A Nobel win for Blackburn and the US universities

Jeff Mueller says:

12:02pm | 06/10/09

Would it be too cruel to suggest a popular attitude might be:“But we’re rich already, why should we have to do hard stuff like science and maths?  Isn’t that what we have Asian and Indian immigrants for?”  Joan Didion describes that as the ‘dumb as we wanna be’ attitude in the US, which is crippling their education in these areas. 

It may help explain (along with private endowment funding and co-operative research with large corporations), why so many top researchers in the US are, like Ms Blackburn, from OS.

At least we’ve seen off Intelligent Design as part of the national science curriculum, for now!

Margaret Gray says:

12:12pm | 06/10/09

I’m not sure what is more cringeworthy and sad:

Desperate Australian media outlets scrambling to confer jingoistic antipodean (Oi, Oi, Oi!!) status on someone who has been resident in the US for 30 years (although taking a dump in-transit at Sydney International qualifies anyone as an “Honorary Australian”) or

The fact that someone as intelligent as Dr Blackburn could only find a worthwhile career beyond our shores?

“...we’ll excuse her if she doesn’t want to be singing in the next QANTAS ad…”

What a glaring - but accurate - indictment of how badly we crave global status and affirmation beyond our “sporting prowess”.

Gibbot says:

12:23pm | 06/10/09

I saw this on this morning’s news. The article ran for maybe ten seconds, and was in the ‘human interest’ slot, ie; after the sport.

That we can devote hour after brain dead hour to the adoration of lummoxes with basic motor skills, while a potentially world changing story like this (forget that one of the recipients is Australian,) is relegated to the realms of ‘human interest’ is a sad indictment of our values.

No wonder we are churning out wave upon wave of semi-literate future drive-through attendants. Where on earth is the incentive for our young to excel in academic pursuits?

G says:

01:28pm | 06/10/09

Actually she was born in Tasmania. You mainlanders have no right to claim her

MF says:

01:39pm | 06/10/09

As a university academic and scientist, I’d like to take up a point you raise “...the problems extends much deeper to our schools and universities where we just aren’t getting the interest among students in studying science…”

The problem in Australia is that there are no serious career options for scientists.  If one pursues science through to the PhD level with the intention of working on cutting edge research, you are largely relegated to the “must go overseas to do it” crowd.  There are massive shortfalls in funding available within the Australian scientific community to work on truly cutting edge research.  The peak funding body for science in Australia - the Australian Research Council - is hugely financially constrained, with less than 20% of applications for funding being successful (less than 15% for early career researchers - the future of research in this country), and of those that are, you’re lucky to get 50% of the amount requested.  How are scientists in Australia expected to produce results in such a narrow funding environment? 

This is why the brain drain is on.  There’s enough interest out there in science, but there’s no jobs in Australia!  Without adequate government funding, there can be no research or people to work on it.  Nobody is going to work for free.  Surprisingly, it’s not to do with salary amounts, scientists here are paid reasonably well by world standards.  It’s simply the lack of funding to pay peoples salary in the first place.  The US, UK and Europe have governments who fund scientific research at appropriate levels to produce such cutting edge work that can lead to Nobel Prizes.  They can employ enough people and provide enough funding for infrastructure that is required for such work to be done.

As it stands, the Australian government spends 0.55% of GDP on research expenditure.  Other research intensive OECD nations have an average 0.9% of GDP set aside for research expenditure.  With such discrepancies, why does it constantly seem to come as a surprise to journos, the public and politicians that our best scientists leave for foreign shores?

Biff says:

02:15pm | 06/10/09

Maybe we should force our government to allocate more money to medical research and the like. What’s the point of having a fully funded HREOC (to name just one in a long list of frivolities) plus staff plus rented office space if we are still battling to find a cure for breast cancer and a host of other maladies.

MF says:

02:33pm | 06/10/09

Leo, my salary, and the salary of 90% of my colleagues comes from private sector funding.  Many scientists are funded in this way, which is fine.  But this research is very narrow in scope, and is not the type of “big sky” research that delivers the cutting edge research you’re talking about in your article.  The sort of research that leads to major breakthroughs tends to be funded by the government.

