New Zealand Association of Scientists News

'Prioritisation' Report Could Cost NZ Dearly

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 03:00:00 GMT

Dr Shane Reti's last act as Minister was to release a Prioritisation Report, that appears to have been prepared by MBIE with some input from PMSTIAC to feed into the Budget government will release on 28 May. We have serious concerns, that we encourage the new Minister Penny Simmonds to consider carefully if she is to be seen as an effective minister, stepping into roles in Cabinet. The 22% cut to research that supports the primary sector and 60-70% of our exports will be a deep blow to the ongoing competitiveness of the sector on the international stage. Cuts to Environment and Health are also questionable, given that NZ's tech sector sees decades to pay off and usually must generate the pay offs overseas.

Our Co-President's immediate comments can be found on our Releases Page as PDF and is below.

This post expands on comments available at the Science Media Centre's Expert Reaction. Our concerns were well covered in Farmers Weekly.

NEW: There are plenty of inconsistencies suggesting a lack of robust process. Lucy Stewart quickly spotted that the report's Figure 2 makes a strong case for rebuilding the social sciences research the government has systematically defunded. Publicly funded missions will not succeed without support at the levels seen in the small advanced economies the MBIE wants to emulate. Yet we were already low based on 2023 data and the "prioritisation" continues to selectively suppress this point?

Sci-Tech Prioritisation Report is a Joke That Could Cost NZ Dearly

1 April 2026

“The Prioritisation Report released today (April 1) by the Prime Minister’s Science Innovation and Technology Council makes a poor case for further cuts and changes to our research system, and appears to have been rushed out the door on the eve of the expected Cabinet reshuffle. It could cost our high-performing export sectors dearly by undermining the research that drives their international competitiveness. This report appears to signal many further job losses and irreversible losses of expertise.” says New Zealand Association of Scientists (NZAS) Co-President Troy Baisden.

Co-President Lucy Stewart summarises the report’s findings and its problems: “The core challenge faced by the research and science system in Aotearoa New Zealand is underfunding. After several consecutive years of cuts including around 700 (and counting) job losses, the best proposal the government has appears to be robbing Peter to pay Paul: taking money from all other areas of research to fund technology research.

“The argument for this is that we have a 'bias' towards agricultural and environmental research, ignoring the fact that we are a country whose economy depends very heavily on the environment. Decreasing funding from all other areas will inevitably lead to further loss of capability. If the government wants to invest in technology it should do so. Asserting that the only way to do this is to underfund other research areas to an even greater degree than they already are is an admission that there is no real interest in Aotearoa having a thriving research sector which can serve our society. There is only an ever-tightening spiral downwards.”

Baisden adds: “This report will have consequences that are dire and damaging. We are now expected to accept that our research system will buy lottery tickets in areas of technology we have mostly neglected and fallen behind in, while ensuring that our enduring strengths like agriculture and horticulture face very large cuts.”

“With research now lumped into four pillars, the Primary Industries and Bioeconomy area will face a 22% cut in its current $251m in funding. That’s catastrophic and made worse by sugar-coating, including the suggestion that $42m over 7.5 years for biodiscovery within the Tech pillar will make up for the $56m cut from each year’s budget by 2028. Doing the maths, it might only cover inflation.

“It is very desirable to find $138m to build new platforms of Tech research. But hope is overstated that the shift will have ‘outsized’ payoffs, which may be hard to capture within the motu when this research must go to international markets to succeed.

“Sadly, to find the funding for Tech, we will gut the three other pillars that all have strong focus and benefits within our nation. Much may also be lost in the gaps between the four simplified pillars. No clear justification is given for cutting Environment and Health less than Bioeconomy. I surmise there may be a fallacy operating: officials infer agricultural industry can pay for the research itself, but that is exactly what undermines our competitiveness and leaves us stuck providing commodities like milk powder to multinationals with little value added or captured.

“It is astounding that the logic for such cuts begins (in Figure 1) by comparing ourselves mainly to small advanced economies, rather than our slightly larger competitors in these areas, including Australia and the Netherlands. After considering the high contributions of the bioeconomy to exports and GDP, our government’s research investment is sensible. Cuts put our entire future economy at risk.

