Thh Globe and Mail today published a commentary about government funding for research by founding Encana CEO Gwyn Morgan. Morgan dismisses the concerns voiced by researchers about reductions in funding for the granting agencies by revealing his own “inconvenient truth” about university research. He then trots out the time-honored criticism that “A big part of university research dollars are spent on esoteric research that doesn’t have the slightest chance of yielding any real value”. Stop the presses!
To be fair, the Globe buried the piece on page two of a Monday business section instead of making it an op-ed or a weekend piece, and so it will surely be an instance of preaching to the choir when Mr. Morgan argues that academic research should hew more closely to business standards of “accountability” and “return on investment”. Mr. Morgan also takes standard shots at the “ivory towers of academia”, suggesting “their only real hope is extracting more public cash, rather than pulling the veil away from the inconvenient truth about university research funding”, which, he argues is that “irrelevant and low-quality research continues to be financed”.
It’s ironic that Mr. Morgan twice uses the phrase “inconvenient truth” to decry academic research funding. The phrase invokes Al Gore’s documentary of the same name – a documentary about the effects of climate change based on research often decried as irrelevant and low-quality by those who wish to see returns on investment. And indeed, it is the inconvenient truths – and the unexpected truths and yes, possibly even the unmarketable truths – that are revealed by academic science funded by governments. Research into convenient truths are properly – and effectively – funded by private industry. Indeed, Encana itself funds a chair at the University of Calgary to “investigate innovative ways for the energy industry to limit its impact on ecosystems in Western Canada”. This applied research, which will no doubt deliver both accountability and a return on investment, will be based on a body of basic research that might have been considered irrelevant until it was suddenly needed. This is true of research in sub-atomic physics, cell biology, mathematics, and so on. Mr. Morgan himself anticipates and accepts this criticism, but suggests that “not every project can or should be financed” (though he resists suggesting this is suggested by the scientific method itself).
More helpfully, though, Mr. Morgan’s article reveals two widespread myths that need to be dispelled by researchers. The first could be called the “arcane university research” myth. This myth envisions university academics as the mad scientists and alchemists from 1950s B-movies, mixing potions in basements in pursuit of their own single-minded interests. This ridiculous myth suggests academics love performing irrelevant research for its own sake and care not a whit for the real world implications of their work. Nothing could be further from the truth. My colleagues from across the life sciences, whether they study biomedical science or ecology, care deeply about how their work impacts on the “real world”. Admittedly, the “returns on investment” are often measured in terms other than strictly financial ones – how will our understanding of this protein’s function help reduce heart disease? how will our understanding of competition between native and invasive species help us maintain healthy lakes and rivers? Science is normally so challenging, with important insights revealing themselves only fitfully, that without a real sense that what they’re doing is important, most scientists couldn’t do it.
Of course, when something with potential value is identified – a compound that is effective as an inhibitor of a disease-associated protein, for instance – it isn’t thrown into the trash heap. There are countless ways the pursuit of these discoveries is encouraged – from specific government development grants to spin-off incubators at universities to partnerships with private industry. The effectiveness of the system is in fact demonstrated by investments made by the private sector to develop and bring to market results originally obtained by academic research financed by government agencies.
The second myth is the “poor and irrelevant science gets funded” myth. This myth assumes that the federal research granting agencies throw money at poor research with no relevance. First of all, the success rates of applications to the various funding agencies in Canada reveal that most applications don’t get funded, period. CIHR, the major funding agency for biomedical research in Canada, has a roughly 20% success rate, even after self-selection of researchers who have applied. In other words, 80% of researchers who believed their work was important and relevant enough to justify the immense time and effort to prepare and submit a CIHR grant application were rejected. Even the NSERC Discovery Grant program, which awards small grants of roughly $30,000 for higher-risk innovative research, this year had a success rate of 63%, even though it has a high success rate by design. Secondly, for those that suceed in getting funded, making research relevant has to be one of the primary goals of their applications. How does the proposed research fit within and how will it advance the current body of knowledge? Furthermore, how does it fit with the government’s current research funding priorities? Governments and funding agencies already make real world choices about how to allocate research funds, and scientists often have their funding reallocated based on new government prioirities.
The prospect of not getting funded is an unbelievable source of nearly constant stress to academic researchers across Canada. Indeed, the academic research sector may be more like the vaunted private sector than Mr. Morgan realizes. He suggests a major distinction between business and academia when he writes:
It’s understandable if taxpayers in the private sector find this [the everyone gets funded myth] difficult to fathom. Even in the best of times, businesses must reallocate human and financial capital from low-value areas to projects and products that have high potential.
But this is, of course, what happens in academic research all the time. As a university researcher you’re a manager with a team of staff. Every year, you have to apply to your senior management to justify getting ANY budget at all, and IF you’re successful, no matter how successful you are, your funding is always on a one, two, or (for the most successful) three-year term. During that time, you have to ensure that you not only meet your objectives but also stay current with the stated goals of the organization, which is an extra challenge since upper management changes every 3-5 years, depending on the government. Past success is no guarantee of future success. Tenure doesn’t guarantee government research funding. Projects are terminated, the contracts of staff are not renewed, and labs scramble for funding.
Private R&D does a bang-up job of performing targeted research focused on return on investment. Academic research provides the tools and starting points. These aren’t closed worlds. There is a communication between the two that allows each to leverage the strengths of the other. Arguing that academic research needs to be more like private industry reveals both a lack of understanding of how the academic research world actually works and a lack of appreciation of how important the distinctions between the two actually are. Helping dispel the myths of academic research funding will improve the discussion and make clearer to the public how strictly their tax dollars are allocated.
Rob Annan Funding Issues