Dr M. says:

03:35pm | 06/10/09

This little 1 yr-post PhD duck is moving to England in December because there are more job opportunities and funding there. Unfortunately there’s sweet FA funding for early or mid career researchers in Australia and the salary is pretty pathetic given the qualifications, time spent in study and responsibility of a medical researcher. There is no dignity in having to beg for a salary each funding round and it’s quite stressful to see number of sucessful grants and grants awarded to researchers diminishing.

It’s depressing all around.

Kids if you like science, become an engineer or a medical doctor. Don’t plan a career in science.

MF says:

04:16pm | 06/10/09

I’m back from the lab, to extend on my previous post, I’d also like to point out that private sector funding is only available for a limited number of scientific fields.  Basically for applied research that is very narrow in scope.  Which is fine, it employs people, but it doesn’t lead to the big breakthroughs, because they take time.  Private sector funding is provided for very specific projects, usually on a 1-2 year contract basis.  The big breakthroughs can take 5-10 years, and the only people capable of funding a project for that amount of time are you guessed it - the government.

But what about the non-applied research.  The theoretical physics, the mathematics, the fields that don’t have immediately applicable results for industry.  It can take decades for some of the theoretical work done to be taken up by industry.  The only people prepared to fund this kind of work are the government, because it’s to improve our understanding of the universe.  Should this kind of research just be let to fall by the wayside because nobody in industry wants to fund it?  Should we simply let our desire to understand our universe wane because there’s no immediate financial gain to be made out of it?

This is why the US and Europe are scientific giants.  Because they fund this fundamental scientific research without immediate thought as to how much money can be made from it.

iansand says:

04:50pm | 06/10/09

I remember reading an article, maybe 45 years ago, about lasers.  The article basically said that these laser things were pretty cool toys but no one had any idea what they were be useful for.  In the current Australian (and to a lesser extent international) research climate the initial research would not be done.

Dr A says:

12:01am | 07/10/09

When Newton was scribing Principia, I doubt he realized that his work would one day underpin every single field of science.  Today, in Australia, he wouldn’t be funded to do that sort of research. 

I’d like to point out that MF forgets to mention one thing.  Not all research is done in universities.  Overseas, there are national labs where there is government funded research going on.  The Australian equivalent is CSIRO.  Funding for these labs overseas by far surpasses funding for CSIRO.  It’s not all about publicly funding university research.

Dr G says:

01:50am | 07/10/09

Dr M,
Agree completely. I made the move to England 5.5 years ago as the only R&D opportunities available to me was in mining (not my interest),  academia (lower salaries), or to move to the US or the UK. Granted, I work in a sector that doesn’t reward its people as well as it used to, but the work is very rewarding, and it is impossible to do my job in Australia as it simply doesn’t exist. Largely, this is due to the poor government funding into R&D, but the lack of infrastructure, costs of setting up/maintaining/running a research institution in Oz and (sadly) geographical location all prevent decent R&D facilities from being operated in Oz by big industry. To move back to Oz, my choices are to move into manufacturing (with a PhD in Engineering, I’m “over qualified”) or academia (see above), so it will be more of a lifestyle choice that will bring me back to the sunburnt country. Maybe I should become one of the “brain dead lummoxes” mentioned earlier?

Amused says:

09:29am | 07/10/09

The other side of the coin as far as the “brain drain” is concerned is that a lot of people with talent just don’t consider a research career. Why would you? You choose the hard science route, you’ve got four years undergraduate, three years PhD (at least) and then a succession of poorly paid, short term post-doc fellowships and then, if you are really lucky, a poorly paid academic position, by which time you’re thirty and have got sod all. The hard-head students say, “No. I’ll go with the cash thank you”.

There was a Simpson’s episode that stuck in my mind about this. Bart wearing a fake pony tail:

Bart: Look at me, I’m a grad student. I’m 30 years old and I made $600 last year.

Marge (chuckling): Bart, don’t make fun of grad students. They’ve just made a terrible life choice.

Too true.