“This problem highlights dangerous confusion in the report. We cannot at the same time embrace what has become the internationally accepted approach of picking the clusters of missions we know will build on our strengths, while deprioritising the areas that matter most to our economy and are most successful internationally. The only thing possibly worse than our failed strategy of not 'picking winners' is deprioritising the areas where we can build on reputation and success, yet that is what has been proposed.

“Almost all of what is proposed, including expectations that areas will be deprioritised suggests that scientists and innovators will remain tangled in challenges and costs from excessive management, ongoing uncertainty as well as political interference and silencing – losing their voice to advocate for either funding or public good using their expertise.

“The report provides what are almost common sense solutions to two challenges: creating a flexible fund with ability to ‘ignite’ new ideas and rapid responses, and measuring what our research system is doing and delivering so that we can better manage it. Sadly both were well developed in institutions a decade ago, and then eliminated as control was centralised back in MBIE and mapped to contracts. Now a new body, RFNZ is to be formed and immediately take responsibility for these? This is not an area where ‘building the airplane while it flies’ normally works out well.

“Beyond cuts to our best performing export sectors, the biggest story in this report is what’s missing. It doesn’t understand the impact the cuts will have on the workforce, international collaboration or the foundational parts of our science system that were emphasised in the SSAG reports. Most of these, such as the infrastructure that is shared across two or more pillars are mentioned only as having been kicked down the road for future consideration.

“Like our many strengths in agriculture and horticulture, our ability to develop Māori research leadership within a number of fields is seen as something that can be abandoned or backburnered indefinitely. The few words provided on this topic make it easy to confuse our past success uplifting Māori and Pacific inclusion in our mainstream research activity with the narrow area of indigenous and Mātauranga Māori research.

“A tragic gap is the lack of integration of across the two hats that Minister Reti has specifically taken on to accomplish this reform. The Universities portfolio was separated from Tertiary Education so that its relation to the research funding system and institutions could be addressed. Despite this advisory group reporting to the Prime Minister to ensure it represents 'NZ Inc', universities and their funding are almost absent, except for a note that three of the eight universities stand to lose $96m in funding. One likely explanation for this is that the report represents a thin sign off and choice of scenarios from the eminent group members, and is the mainly the work of a small policy team in MBIE’s underperforming science, innovation and technology area.

“Sadly from the workforce perspective, we’re told that a projected $850m three years down the road, likely to be $800m or less after adjusting for inflation, will somehow have allowed our workforce to build back bigger and better than what $839m delivers today? It seems like magical thinking, rather than science.”

Need for Workforce Strategy as Job Losses Escalate

Thu, 05 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Can we remain a small advanced nation with ongoing losses of our science workforce?

access pdf versions on our releases page and web version of Workforce Stategy

“Two years of science reforms are best described as squeezing more juice from the same fruit, rather than planting and managing our orchards,” says New Zealand Association of Scientists (NZAS) Co-President Troy Baisden.^{^[1]}

“That's a tough pill to swallow as another 134 roles, including 86 scientists, are going at the newly merged Bioeconomy Science Institute. The job losses appear to be driven by tight budgets, not efficiency generated by having a coordinated strategy in place.”

“With science roles continuing to go out the door with no strategies in place, there’s no prospect of achieving the growth the government claims it is seeking. Worse, the long-term support for research as the driver of productivity is being defunded so fast that discussion has turned to whether we’ll lose our place in the club of small, advanced economies.” ^{^[2]}^{^[3]}

Co-President Lucy Stewart adds, “The government has effectively run out of time to look after our demoralised science workforce before the election closes in. The big issues remain completely unaddressed, from crippling overheads^{^[4]} to dysfunctional early and mid-career roles.”^{^[5]}

“We’ve swapped out managers and logos, which gets nothing meaningful done. Science is done by scientists, and we’re losing scientists at a rate unprecedented in decades. We have very few new initiatives in areas of national strength or clear need.”

