HIGH FLYERS THINK TANK

National Research Priorities Strategic Forum
26–27 June 2002

Session 1 discussion
Session 2 discussion
Session 3 discussion
Session 4 discussion
Session 5 discussion
Session 6 discussion
Session 7 discussion
Session 8 discussion

Session 1 discussion
Chair: Michael Barber

Tony Underwood (University of Sydney): I am not sure if this question is in order for this session or later, so perhaps some advice on that. A question that did come up was to do with the criteria in the policy, the third one of which had the major heading ‘Australia must capture the benefits’. I am not entirely clear that we know how to measure whether Australia is capturing the benefits of some forms of research. Is that something that has been on the agenda and been worked out well, or is that something vague? Now, this may come under implementation, so I am quite happy to leave it till then if that is the appropriate time to ask it.

Michael Barber: I think I can make perhaps a ruling which is helpful. I certainly think that is an issue that falls within Joanne’s criteria. The more specific issue of getting some broad indicators of that are really the theme that Bruce Hobbs will address tomorrow. But that issue would certainly be one that Joanne or Graham may wish to comment on specifically a little bit as it is seen within this process.

Joanne Daly: The answer is somewhere between being very vague and very specific. The second dot point under the criterion, ‘for Australia to capture the benefits of the research’, is about expanding the knowledge base and increasing our input into hot science – there are many criteria that can be used, and I think the Academy of Science, for example, put out a report last year looking at the benefits of international collaboration, in which they looked at the citation rates for people who collaborated internationally versus those who did not, and so on. So I think there are some very good criteria that can be used to see if we are having significant impact in those areas and capturing the benefit.

The first dot point under that criterion is capturing the benefits through commercially or socially relevant outcomes. This was an issue that came up a number of times during the consultation phase, and it is basically saying that when we established national research priorities we also need to think about the process by which we would capture the benefits. Sometimes that can be a very direct process, by measuring things like the patent output or by looking at the implementation of a particular policy or regulation, if it is national water policy or something like that. In other cases we are yet probably to define the appropriate outcome measures that we could use. So I think it is a mixture. We already have in place some very well-defined outcome measures, but I think also in this process as it evolves over the years we need to sharpen that. CSIRO might reflect on that in their talk, as I think one of the things that they have been thinking about with their Flagship projects is how to get better outcome measures.

Graham Farquhar: I guess I would like to add to that that Ralph Slatyer made the comment to me earlier this afternoon about the cultural significance of science. We as scientists, when we travel overseas, are the people that overseas people see. So that is one aspect of it.

But science has an important culture, and it seems to me that we can include that among our outcomes. And in putting forward various priorities as proposals, we should be imaginative about scoring ourselves as to how those outcomes would have good social benefits in that kind of cultural sense as well.

Sue Richardson (Academy of the Social Sciences): To be honest, I was surprised that the selection criteria were so vague. While you could not disagree that our research priorities should be significant and capable of implementation, and produce some benefits for Australia, it seems to me that you could scarcely use such vague criteria to discriminate between one set of proposals and another. It is hard to imagine any substantial research project put forward by any scholar in this community that would not meet those criteria. I am just wondering whether I have missed the plot here. Is this actually just code for saying that you have thought at great length as to what is meant by ‘significant for Australia’ and you just haven’t let us in on the secret, or is it really as vague as the criteria that you put up?

For a start I would like to imagine that you would say something like ‘the most significant that we are able to devise, given the current Australian research capacity’ – that is not just that it is significant, but that it is more significant than anything else that might be competing for a research priority theme. The notion of what is significant and what is not, I would imagine, could occupy this group of people and many others for days, in discussing what you mean by significant. Significant for what? Significant for human well-being? Significant for protection of the environment? Significant for GDP? Significant because it is the creation of new knowledge that is unique and original, and that in itself is a worthy objective of human endeavour? What might significant mean?

Joanne Daly: If I could answer the beginning part of the question: I think it is very important to realise that these selection criteria are not to be used for distinguishing between research projects. National research priorities is not down at project level. It is not even necessarily down at the discipline level, unless there is a discipline that is seriously underdone but is fundamental to the future of Australia. I guess that is why the four priorities were chosen for the ARC last year: the government and the ARC believed there should be significant increase in activity in that area.

