Editorial: What is the business of science?
New Zealand science has been bought.
A visit to the website of the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology (FRST) seems like a landing somewhere deep in the pages of a financial services company. It takes considerable navigation to discover that this organisation has a central role in the funding of public research in New Zealand. There does not seem to be any value placed on enquiry and learning as a way of life, with its own inherent and immediate value. All learning and research - as far as FRST is concerned - is an investment; and the investment only counts if some future return can be expected. The language is all about knowable benefits, which puts human thinking on a very short leash. The desired benefits are broadly described as economic, environmental and social, but how do we actually get there? Innovation, in all fields, is treated as something that is inherently good. It is not seen as something that has to be tested against what already exists, or against other innovations, before its value can be judged.
Of course, society will always need new knowledge and innovation in order to adapt to change, but the actual human beings who inhabit society also need continuity. As individuals, we need and desire some things that do not change, or that do not change too fast. The terminology of FRST suggests a society obsessed with material wealth and unhappy with its past. It suggests that New Zealand science has no independent stance from its sources of funding, and that it has been bought to serve an industrial process that incidentally might have something to do with sentient human beings.
Human happiness is not a kitset product that can be designed and built by machines working with perfect economic efficiency. Advances in science and technology are not the only routes to human happiness - though they can help. Creative scientists cannot work to certain mechanical standards to produce products of a certain guaranteed quality. Scientists can be bought - but buyers will often be disappointed with what they get. But, I guess that is a risk sophisticated investors are prepared for. They can buy a portfolio of scientists representing diverse industries, and if the fund does not perform, it can be closed... nothing personal intended of course. Delete.
I am sorry that the FRST website evokes such a rant-against-the-system. The reality behind the image FRST projects may be something quite different. One can begin to see this in the biographies of the people on its board, and in many of the projects supported (see the board). Perhaps, in the hope of translating science and communicating with the business world, FRST has adopted what is really a parody of business language - a parody that even business people might see as unreal, or more business-like than business itself.
Does anyone like the parody? Can we laugh at it, when so much is at stake in human terms? Can FRST take itself less seriously, in order to be more serious? Is it possible for an organisation as large as FRST to be human? If support for cultural diversity in New Zealand is one of its goals, can it also support diversity in how research, science, and technology are talked about and supported? Or is New Zealand science already in the pocket of "the suits"?
Speaking of which - I own a good New Zealand suit myself. Nice wool. People here in Japan think I am someone from the 19th century, and I like that. A little continuity can go a long way (PJM, March 2005).