Baisden points out, “The obvious steps to look after the science workforce were clear from extensive consultation in the previous reform. It was perhaps the most important of four pillars.^{^[6]} How could obvious steps have been lost?”

“We’re releasing our 15-point workforce strategy as a reminder to the government and MBIE that action can be taken on it at any time. It also serves as the backbone of our election platform we’ll be putting to political parties and voters to debate and support.”

The strategy has three key themes that put our ailing and demoralised workforce back at the heart of our drive for a successful future.

1. Rebuild the research careers pipeline. Create stable, nationally backed fellowships as well as fair and supportive conditions from PhD to senior researcher, so talent can thrive across universities, institutes, and Māori-led organisations.

2. Fix the funding foundations. Shift to funding toward people and teams, not a burning platform of crippling overheads and endless proposals that can’t all be funded. Back science-led workforce planning and restore strong national leadership linking research and tertiary strategy.

3. Reconnect science with society, business and the world. Give Kiwi researchers stable careers, deeper international ties, and a renewed social contract of trust and service — ensuring science delivers for the nation’s future.

Baisden explains, “Only in a system with stability and independence can researchers build trust as they provide facts, foresight and support innovation – in the face of crises and irrespective of the government of the day. This includes forming and supporting communities of researchers to drive forward missions.”

“Doing so requires reconnecting science with society and rebuilding trust and investment, including initiatives that span our PROs, universities and beyond. Repairing science careers provides part of the solution that needs to be matched with stable support for the foundation of our research system and clusters of focus where we succeed and look after our national needs.”

“The cancellation of the unloved National Science Challenges has left large vacuums in what had been seen as the 11 most important areas of research. Now is the time to consider supporting clusters, for example, by reimagining and better funding university Centres of Research Excellence (CoREs).^{^[7]} Doing so in obvious areas where integrated research is sorely needed, like climate change and energy, would move us forward, reimagine how to fix the underfunded CoRE model, and provide an alternative to the chaos of a competition to fund or refund all ten currently operating CoREs at the same time in 2028.”

Our Workforce Strategy is linked and on our releases page (PDF). We note it includes a glossary.

^{^[1]} https://www.sciencemediacentre.co.nz/2025/01/23/reforms-to-nzs-science-sector/

^{^[2]} https://informedfutures.org/govt-must-look-beyond-political-gains-in-rd-reform/

^{^[3]} https://vimeo.com/1143316086?fl=pl&fe=sh#t=6m46s

^{^[4]} https://doi.org/10.26686/nzsr.v80.9848

^{^[5]} https://doi.org/10.26686/nzsr.v80.10493

^{^[6]} https://www.mbie.govt.nz/dmsdocument/25789-te-ara-paerangi-future-pathways-white-paper-2022-pdf

^{^[7]} https://www.tec.govt.nz/funding/fund-finder/centres-of-research-excellence/cores-funded-in-201920-round

Statement: Science Reforms Failing, Again.

Mon, 02 Feb 2026 19:00:00 GMT

Science reforms failing before they’ve started, yet again

“Scientists began last year wondering if their careers were stuck in a process of rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic or a game of musical chairs. We start 2026 knowing it is both at the same time,” says New Zealand Association of Scientists (NZAS) Co-President Troy Baisden.

“The question now to ask is how much Aotearoa New Zealand will suffer, relative to our peer nations, as our knowledge and experts continue to disappear when they are needed.”

He adds, “The SSAG reports were very clear in saying failure to support our public research system, its people and their connections, is at the root of our productivity issues and lagging economy.”

“Sadly, the current reform doubles down on failures of the ministry and successive ministers to support our institutions and scientists to deliver what the public and our struggling economy deserves.”

“Rather than plastering over the failures, there are obvious steps of accountability and transparency that must be called for as we head toward an election. Here, we outline three.”

“After compounding decades of incremental failures and avoiding every effort at foresight and advice based on international norms, we’ve arrived at a big question. Are we choosing to fall out of the club of developed and advanced nations^{^[1]}^{^[2]} – simply because we won’t invest in our future?