These criteria are to be applied at a fairly high level – What are the national goals of this country? Should we be investing as a country in things like energy: reducing greenhouse emissions, and the technology that sits behind that, looking at rural and regional development and the technological advances that are needed in order to reduce the isolation of people in the rural community and to increase their employment possibilities. So we are actually looking at a very high level here, and ‘significant’ is ‘very significant’. And I guess it was in that context we were using the word ‘significant’. We did not want to use too many adjectives in front of these words.

I guess the other is that the interpretation of these criteria will be by the expert advisory panel, who I guess we have an opportunity to sit down with. Given that sense, this is a very visionary process. We are not down there choosing between Cuticles of eucalypts versus Working on insecticide resistance in my favourite insect. It is actually right at the top level. Do we as a nation want to invest more money in things like energy or mining or agriculture? If we want to invest in all those areas, are there specific areas we really want to put in a very great boost to? So it is really the interpretation and the context of the whole paper that sets the interpretation of those selection criteria – right up at a high thematic level.

Graham Farquhar: I would like to comment on that question in a different way. There was always this tension in the Consultative Panel meetings: when something was spelled out in great detail – which is an example, I suppose, of transparency that it is there – then it was quite easy for people to say, ‘Well, you’ve actually got it all sorted out. Why are you bothering coming around asking us?’ and when there were areas where clearly researchers and research users and the general public were being invited to make suggestions and there were these big gaps, people were saying, ‘God, you haven’t thought this through at all.’ I mean, there is a bit of a balancing act between providing a straw man which people can react to and having something that does come up from below.

Just to speak about process: whenever we would get questions like yours – which is obviously an important one, I am not meaning to belittle it – we would say, ‘Get it in writing, and get it in soon.’ So I think with your comments, and obviously with your background you have an insight into the dangers of a word that might have so many different meanings to different people, it is important to get those in. ‘We will send the web address to you’ was the normal retort. If people have got ideas about process, get them in by Friday.

Michael Barber: May I take the chair’s prerogative to ask a question. There was a separate tension, it seems to me, between your statement, Joanne, about these things being aspirational, and a three-year horizon, or even the extent that Australia had to rapidly build up the capacity to respond. If you actually take the vision of a man on the Moon, as John Kennedy articulated, by the end of a decade, that flowed through with a lot of agencies doing a lot of things in America, and that was a-lot-of-things-a-long-way-before-a-man-even-walked-on-the-Moon activity. So I would be interested to know to what extent, in the consultative process or in the Taskforce, in a sense resolving that tension between there being something which people can in fact sign up to and – without even getting to Graham’s view of blue sky out there – a view at that level that we are not going to have solved salinity, for example, in three years but we can make some step. I was interested in your thoughts on that tension.

Joanne Daly: It was interesting when we looked at the response when this paper we had written went out: if I could delete one phrase out of this entire paper I guess ‘three years’ would be it. I now realise we didn’t actually convey what we wanted to say at that point.

Most of us here work in a research environment, and all of us are used to having reviews of our work. Every one, two, three, five years or whatever it is quite normal to stop and say, as an organisation, as an agency or as a country, ‘Are we going in the right direction?’ And that is what the three years was really intended to convey. People have said to us that you can’t look at outcomes in three years, and I agree that if you are starting the research today, by and large in most areas of research you will not see an outcome of significance in three years. You are looking at five, 10 years. When I was setting up new programs of activity in entomology, I always knew, even if I was putting on a postdoc or starting an activity with two or three years’ funding, that I was making a commitment on behalf of CSIRO for up to 10 years or more, because that is the way things panned out, by and large.

The three years is simply triggering saying, ‘Look, we actually need to stop and have a look at these things periodically, and see how they’re going.’ So that’s one thing about the three years. And it may be appropriate to bring in a new priority and to start to phase down a priority that is not actually getting us where we want to be.

I think the other thing that is important is that in terms of outcomes there is no point in our setting a priority which will deliver nothing within 10 years, but it doesn’t have to be delivering the result, the end point, in 10 years. Aspirational goals are things we aim to get to – ‘Let’s go to Mars, or to Saturn,’ or whatever. So that might be the end point.

The United States believes that nanotechnology will drive its industry in the year 2020, and that is why we also need as a country to get into nano, because it will be a fundamental technology of industry within the next two decades.

So what is the goal? By 2020 we certainly want nanotechnology to diffuse right through our industry. In five years’ time it might be appropriate to say we would like to double the number of PhDs in that area, or we would like to see some engineering departments in Australia actually teaching courses specifically around nanotechnology, or have masters degrees in it or something. So you need to set goals, and to recog