OPINION: We’ve heard so much about the shovel-ready projects getting funding as part of the pandemic recovery, but what about the pipette-ready research?
A pipette, recall, is one of those little glass syringe-like devices used for accurately measuring and transferring liquids in chemistry and biology labs. They’re as common in labs as shovels on building sites.
As the election approaches, scientists are asking where the investment is in potentially game-changing research to tackle the massive challenges ahead of us.
Necessity is the mother of invention and as such, most of the new science funding in this year’s Budget and subsequent top-ups have gone towards dealing with the emergency at hand.
The Crown research institutes, such as Niwa and GNS Science, had a $196 million funding boost to shore them up and “hundreds of millions of dollars” is being put aside to secure Covid-19 vaccine candidates.
Callaghan Innovation is making loans available to help businesses that would otherwise have to abandon their R&D programmes.
But the Government has nearly $14 billion more in reserve. Investing now in long-term scientific research would see us better placed to reap the rewards of innovation down the track. After all, as National’s science spokeswoman Dr Parmjeet Parmar keeps pointing out, we are already falling behind when it comes to international comparisons of our innovation capability.
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This year, New Zealand dropped five places to 29th in the Bloomberg Innovation Index, a ranking of 60 countries’ comparative performance in innovation, which measures factors such as national R&D spending, productivity, the density of our high-tech sector and patent activity.
What National would do to address the situation isn’t clear. It hasn’t released an innovation policy yet. Labour points out that it has increased funding in science to the tune of 26 per cent during its term in government.
But it doesn’t have a plan for the sector. A strategy has been in the works for years, but it won't be released before the election. There is some suggestion that how publicly funded research is done could see a shake-up under a second term Labour Government.
“One of the issues is that incentives in the funding system insufficiently foster collaboration,” said Dr Ayesha Verrall, an infectious diseases physician and researcher who reviewed the Government’s Covid-19 response and is now standing as a Labour list candidate.
She was speaking alongside other political party spokespeople as part of a webinar hosted by the NZ Association of Scientists.
The need for our public research labs to also generate revenue to pay their way is seen by many as a barrier to doing the real game-changing science we need. Our research system is far too fragmented and competitive for a country of our size.
With our university system under pressure, we also need to invest in securing the pipeline of scientific talent that will make the future discoveries. Sure, we need to weather the current storm, but also invest to make the most of what lies beyond it.