Baisden says, “The election year is a chance to choose our future and demand an escape from endless failures and the loss of accountability we see when successive ministers claim the loss of jobs and capability is an operational issue in institutions, and institutions claim cuts are forced on them by funding provided by the minister and government. No one has a strategic sense of what we’re choosing to lose by pursuing cut after cut.”

“The loss of accountability has spiralled completely out of control:

● More funding disappears into institutions than goes to scientists, much more in the case of Crown Research Institutes, creating all manner of challenges for scientists.^{^[3]}

● Key Ministerial advice^{^[4]} confirmed officials don’t understand where the anomalously high ‘overhead’ funding goes, what ‘cross-subsidises’ and have no solutions.

Accountability for public funding is among the most important of five fundamentals that have underpinned the success of national research systems across the eras since the Second World War.^{^[5]} Yet, there seems to be no plan to fix the reality in our CRIs: when a science team finally win the battles for scarce public funding, as little as one dollar in five goes to their salaries and project costs. Government departments, companies and philanthropists balk at covering the high costs hidden in our system. These potential funders, along with researchers themselves, can’t understand why our government doesn’t structure the system to fund and deliver widespread benefits, as peer nations do.

Taken together, the ‘five fundamentals’ have built successful national research systems where stability, independence and accountability add up to much more than the sum of their parts, generating benefits widely touted as 8^{^[6]}, 11^{^[7]} or as much as 20 dollars for each taxpayer dollar invested. In our view, the reform has now transgressed all five fundamentals.

It is highly concerning that the recently announced Research Funding New Zealand board appears to have little or no track record in critical areas of our science system including climate change, hazards, the environment, and the social sciences – yet was announced immediately following the loss of lives in the type of storm event climate change will exacerbate.

Reforms which make science less stable and less independent from politics must be contested in the election – continuing to go off track will cost us dearly. We need to change course to avoid the path that continues to see our broken system failing to provide our country with the expertise and knowledge development we need in an increasingly uncertain global environment.”

Co-President Lucy Stewart also observes, “Over the last year, there’s been a lot of focus on the large losses of science roles, yet the crippling uncertainty and difficulty establishing and maintaining careers in science needs more attention.” Accounts from a dozen early career researchers have recently been published ^{^[8]} in the New Zealand Science Review, putting details to the bleak outlook.

In subsequent statements, we’ll highlight key topics from our long-standing vision for reform.^{^[9]} Yet as we enter the election year, establishing accountability to support informed debate has become urgent. We highlight three key gaps where the public should expect answers ahead of the election.

First, why do we now have strategic funding bodies that lack key expertise in areas of critical importance? What will we do to avoid losing key knowledge and capacity because decision-makers don’t know what they don’t know?

Second, where is the money going, and why are we unable to say when complex reform has been considered urgent by two different governments over the past five years? What are we cross-subsidising and what are we at risk of losing? How quickly can funds be better used to support careers, science and widespread benefits for the nation – worth many times each dollar invested as occurs in other nations?

Third, why do we have such poor transparency when large research initiatives fail? Sadly, this appears to mean our Ministry simply doesn’t know how to fund them to succeed. We might have begun by asking what the implications have been of losing confidence in and then defunding National Science Challenges? But the same unit has been equally responsible for another large investment, MethaneSat, that has come to grief with inadequate public transparency. It seems apparent that sufficient answers are not forthcoming, and the failure may be representative of wider problems in how MBIE has failed to manage science at scale. We join calls for the Auditor General to investigate and report back ahead of the election.

A failure to pin down accountability in these ways will send us on the path to abandon our membership among advanced nations, and mean the strong science we need for economic stability and growth, as well as to keep us healthy and safe will continue to fall to pieces in the shifting sands of politically driven funding and cuts.

