‘Magical’ thinking drives New Zealand science reforms

New Zealand’s science reforms are based on “magical” expectations of windfall profits from publicly funded research, even though a long-awaited review has cautioned against such “naive” notions, critics say.

The New Zealand Association of Scientists (NZAS) has accused the government of cherry-picking commercially focused proposals from the “considered and thorough” recommendations in the second report from the Science System Advisory Group.

The approach risks diverting money away from science and into management pitches for “impossible or unlikely commercial revenue”, exacerbating the “pointless competition” plaguing the “fragile” system, the association warned.

Outgoing science minister Judith Collins said the potential to profit from public good research in areas like health and vulcanology had been underrated. “Health makes a lot of money,” she told Radio New Zealand. “There’s enormous opportunities for us to commercialise significantly more.”

However, the report argues against the “naive idea” that universities and other research organisations can “generate significant income” by exploiting intellectual property.

“This is just not the case,” the report insists. “There are very few exceptions internationally, and most of those have been based on one or two mega-deals paying royalties in the highest ranked universities.”

It says university commercialisation offices in New Zealand are “excessively protectionist” in their dealings with investors. Few if any have significant scale and many lack understanding of legal, operational, business and industrial issues, often failing to recognise research projects with genuine commercial potential or overlooking them because of “limited shelf life”.

NZAS co-president Troy Baisden said policymakers would need to be “quite optimistic or even believe in a little bit of magic” to rely on research commercialisation as a source of institutional revenue or economic growth more broadly. “It’s taking a 20th-century commercialisation response [in] the 21st century,” he said.

The association said the government had picked and chosen report recommendations despite the review panel’s advice not to treat them “as a smorgasbord”. While Wellington had agreed to merge crown research institutes (CRIs) “to reduce competition and improve coordination”, other “well-supported” ideas – including a stand-alone science ministry and a national research council – had been “left by the wayside”.

The government embraced the report’s proposal for a Science, Innovation and Technology Advisory Council, but a Cabinet document says its core members will be people with “deep and broad experience in business, impact and commercialisation” – not the “distinguished New Zealand scientists” recommended in the report.

And while the report said the prime minister’s chief science adviser should function as the council’s executive officer, the Cabinet document contains no reference to this position, which has lain vacant since mid-2024.

NZAS co-president Lucy Stewart said this epitomised the government’s attitude to the sector. “Scientists are only useful if they can make money – but let’s not risk them giving any advice we don’t want to hear,” she said.

“The last National [Party] government brought in the prime minister’s chief science adviser, they brought in the National Science Challenges, they established Callaghan Innovation, and now this government has got rid of all of those things.”

Stewart said it was unclear whether displaced Callaghan staff would find employment with a proposed new public research organisation focused on technologies including artificial intelligence, quantum computing and synthetic biology. She said the government had allocated no funding to cover the establishment costs or CRI mergers, leaving many scientists in “a state of huge anxiety”.

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com