Inkless Wells

Paul Wells on all the latest out of Ottawa—along with the occasional post about jazz. Follow Paul on Twitter: @InklessPW

Categories: Capital Read, Inkless Wells

The Harper government: Good for science

by Paul Wells on Friday, June 19, 2009 6:01pm - 39 Comments

Last year two Canadians, Tony Pawson and Charles Taylor, won Japan’s Kyoto Prize, which has nothing to do with climate-change treaties but has been, for more than 20 years, that country’s most prestigious award for great thinkers. Charles Taylor you may know: he’s the McGill University philosopher. Tony Pawson is a Distinguished Investigator — I’ve only now learned he’s no longer Director of Research, and I suspect he’s greatly pleased to be out of that job — at the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto. I’m told by people who know this stuff better than I do that his research on how cells communicate with one another may already have won him his Nobel — there is, as you can imagine, a long lag between discovery and recompense in this line of work.

Anyway, Pawson’s Kyoto Prize Lecture (.pdf) includes this eloquent plea for governments to leave scientists alone, as much as possible, to think in surprising ways and follow uncertain paths:

Remarkably, the basic science that has been pursued over several decades into the nature of cell communication, and the mis-wiring of signaling pathways in disease, is starting to yield new targeted therapies that are changing the way that we treat cancers for the better, and will be applicable to many human ailments. Although these are early days, I believe that this progress underscores the importance of giving free rein to human inventiveness. It would have been hard to predict that work on a curious chicken virus would have ultimately led to new ways of thinking about how human cells are organized, and to new drugs to treat one of mankind’s most persistent enemies. Governments increasingly want to see immediate returns on the research that they support, but it is worth viewing basic science as a long-term investment that will yield completely unexpected dividends for humanity in the future.

You know where this is going. The Harper government ran Pawson out of town. Nickle-and-dimed him to death. Discovered that cell biology is part of the devil’s work because its mechanisms evolve, and performed an exorcism.

Not really.

Yesterday the Pawson Lab at Mount Sinai received an $11.5 million grant from the Canada Foundation for Innovation to study “Quantitative Cell Biology and Proteomics.” That’s part of $19 million CFI granted to Mount Sinai yesterday; $135 million to the University of Toronto and associated hospitals; and $665 million in total CFI grants announced yesterday across Canada. I’m told that may be the largest single round of research infrastructure investments ever in Canada.

Of course politics is not alien to this: this competition round began in October, and the Harper government added $150 million to the competition amount in the January budget. Stimulus, you know. Applications are peer-reviewed, and with this much money sloshing around, it wasn’t super-hard to score: the 35% success rate was very high. (Success rate for CIHR health operating grants is currently around 18%; the success rate for the latest NIH round in the U.S. is about 1%. The research administrator who shared all this info with me suggests that neither 35% nor 1% is ideal. You’d like it to be kind of in between.)

So it’s not that there isn’t room for public scrutiny of the Harper government’s science policies. You’re free to wish Gary Goodyear was more up to speed on the whole evolution thing. It’s really important that the feds pony up the money the granting councils will need next year to pay for the research that will make all these labs worth the investment. But three and a half years after Harper became prime minister, this government just put $50 million into particle physics, $19 million to develop special-purpose embedded computer systems, and a hell of a lot more. It’s worth noting.

Tags: credit where it's due, research

More by Paul Wells

Digger

This is why I keep returning to Inkless Wells; kudos when kudos are due and a smack down when a smack down is due. Deciding where to best place public funding is a challenge at the best of times and we all can't be happy all the time but this is a good news story worth reporting.
André

I think what Pawson was referring to is that the government often pick and choose where the money goes, often for the wrong reasons, and that somehow gives them a right to pull the plug before the research becomes ripe. Research done right works on a longer timeline than any politician's lifespan; it's ludicrous that these politicians should directly invest into research and take the credit for their "generosity".
Wayne

funny how reality keeps popping the bubble of prejudice.

http://intensedebate.com/people/sea_n_mountains sea_n_mountains

Wayne, as Paul rightly recognizes the Harper government has done a lot of good re research investment. And, there is even more than Paul lists here to be sure. I personally benefited from, and applaud, his changes to the taxation of scholarships. But that does not give the Tories full marks. Goodyear's attempt to influence research funding (see http://chronicle.com/news/article/6618/canadas-sc… for instance, dismisses the idea that concerns are merely prejudice.

http://intensedebate.com/people/Crit_Reasoning Crit_Reasoning

It was a government-subsidized "interdisciplinary" conference on Israel/Palestine, which included some participants who were arguably peddling hatemongering anti-Israel propaganda. The Canadian Jewish lobby vigorously protested the fact that this event would be funded by Canadian taxpayers.