A PDF version of this statement can be found on our statements and releases page. https://scientists.org.nz/press-releases

[1] https://informedfutures.org/govt-must-look-beyond-political-gains-in-rd-reform/

[2] https://vimeo.com/1143316086?fl=pl&fe=sh#t=6m46s

[3] E.g., https://doi.org/10.26686/nzsr.v80.9848

[4]https://www.mbie.govt.nz/dmsdocument/31287-briefing-0017004-overheads-infrastructure-and-science-services-in-the-new-funding-system

[5] p. 35 https://nsf-gov-resources.nsf.gov/2023-04/EndlessFrontier75th_w.pdf, see also NZAS Co-President’s address https://youtu.be/Wez15gMIKPI?si=felvGZbLPMhnjomt&t=740

[6] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/55-billion-rd-funding-boost-to-unlock-uk-breakthroughs-from-health-to-clean-energy

[7] https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_1115

[8] https://doi.org/10.26686/nzsr.v80.10493

[9] Our vision and strategy formed in late 2020 has proven more robust than any government reform agenda. Summary: https://ojs.victoria.ac.nz/nzsr/article/view/7803/6946; statement: https://ojs.victoria.ac.nz/nzsr/article/view/7804/6947.

Press Release: Great Potential and Danger in New Science Funding Strategy

Tue, 14 Oct 2025 03:00:00 GMT

Great Potential and Danger in New Science Funding Strategy

NZAS Co-Presidents Lucy Stewart and Troy Baisden comment on the new strategy for research funding^{^[1]}announced today.

“There is great potential in the science funding reform announced today. The announcements create a more strategic science funding system that better resembles successful systems in successful small nations. It has a high level structure and a matrix of considerations that will help ground it in achieving what we need as a nation.

Yet there are some things that can go wrong, and have gone wrong with past reforms.

First, the four Pillars may provide too much simplicity to ensure all needs are met. Two of the four pillars are focused on research related to the ‘economy’, when we know much research is not easily categorised in this way. Lack of clarity on where and how natural hazards research will be funded is an obvious example.

The new Research Funding New Zealand agency is yet to be built, but the Government is already planning the disestablishment of the two most competent funding bodies, Marsden and Health Research Council. Their strengths could be lost into a larger bureaucracy. The newly created Public Research Organisations might be best placed to set strategy, and it is worth remembering this recommendation of the 2010 reform felt promising but was abandoned in a partially implemented state.

We have also learned from past reforms that the biggest danger to successful systems is building more layers of management. As a company, Boeing ran into trouble making good planes when it sidelined its aeronautical engineers from top management. Successful science systems have strategies run by scientists who know science and who it delivers to, and who are not sidelined by managers and bureaucrats. Yet that’s what has happened in our current system - and the new system retains this potential.

The acid test may be simple. Scientists, business, politicians and the public would all like to see more useful science versus less bureaucracy. Our system rates as one of the worst in the world in terms of the ratio of funding that actually goes to science versus management and bureaucracy. Will we see any improvement, or will we continue to underfund the actual research this new agency is intended to support?”

See our PDF version on our Press Releases page.

^{^[1]} Cabinet documents available at https://www.mbie.govt.nz/about/open-government-and-official-information/release-of-information/cabinet-papers-and-minutes

"Day One" dawns –- what will CRI mergers mean and what else do we know?

Mon, 30 Jun 2025 01:00:00 GMT

Tomorrow is "Day One" for new institutes representing Bioeconomy Science and Earth Science, combining six of the seven current Crown Research Institutes (CRIs). While this is said to be the biggest reform in over 30 years, how much is actually changing?

When announced, the public good aspect of the merged organisations was played up, calling them PROs - Public Research Organisations. Yet the freshly minted Statements of Core Purpose make it clear the three new organisations are still very much CRIs, just bigger, with no clear policy to encourage the spinoffs and spillovers that bring big benefits to NZ Inc's bottom line over the internal accounts of the organisations. This leaves us asking if the two bigger new entities (ESR is getting a re-branding, but not merging with any other organisations) will end up feeling more like the supermarket duopoly than the solution to our nation's research needs.

The Bioeconomy Science Institute will combine Plant & Food, AgResearch, Scion (Forest Research Institute), and Manaaki Whenua Landcare Research.

