Recently new CSIRO chief executive, Larry Marshall, has informed the organisation he wants it to operate more like a start-up company. When pressed he explained that this means scientists should be less afraid of failure and dare to try new things. WTF? Isn’t this the very nature of scientific research?
I’ve been fortunate to work in universities for the last two decades so I’ve had some exposure to scientists and the way they go about developing our knowledge. It seems to me that one of the fundamental aims of science is to fail, repeatedly, and then try something new. Take searching for the cure for cancer (and I know cancer is more than one disease but this is a blog and I’m keeping it simple). Every time we try something which fails, or doesn’t fully succeed, we learn something about what to try next. In this way we move inexorably towards the cure. In that sense scientists, not venture capitalists or computer programmers, are the original innovators.
So the idea that scientists need encouragement to be less afraid of failure and more inclined to try new things does not ring true. But Marshall has contextualised these explanations, saying that scientists also need to focus on work that can be sold.
I get it. The people who used to fund blue skies scientific research aimed at developing our knowledge – namely us, taxpayers – are broke. Of if not broke, our priorities, along with our economy are ‘in transition’. Money has got to come from somewhere and business just doesn’t invest in stuff where they don’t have the pay-off in close enough sight to estimate its size. So something has to give.
Thing is, being bold, unafraid of failure and prepared to try new things is inconsistent with the idea that everything you do has to make money. It seems Marshall’s message to the scientists he leads is that they should be less afraid of failing at everything except making money.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with selling some discovery which has economic value. It’s just that there are different kinds of value which we should be paying for. Creating products is different from creating knowledge and we need to be able to do both. Organisations like Universities and the CSIRO should be arguing for the value of unfettered knowledge creation, and working in partnership with industry to extract economic value from each discovery. Shutting down the creation of knowledge for its own sake seems unlikely to increase scientific endeavour or, ultimately, financial return.