Goodyear timidly suggested to the granting-council president that funding for the event should be reviewed, he was met with a sharp rebuke, and that was the end of it. Perhaps Goodyear's conduct in this case was inappropriate, but I think we can all agree that in some circumstances government funding of such a conference would be objectionable. For instance, we wouldn't want Canadian taxpayers to fund an explicitly racist conference, would we?

http://intensedebate.com/people/sea_n_mountains sea_n_mountains

A few things to consider:

1) the conference was not explicitly racist
2) the lobby could have raised it objections directly (and may well have)
3) the lobby is also a political org and is extremely set against the subject matter being discussed (single-state solution)
4) if goodyear thought there was a problem with what SSHRC was funding there are a myriad of ways that he could of addressed this better than the manner he choose (e.g., referring the issue to committee for a review of funding decisions)… an open letter to the head of sshrc raising his concerns would even be better.
5) he chose the worst possible mechanism, a less than transparent (save the rebuke and it getting reported on) that appears – at the very least – to contravene the independent nature of the granting councils.

while you an i might agree there are things that the we prefer the government not fund, it is not clear this is it, and even if it is goodyear stick-handled this in a manner that beget whatever criticism he got and reinforced existing perspectives.
http://www.intensedebate.com/people/sea_n_mountains sea_n_mountains

A few things to consider:

1) the conference was not explicitly racist
2) the lobby could have raised it objections directly (and may well have)
3) the lobby is also a political org and is extremely set against the subject matter being discussed (single-state solution)
4) if goodyear thought there was a problem with what SSHRC was funding there are a myriad of ways that he could of addressed this better than the manner he choose (e.g., referring the issue to committee for a review of funding decisions)… an open letter to the head of sshrc raising his concerns would even be better.
5) he chose the worst possible mechanism, a less than transparent (save the rebuke and it getting reported on) that appears – at the very least – to contravene the independent nature of the granting councils.

while you and i might agree there are things that we prefer the government not fund, it is not clear this is amounted to that; and, even if it did goodyear stick-handled this in a manner that beget whatever criticism he got and reinforced existing perspectives.
catherine

B'nai Brith just published a retraction and apology for comments it made about one of the speakers. The way the apology reads, and the fact that it is being distributed in various locations, suggests that it may be in response to a lawsuit or threat of a lawsuit.

http://intensedebate.com/people/sea_n_mountains sea_n_mountains

have not seen the retraction, but i hear that it recognizes that BB erroneously attributed statements denying the holocaust to one of the speakers.
catherine

That is correct. BB's original statement alleged it was "a conference where several of the speakers are actively engaged in Holocaust denial". This apparently was based on one quote erroneously attributed to one speaker as explained in the apology, http://www.bnaibrith.ca/files/action_alert.htm. No explanation of how this one error resulted in the allegation of "several speakers".

Wascally Wabbit

Excuse me while I pick myself off the floor.
You – mean – they couldn't find any hidden Liberals among all those recipients?
I guess their own research was sloppy then!
Austin So

Tony Pawson is a great guy…and he won not only the Kyoto but also our very own Gairdner award…

But just as a point of clarification, his lab didn't personally receive CFI money, but rather he is going to leading a group of investigators and will be disbursing funds as he sees fit as related to this area of investigation. And I don't doubt that he will follow his convictions on funding when doing so either. But the problem is if the person receiving the funds is prone to the same "immediate return/impact" mentality that seems to dog science and research in general. It also has the potential to become a funding process dominated by the connections you have rather than your ability or insight.

Not meaning to throw water on this further, but I don't know if we should be thanking Harper for this change in funding practices if this was the direction funding allocations were going anyway…just good that it happened under his "watch" (if you can even call it that).

Significant discoveries often come from left field and outside the box, and this funding process doesn't necessarily address this either, but it does allow for more direct input from researchers of where funding should go within their own field…
http://intensedebate.com/people/truemuse truemuse

the Gary Goodyear thing….tired.
You might mention the legislative side of Harper's science 'accomplishments'. Like how his gov't tried to push through Bill C-51. Sloppy handling, poor legislation.
All the money in the world in grants won't get our country's scientific innovations to the marketplace (by a recent study I'm sure you must know). There are so many systemic problems that control how science can benefit us, problems related to the administration of universities and the need for revised laws and the Harper minority gov't has shown they can't do a darn thing to resolve those, the problems that truly impede progress and growth that comes from innovation. To me, it makes perfect sense that 'basic' science should feed innovation. The fact that a scientist like Pawson says this as though it's some kind of revelation is SCARY.
Canuckistanian

great news! very interesting.

a minor quibble (not with you or your reporting):

"Success rate for CIHR health operating grants is currently around 18%"

might want to tell SSHRC that. they seem to have convinced the G&M it is 75%. just saying ;-)
http://intensedebate.com/people/Brammer Brammer

Applications were peer reviewed? Really?