The Earth Science Institute will combine NIWA and GNS Science, and also include Metservice as well as the Measurement Standards Laboratory (formerly part of Callaghan Innovation).

The future for these bodies was discussed in a May Webinar, with MBIE's Iain Cossar pointing out that the structure of our organisations has not delivered for our economy as intended. He says this doesn't reflect the quality of our researchers in the organisations.

We all hope the reform helps – but will it?

Shortly after the webinar we had an announcement that the main funding mechanism for getting research to deliver for the economy and other national outcomes, the Endeavour Fund, would suspend accepting proposals for a year. And the 2025 Budget confirmed a pattern that research funding would be reprioritised, continuing if aligned with the Government's economic agenda, but cut in other areas in order to reprioritise funds to the management of the reform.

MBIE correctly points out that there is no way (except for contestable funding rounds) for the system to prioritise funding. While already making reprioritisations, the PM's Science and Technology Advisory Council is supposed to be the mechanism for doing so, yet lacks expertise on climate change, hazards and environment.

The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment (PCE) is one of the critics of the approach being taken to the reform, taking the remarkable step of penning a letter to the Prime Minister. Since the current PCE set up the present system as a minister in the National Government of the 1990s, his criticism carries particular weight. Select committee proceedings reveal the position of environmental research has been discussed but is unresolved. In short, the needed funding to better manage the demands our economy makes on the environment, particularly in the face of climate change, is not aided by the split across the two new CRIs. From my perspective, key issues such as erosion and wetlands require knowledge, skills and technology from both institutes, but their institutional incentives could still favour holding intellectual property for commercial gain rather than sharing for the public good.

Improved focus on intellectual property settings associated with investment is one bright spot. But IP is a small part of a much bigger problem leading to suspicions this change is driven by what appears to be a false hope. Our system has mostly failed miserably at commercialisation, with only spotty successes. Instead, up to 50% of revenue to Crown Research Institutes is derived from commercial consultancy. Thinking that commercialisation will somehow save the day has been a dangerous distraction that everyone inside CRIs has seen many times over the last 30 years, and was explicitly called out in the Science System Advisory Group report delivered in August last year. This report, which provided the main hope that this sequel to previous science reforms would go far better than the last, was not released until January when the CRI mergers and IP reforms were announced. The reform agenda implemented to date has pulled very selectively from the report.

The SSAG report went to great length to point out that no research institutions globally have ever been able to rely on commercialisation as a main source revenue. Instead, national success requires investing about 0.6% of GDP into a public foundation in the research system. Put another way, that's a bit more than a quarter of our now abandoned target to lift R&D spending to 2% of R&D, and that our failure to first fund the foundation is why we've given up on that target.

We're currently dropping to about 0.3% by my accounting and about $300m behind 2019 levels of support for foundational public science, after adjusting for inflation. The irony is that the government is now reprioritising cuts to that foundation of public research funding in order to support management of change, attracting investment, and even setting up the gene tech regulator.

The most quoted commentary likened the approach the government was taking to trying to squeeze more juice from previously squeezed lemons, rather than trying to grow more lemons.

The SSAG report (PDF footnote 15, p31) ) favours an analogy where a hydroelectric power station is being asked to generate more power without regard to inflows and reservoir levels.

Whether we're squeezing lemons or running down our reservoirs, my view remains that the reason we have the largest "valley of death" for commercialisation is not IP or the structure of our system, but the problem that plagues all our crumbling infrastructure deficits. We simply don't invest in the needed foundation of skills, equipment and connections that would allow us to bridge from existing knowledge into the science and innovation that solves big problems. We also aren't succeeding in getting our science system to support our policy and legislation as it should, nor are we getting the improvements in productivity we once did.

Yet, the government's messages and reprioritisation continues to double down on commercialisation messages. Discussing that on Nine-to-Noon, NZAS Co-President Lucy Stewart points likens the approach we're seeing as focusing on training sprinters to run the last hundred metres of a marathon.

