Soviet road to research ruin

James Fawcett says science must continue to educate. Scientists do science to make discoveries. In order to do so they have to spend money, much of it coming from the taxpayer. But why should governments support academic research? The scientists tend to argue that science is intrinsically good and valuable and improves our lives, so more of it must be better. Governments have been more interested in trying to identify and maximise the economic benefits.

What are they? Scientific discoveries may be taken up by industry: most industries are technologically based, and early access to new discoveries may give them a competitive advantage. This is essentially a trickle-down theory of scientific economics. Whether it really works is debatable.

Any society will have problems which need solving, for instance how to combat AIDS, how to counter mad cow disease, and how to preserve the environment. It rightly looks to the scientific community for answers. Not all these answers are necessarily economically beneficial. Industrial companies also have particular problems which need solving, and if government wishes to provide direct financial assistance to industry, government-funded scientists can be assigned to research them.

Scientific research educates: technologically based industries have a requirement for scientifically educated staff in both management and research. Managements must include members with a scientific background in order that companies can make rational decisions about future directions, and assess the various inventions which they may be offered. Research departments need research staff, who mostly learn their skills as postgraduates in basic research laboratories.

However, the great majority of staff employed by industry never receive postgraduate scientific training and their view of science and technology is therefore shaped while they are undergraduates. It is important to have science at undergraduate level taught by those who are actively involved in making discoveries.

In the past scientists have tended to be too focused on following pure research, and have therefore not interested themselves in practical spin-offs. Few industrialists have had any training in, knowledge of, or sympathy for science.

Paradoxically, however, it is some of the industries based most closely on science and which function most like research institutions that have done the best and created the most employment, for instance the pharmaceutical industry. And it is in these industries that there is the greatest interchange of personnel and ideas between academia and industry.

The conclusion must be that the main failure in converting research into profit in Britain has been one of education. The great need is therefore to make sure that scientific literacy, and above all the skills of invention and innovation, is disseminated more widely throughout industry.

In the long term, the most economically valuable product of science is probably not the science itself, but the education of those who can be involved in it. The present policy of assessing the productivity of the science establishment simply by measuring the output of scientific papers therefore misses the point.

The output of papers provides a useful measure of the quality and vitality of the scientific community, but it tells one little about how much good the scientists are doing the economy. Equally, the present idea of asking industry what problems it wants solved, and then instructing the research councils to solve them could, unless linked to a training policy, be a mistake. While getting research done at public expense could undoubtedly reduce industry's costs by allowing it to employ fewer researchers, the results of a scientific investigation are rather ephemeral.

If the research is done by a fully trained scientist in an institution who is pulled off one problem and put on another, little of long-term benefit has been achieved unless the performance of the research involves the training of someone, preferably from the company involved, to carry it further. In addition, any policy that persuades British industry, which already spends less on its research departments than almost all its competitors, that it is safe to reduce further the size of its research establishment must be damaging.

Which fields of research to fund has always been a thorny issue. Companies complain that we are producing sufficient graduates and PhDs, but not in the right subjects. The present Technology Foresight exercise, if linked to the educational aspects of research, might address this. However, "picking winners" has seldom been a successful policy. Clearly a cautious middle way, emphasising the useful while allowing the esoteric, is preferable.

If the most important long-term effects on the economy from doing research are education and training, then government, which wants value for its money, should ensure that the science it funds happens in places where the researchers are passing on their skills as widely as possible. This essentially means establishments involved in undergraduate, postgraduate and adult education.

Equally important is to consider what proportion of funding to allocate to dedicated research institutes, which may perform excellent research but do little education or training. There is clearly a case for centres of research excellence but how many university departments should be stripped of research funding to keep one institute open? How many of our best scientists should we allow to be removed from the educational process? We are moving steadily towards the old Soviet model, where universities were for teaching, and research happened in institutes of the National Academy for Sciences, which received central policy direction.

The calculation of how much to spend on research should start from a need to redress the shortage of scientific and technical skills. Universities must be staffed and equipped so that relevant subjects and, more importantly, a discovery culture can be transmitted to sufficient numbers. Students must be induced to take courses which teach skills needed in the economy. And industry should be encouraged to send staff for regular retraining.

James Fawcett is a lecturer at King's College, Cambridge.