I thought the government was trying to micro manage these last year, commercialization had to occur very quickly, etc.

Still, kudos where they are due.
catherine

The cuts to the granting councils, and consequently to operating funds, is a fiasco and waiting until next year to do anything about it is not going to help all the scientists locked into 5 year grants. Harper doesn't understand the ongoing operating costs that basic science needs. There is a significant difference between what is happening in the US on operating funds and in Canada.

http://intensedebate.com/people/Inkless Inkless

The CIHR's 2008-09 budget is almost 50% larger than its 05-06 budget. The "fiasco" cuts are not what I would have advised but they do not eliminate the overall continued growth in the CIHR's budget under the Conservatives. You could look it up.
http://intensedebate.com/people/Inkless Inkless

I'd love to read your description of the size of this year's cuts, compared to the total budgets of the granting councils and the evolution of those budgets over the past 5 years. I'd show you, but you'd think I was being mean to you. Here's a hint. For the CIHR:

http://www.cihr-irsc.gc.ca/e/22953.html
http://www.cihr-irsc.gc.ca/e/38776.html

http://intensedebate.com/people/Crit_Reasoning Crit_Reasoning

It's always fun to watch a faith-based opinion collide with an evidence-based opinion.

Stewart

in this case faith based versus conveniently selected evidence based opinion… see catherine below

catherine

Track the amount of science operating funds compared to the increase both in infrastructure and to the number of researchers to see the problem. The further increases in infrastructure with no increased operating funds (in fact, the science granting council took a small cut) has deepened the problem.

catherine

This year's cut to NSERC, $11.2M, rises to $23.3M in 2010-11 and $34.7M in 2011-12, according to the 2009 Budget. One can see evidence of this years cut in the amount of operating funds (Discovery grants) awarded. The total amount awarded was $68.7-million in 2009 compared to $71.5-million in 2008. For example in Mathematics, the total amount of operating funds awarded in 2009 was 2.28M, down from 2.48M in 2008, which was also down from 2.62M in 2007.

Dot

Good, positive, non partisan stories are always a pleasure to read.

Well done.
Dahurian

I am a bit confused by Inkless Well's post. Using the CFI process as an example of investing in basic research is incorrect. The Canadian Foundation for Innovation does not support basic research. In fact, during the CFI application process one has to identify the innovative nature of the project and how it will have immediate economic and training benefits for Canada. Furthermore, here is the equation used by CFI: 40% funding by CFI, 40% by provincial matches, 20% by industrial match. Thus, all successful CFI awards need to have some sort of industry buy in. Sometimes, vendors themselves will kick in 20% so that one doesn't need an industry buy in but typically one can not make up the full 20% by canvassing vendors for the 20%. In my experience, CFI builds targeted infrastructure with an emphasis on applied research. Often the infrastructure ends up being used for pure research but this is not the target of CFI but a side effect.

However, I agree with Inkless Wells' comments. The Harper government has done an okay job managing science. The recent infrastructure investment and the renewal of CFI are welcome and needed. Hopefully, the upper bureaucrats in Ottawa will keep on fighting the good fight to convince MP's of all stripes of the short and long term benefits of funding science (applied and basic) in Canada.
Stewart

One point of clarification on the success rate, this was a capped competition. i.e. each university had an allotment that it could ask for. In practice, what this means is that every university ran an internal competition, most with about a 30% success rate. So the ultimate success rate for any given proposal would be about a third of a third (around 10%).
http://intensedebate.com/people/CndnRschr CndnRschr

Kudos Paul. Credit where credit is due – credibility depends on seeing it for what it is. Endless rhetoric and criticism of the government by the research community will simply result in a backlash as it comes across as arrogant and self-serving. Instead, we need to do a better job of convincing tax payers that long-term wealth and social security is served by investing in the future – through better public transport, public health (vaccines, prevention and clean and reliable water, for example), and in researching better ways to address challenges and understanding. All governments have a simple aim of doing whatever they can to stay in power and to do that they must satisfy the immediate concerns of the electorate. That results in short-term, disconnected, Band-Aid solutions that are akin to dressing a wound without tackling the root causes of the infection. But scientists also focus on their immediate needs and understandably fret about their precarious funding and what they perceive as undue influence in where the limited funding is directed.

