David Lillis: Preserving Excellence in New Zealand Research

Introduction

Since the 1990s, New Zealand’s research effort has been directed towards the achievement of outcomes and investment decisions carried out primarily on the basis of excellence and potential to achieve those outcomes. Until recently, each of our funding instruments embodied excellence or "science quality" as a condition of funding but, unfortunately, excellence has diminished in importance in funding decision-making, especially within the Performance Based Research Fund (PBRF).

Dr David Lillis: Capture of Research Funding in New Zealand?

Executive Summary 

The embedding of the Treaty of Waitangi and an increased focus on Māori research and Māori researchers in our innovation system follow similar trends in domains such as education and public health. According increased status to Māori culture and Māori researchers and, indeed, also to Pacific research, in research funding decision-making may enhance the profile of Māori and Pacific in research and create needed role models for young Māori and Pacific people. However, negative consequences for other research will follow. 

Bob Edlin: Here’s a letter to the editor you might have missed on science and how it should be shaped by the Treaty and spirituality

Scimex drew our attention around two weeks ago to news that Māori researchers were calling for a Tiriti-led science-policy approach.

A multi-disciplinary group of Māori researchers – most of them from the humanities – had published a report which recommended the appointments of Māori Chief Science Advisors and the development of Treaty-based guidelines for science and innovation funding.

In other words, scientists should have their funding chopped off if they don’t subscribe to the authors’ ideas about how the Treaty should play a role in this country’s science and innovation systems.

They wrote that the way scientists and policymakers work with each other left little room for Māori participation or leadership, although it seems they have been doing nicely, thank you, with their own careers.

Matt Ridley from the UK: Let in more scientists, not fewer

Michael Kosterlitz, one of the four British-born but American-resident winners of Nobel prizes in science this year, is so incensed by Brexit that he is considering renouncing his British citizenship: “The idea of not being able to travel and work freely in Europe is unthinkable to me.” He has been misled — not by Leavers but by Remainers.

It’s not just that the overseas press have consistently portrayed Brexit as a nativist retreat, despite Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Daniel Hannan consistently saying the very opposite. Throughout the referendum campaign — and, shamefully, since — academics have been told by their lobby groups (such as Universities UK) that Brexit probably means losing access to European research funds, European scientific collaborations and European talent.