On the Value of Investment in Science - An Essay in Two Parts

Part 2: Fixing collaboration and risk aversion.

Photo by Marvin Meyer on Unsplash

(Originally published in full on the Royal Society of Victoria Newsletter March 2022 issue, page 2)

The “non-intuitive” investments Australia can make to boost its scientific reach, innovation, capabilities, and efficiency are understandably not constrained to peer-reviewed research funding only. I was fortunate enough to participate in the Reboot STEMM forum from the Australian Academy of Science last year, and I had the opportunity to look into the so many ways scientists around Australia think science could be improved. We touched on many topics, which I believe could be argued to be part of these “non-intuitive” investments. I will argue two more to complement my previous communication.

Expanding the horizons for scientific careers: Becoming a professional grant writer and team leader that is forced to outsource the science to their postdocs and PhD students due to time constraints and prioritising grant writing is hardly what many of us envisioned when we put our money, time, and soul into our scientific training. For many of us, spending too much time writing grants is the last thing we want to do, especially if this takes away from doing the science we love (that is, performing experiments, analysing data, troubleshooting the methodology, and writing the papers). It is however as if the only possible pathway for scientists (in Academia at least) is to get further and further away from the laboratory the more we progress in our careers. Does it have to be this way? It should not be a mystery that people are the most productive when they do what they are passionate about, and even though doing things we do not like doing is part of every job, the moment it takes a little too high priority and consumes too much of our time we slowly but surely drift away intellectually, become demotivated and desperate to find alternatives. Basically, the opposite of productive. Increasing the budgets of grants (so that researchers can hire more postdocs instead of having to rely on PhD students to do the science and be productive) and the previously mentioned modified lottery (which means the pressure on ‘track record’ is lightened) could help expand the horizons for scientists to follow the type of professional careers they want, even after their PhDs.

Managing the PhD oversupply problem and connecting Academia and Industry more effectively: Data from a recent report from CSIRO & The Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute (ANSI) shows that the number of PhD’s in the Australian domestic workforce and the available staff positions follow two abysmally different trends: while the number of PhDs has increased exponentially, the number of available staff positions has only increase linearly, with an eye-watering slope that spells trouble for those who want to stay in the sector.[1] And although many PhD graduates are finding jobs outside academia and in many other public and private sectors, it would be interesting to know what proportion of these PhD-filled positions did require a PhD awardee to be filled. I suspect not an overwhelming percentage. Conferring PhDs en masse without a workforce that requires them is simply spending resources (time, money, and brainpower) into a training regime that is not required by the position to be filled and that also devalues the degree by oversupply. In other words: it’s inefficient. This is even more pressing since previous research by Inger Mewburn and colleagues shows that 80% of job ads in Australia looking for employees with high levels of research skills did not mention PhD as a necessary qualification.[2] A good balance between the production of PhDs and the workforce demand for them should be the focus of much of our efforts: if we do need these people to drive the future of Australia, we should at least make sure there are positions available for them where they can utilise their newly acquired skills. Either that, or we should start thinking of cutting back on the number of PhDs we produce yearly – meaning we should investigate the incentives that drive the production of PhDs. Otherwise, we are simply funneling resources into creating higher-order professionals that are basically overqualified and under-utilised.

The report also shows that nearly half of the PhDs surveyed want to remain in universities and research institutes, and while it is understandable that there will never be enough positions for all of those who want them, it is also true that building bridges between Academia and the industry and other sectors has been a daunting task, which thus hinders commercialisation of research and innovation. A previous CSIRO report highlights from previous and numerous sources that these low levels of cross-sector collaborations are stagnating science in Australia: only 10% of companies who collaborated did so with universities or other higher education institutions, and around 13% of these companies did so with other research institutions. For larger companies with 200 or more employees that engaged in innovation collaboration, around 14% did so with universities or other higher education institutions, and around 18% did so with other research institutions.[3] This, despite universities and research institutes being the place where PhDs are formed and where many of them want to spend their careers.