Science listens to no politician, funder or scientist. It reveals itself only to those with the ingenuity and audacity to ask it the right questions. But it also represents an infinite resource that any country can tap. We can choose to let well-meaning administrators decide which questions are most relevant or we can let the researchers do this. My bet for the best return on investment is the naivety, scatter-brain and doggedness of the latter rather than the formulaic, pragmatic, overly responsive to influences and organized thinking of the former. To spell it out, this means ensuring support for investigator-initiated research rather than "requests for applications" in specific areas. Take a look at CIHR decisions pages to see RFAs gone mad. We can (and should) make science accountable, but that doesn't make science predictable.
http://intensedebate.com/people/CndnRschr CndnRschr

Good twisting of the numbers Eric. The most dramatic increases in the tricouncil budgets occurred under the Liberal administration (which was in government till January 2006). They did make severe cuts in the early nineties (and I fear this will be our fate in 2-3 years time – we've been here before – someone is going to have to pay for the bail-outs and enormous deficits). However, MRC (the CIHR predecessor) had a budget of $275 million in 1998 and that increased to $800 million under the Chretien/Martin administration. Over the past 4 years, their budget (along with NSERC and SSHRC) was stagnant, not even being awarded inflationary increases, and was, in the "stimulus" budget, cut by 5%. This resulted in cutting of a number of programs such as team grants (ironic, given the increasing need for multi-disciplinary research).

I'll also call you out on the funding of applied research. This is best done in or in collaboration with the private sector. Canadian industry has been decreasing its funding of R&D to a much greater rate than the Harper government as revealed by several recent studies. This needs addressing because without active industry participation, we'll be wasting money developing uncompetitive doodads that no one wants. Moreover, applied research absolutely depends on a vibrant basic/discovery effort. You cannot divert money from one to the other as has been the practice lately. Unfortunately, the nature of research is that the discovery phase is inherently unpredictable and a large part of it is devoted to simply understanding the mysteries of the universe. WIthout that knowledge, our efforts to exploit what little we know is akin to running in the dark. Why does a drug cost $800 million to develop? Because the final product is at the top of a pyramid of failed drugs.

Lastly, do you want incremental changes such as a slightly longer lasting chemotherapy poison that has been in use for 50 years and extends life by a few months, or a molecularly targeted therapy with minimal side effects based on understanding the molecular cause of the disease that essentially cures the majority of patients, like Gleevec and chronic myelogenous leukemia? I know where I'd rather put my tax dollars.
catherine

Since we are talking about Harper, why do you use numbers from 1998 when almost all the increase occurred under Liberal governments?

More relevant is the 2005-06 NSERC budget was $865M, not $400M. In recent years, the government has redirected funds that used to go directly to various organizations/institutes to now flow through NSERC. They have also targeted some NSERC money toward certain programs. Tracking the Discovery Grant program, which NSERC has tried to protect over the years, even when their budget falls far short of need, seems a better indicator of the health of science operating funds these days.

http://viewsfromscience.blogspot.com Eric

I used the 1998 numbers because they represented the lowest ebb of funding and yes I had mentioned that it was at $500 million in 1994.

As you point out, the funding for NSERC has experienced a net increase under Harper. No matter how you cut it that is the case, funding has gone up from $865 million to around $1 billion in 2 years. That is well above inflation (which is around 2%/year). Tracking individual grant programs I do not believe to be the best indicator of 'funding for sciences' because its a very narrow look at a very broad program. Even looking only at NSERC funding can be a bit misleading but is a better measure.

But the fact that you are reduced to arguing that specific grants have been reduced by small amounts highlights how weak the case you are making is. This is not a 'fiasco' in any sense of the word.

Moreover, what I am pointing out with the numbers on Chretien is the hypocrisy of declaring that Harper's move to cut 1% from the NSERC budget a 'fiasco' but then not saying the same about the time when under the Liberals (from 1994 to 1998) it was cut around 15%. In hindsight we can see that after the financial deficit was defeated the government renewed funding to the sciences with vigor. Since we are in a deficit, it seems reasonable to give them the benefit of the doubt for the time being to the Harper government when they make reductions that amount to less that 5% of the total budget.

catherine

" $865 million to around $1 billion in 2 years"

The $865 was in the 2005 budget. We are now in the 2009 budget. That's an average annual increase of about 1.5% above inflation. But, as I explained, each year Harper has targeted millions of the NSERC funds to specific uses and directed committed funds through NSERC. The end result is that money has increased for automotive research but has decreased in the basic sciences, even in 2005 dollars. For example, in Mathematics, $2.65M was awarded in operating funds in 2005 and only $2.28M in 2009.

http://viewsfromscience.blogspot.com Eric

And as I stated before, the fact that you are arguing specific fields illustrates the weakness of your argument. You started this by calling the funding status a 'fiasco'. My entire argument this whole time has been that you are exaggerating the issue.

