter, like many, sees Marsden as "the only blue-skies research fund we have" _ about 5 per cent of the government pool.
In the wider picture, New Zealand's total R&D expenditure was 1.17 per cent of our gross domestic product (GDP) in 2006 with Government financing amounting to 0.52 per cent. Not good when compared with Australia (R&D expenditure 1.76 per cent of GDP) and the OECD average (2.21 per cent).
What drags us down is a relatively low level of business expenditure on R&D. A recent OECD review of New Zealand's innovation policy pointed out the obvious: "The Marsden Fund should be larger since this would increase the probability of successful high-impact research yielding a big payoff for society."
About 85 per cent of Marsden grants go to traditional sciences, the remainder going to social sciences and the humanities. Inevitably, when the list is announced, there is some media mystification at some of the research funded. Like the Victoria University lecturer awarded $600,000 in the latest round to research, "How do positive events lead to greater happiness and wellbeing?"
In 2006 there was criticism of more than $465,000 to investigate "the hustler, the modern orgasm and the sexual culture of Auckland".
The fund, established in 1994 and administered by the Royal Society of New Zealand, was also accused, in 2006, of cronyism in its allocations after $6 million of its then $36 million budget was awarded to members of its own council. Now a "rolling" panel list means researchers can no longer apply for funding from the panel they sit on.
Professor Hunter says getting Marsden money is extremely competitive _ the key criteria being the quality of the science, its originality, insight and rigour, vetted by international referees.
"It's got to be world-class science."