There have been many attempts to bridge Academia and Industry and other sectors. One successful example is the industry internship model for PhDs, where students spend part of their formation working directly in industry positions as part of a previously established university-industry partnership collaboration. However, these are not the norm. Another successful model that I am happy to champion and promote – since it is not abundant enough – is what is known as “Hackathons”. These are events were innovation-driven minds gather to form teams and compete to propose the best solutions to a particular problem: the organiser presents the problem to the contestant teams and gives them 2-3 days to develop and present the idea/solution to the judges, competing for a prize. I had the opportunity to participate in a couple of them and not only they are an amazing collaborative experience, but they also serve to bring around innovative people from all walks of life to use their brains to solve problems these companies have. This model could be harnessed by more companies and industries to invite PhD students and graduates to get in touch with them and their needs, serving two important purposes at the same time: PhD students and graduates get in touch and interact with potential employers and their industries to maybe find a path they have not considered before, and employers get in touch with a pool of innovation-driven people, from which they could find their next perfect hire. Companies do not even have to disclose their secrets and problems to the public, in fear of intellectual property exposure: they could simply craft a closely related hypothetical problem to probe the contestants and their innovative skills. There have been many Hackathon events across Australia in the last 5 years, however many in my opinion they have been too centred on IT developments, and other industries and potential innovation pathways are underrepresented. Directly advertise these hackathons on university campuses and newsletters and boom! Let innovation begin.

At the core of many of these problems science face, however, is a factor that I briefly mentioned in my previous letter: we have a culture that is focused on compliance, risk-aversion, risk-management, and inflexibility. This is the opposite of what science and innovation require, and what a country needs to thrive in a hyper-competitive industrial future. Some universities appear to be more interested in mitigating liabilities than in providing scientists with an environment where they can perform science without being held back at every corner by red tape, never-ending risk assessments and a bureaucracy that holds their progress back sometimes for months on end. If we could lift the standard for what constitutes a risk worth the paperwork and oversight, we could liberate hours and hours of progress and innovation from these bureaucratic captors, thus increasing our efficiency. But for that our attitudes towards risk need to change. And I am not sure how to do that other than by changing policies and incentives for universities and companies so those who do want to take the risk can do so without being held back by those who are too afraid of taking the risk.

Without disruptive people creating disruptive environments and disruptive innovations we risk holding Australia endlessly in the economic Middle Ages of natural resource extraction and export. This is in my opinion a form of “trusting the market” in terms of scientific brainpower: trust the scientists and entrepreneurs and they will deliver, instead of actively managing science and putting barriers around innovation just because we are too afraid of what the risks will be.

Warren Buffet has instructed after his death to “put 10% [of his fortune] in short-term government bonds and 90% in a very low-cost index fund” since he “believe[s] the long-term results from this policy will be superior to those attained by most investors—whether pension funds, institutions, or individuals—who employ high-fee managers.”[4] Buffet trusts the market, and he is probably the most successful investor of modern times. Couldn’t we all trust the (scientific) market a bit more instead of trying to endlessly manage it?

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[1] Paul X. McCarthy and Dr Maaike Wienk, 1 May 2019, Advancing Australia’s Knowledge Economy, AMSI & CSIRO Data61’s Ribit.net, available from <https://amsi.org.au/?publications=advancing-australias-knowledge-economy>

[2] Mewburn, I., Grant, W.J., Suominen, H. et al. A Machine Learning Analysis of the Non-academic Employment Opportunities for Ph.D. Graduates in Australia. High Educ Policy 33, 799–813 (2020). doi: 10.1057/s41307-018-0098-4

[3] CSIRO Futures (2021) Unlocking the innovation potential of Australian companies, CSIRO, Canberra

[4] Buffett WE. 2014. Berkshire Hathaway 2013 annual report, p 20. Berkshire Hathaway, Omaha, NE.