And thank you for crunching the numbers for me. It is interesting to see that the annual increase has exceeded inflation, which undermines your own argument but its good for you to show it. Actually what is most interesting is looking at 'planned' vs 'actual' spending. In 2007-2008, the government 'planned' to spend $900 million, but actually spent $1 billion. Just a warning when you are looking at the numbers given in different reports, generally the numbers i have looked at come from the 'after reports' available through the Departmental Performance Reports. According to them there is no data available after 2007-2008, so we'll have to be patient for the 2008-2009 and 2009-2010 budgets and final reports.

Data is available through the Treasury Board at sites like:
http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/dpr-rmr/2007-2008/inst/n…
or you can get it through NSERC directly:
http://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/NSERC-CRSNG/FactsFig…

catherine

I am not arguing specific fields, I am giving an example which did not benefit from automotive money. The numbers speak for themselves once you factor in how much is diverted to targetted industrial applications and how much is newly flow-through money (such as Perimeter, the light source, etc).

The fiasco is being clued out about research. The shortfall in operating to infrastructure funds has been well documented and the latest budget really exacerbated this problem. Actually, I was not previously aware of just how much operating funds in basic research had been cut as I wasn't previously aware of just how much money in NSERCs budget has been diverted.

I was also surprised to see how obscure NSERC reporting had become. One has to go to the individual grant selection committees to get the real scoop. NSERC reporting used to be straightforward, but I guess the Honourable Edwards is not as big on transparency as the scientists and engineers who used to chair Council were. Perhaps this is due to all his years in politics.
http://intensedebate.com/people/austinso austinso

Focusing on one agency is a bit disingenuous anyway…the numbers play differently when examined across the board of government granting agencies…
catherine

Harper's problems have mainly (although not exclusively) been with basic science and the basic science research that medical research feeds off is funded through NSERC. I would go even further and focus on the funding for basic research within NSERC, as there as been a noticeable shift toward applied areas such as automotive, forestry, etc, in the last few years.
http://intensedebate.com/people/austinso austinso

Sorry catherine…I didn't mean to suggest that you personally were being disingenuous, only that the picture across all funding agencies is grim, and we only see the flash…allocating monies to building big things and buying state-of-the-art equipment (which is generally what CFI focuses on) doesn't mean anything if you don't have the funds to operate them.

catherine

I hadn't previously realized that Harper changed NSERC Council so that it is no longer run by a PhD scientist or engineer and is now run by a former Conservative politician and broadcaster.

http://viewsfromscience.blogspot.com Eric

You mean the guy (James Edward) who served as the Chair of the Board of Governors at the University of Alberta for 4 years? I think I did say something in one of my previous posts about how the Harper government was leaning towards university administrators rather than direct scientists.

http://intensedebate.com/people/austinso austinso

It is not simply a question of funding "basic research", it is a question of funding out-there thinking and approaches on fundamental processes, which have no apparent immediate benefit to anything, but later on can revolutionize a field.

I agree, let the countries with wads of cash fund the big grinding experiments that cater to the status quo and take a side supportive role in this work, but there is definitely a need to find ways to fund the types of proof-principle experiments which are high risk with the potential for high reward. This is where the playing field is leveled and where GDP doesn't matter, simply because it is relies solely on the creativity of the researcher.
http://intensedebate.com/people/CndnRschr CndnRschr

Apologies for implying you were lying, but your statement, "NSERC's funding has increased from a little more than $400 million under Chretien in 1998 to over $1 billion under Harper in 2008, that's a more than doubling of their funding in 10 years." is a clever way of implying the main increases came under Harper when, in fact, they demonstrably did not. I'll agree to disagree on the applied research area, and fall back on the CAHS and other reports that show that the private sector in Canada has a dismal record in funding R&D – and with the demise of Nortel, is falling even further behind.

As for sharing of knowledge, if you truly believe we (as Canadians) can simply sit back and take the discoveries of others and apply them, I wish you good luck. Of course there is international collaboration in big science projects , but you have to be part of the game to benefit. Eagerly watching from the sidelines is unlikely to do much for Canadian competitiveness. There's also that thang called international responsibility…..