The cost of change appears to be very high – if the rates senior and principal scientists charge everyone from the government to clients is any guide. Trying to justify this to a Parliamentary Select Committee, the GNS Science Chief Executive expresses confusion that it is ok to pay over $400 an hour for a lawyer but not a scientist. But lawyers might take home most of this, while scientists watch increasingly efficient institutions take three quarters or more, up from about half which was the norm 15 years ago and remains true for universities. How can we not see the model for reinvesting in CRI buildings, equipment and all the work and management that forms a foundation for 'chargeable time' is simply broken and spiralling out of control, with the evidence being that the chargeout rates are so far outside the sectors norms both nationally and internationally that collaborations have become nearly impossible to arrange equitably, and most scientists at the beginning and middle of their careers are losing hope that they can find ways forward.

Perhaps "Day One" will mean the institutes continue to get on with business as usual, with some incremental gains. Perhaps the biggest mystery is whether Universities, who also have had two big advisory reports delivered to government, will also see significant reform in exchange for increased or changed funding, or simply be allowed to continue on without the cost of significant change.

-Troy Baisden (NZAS Co-President)

The NZAS Presidents welcome enquires -- President(at)scientists.org.nz

We also have a press release on this topic

Also, check out our page with key documents from past science reforms, back to 1986.

Survey of Scientists and Technologists working in Aotearoa New Zealand

Thu, 19 Jun 2025 03:00:00 GMT

We are pleased to again support a survey of scientists and technologists working in Aotearoa New Zealand. Similar surveys have been carried out through NZAS in 1996, 2000 and 2008, forming an important chronicle of changes in our scientific workforce. Those working within science and research organisations should receive an invitation to participate in the survey through employers and membership-based organisations. We strongly encourage everyone to respond.

Here is the formal invitation to participate in the survey.

The New Zealand Association of Scientists (NZAS) is carrying out a survey of scientists and technologists in New Zealand to develop a comprehensive understanding of the science and technology environment in New Zealand by exploring the views, characteristics, careers and demographics of scientists and technologists who work in New Zealand. The last survey of this kind was conducted in 2008 and given the many changes that have occurred over the past 17 years this survey is well overdue. The survey can be completed using the following link:

https://canterbury.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_exImr5JW2FcwrRA

Participation in the survey is voluntary and all responses are treated confidentially.

You are also welcome to forward this link and message on to other scientists and technologists in New Zealand.

If you have any questions about the research, please contact: Michael Edmonds michael.edmonds@canterbury.ac.nz. This study has been reviewed and approved by the University of Canterbury Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC). If you have concerns or complaints about this research, please contact the Chair of the HREC at human-ethics@canterbury.ac.nz.

We thank Michael Edmonds for his work making this possible, and also Prof Jack Sommer for once again contributing to the delivery of the survey he'd previously administrated on his visits.

NZAS Release: Budget 2025 robs researchers to pay for regulation

Sat, 24 May 2025 02:00:00 GMT

Read the release here or find the PDF version on our releases page

NZAS Co-Presidents Lucy Stewart and Troy Baisden have made initial comments on the Budget released by the coalition government this week, highlighting the ‘re-prioritisation’ of frontline research funds to pay for the government’s science reforms. Pre-Budget commentary has emphasised that Aotearoa New Zealand’s research and science system has been under-funded by successive governments for decades and that meaningful new funding is needed if we want to achieve the same level of science and innovation as other small advanced economies. The need for funding from government was also a key theme of the first Science System Advisory Group report released in January 2025.

Prof Troy Baisden laments, “Following last year’s nothing-burger budget for science, this year edges toward a black hole budget for the research system. Many areas of research may now be heading across a threshold where there’s no escape and they can no longer rebuild what is being lost.“

Dr Lucy Stewart comments, "The Government signalled that there was unlikely to be new spending for research and science in this Budget. They have also, in the past six months, demonstrated a willingness to take funding away from areas of research that they do not see as priorities. This was most clearly illustrated by the changes to the Marsden Fund in December 2024, which removed social sciences and humanities from the eligible areas of research. In recent weeks they have also announced that the Endeavour Fund will not award new funding in 2026 and will only offer extensions to current projects which are considered to be ‘value for money’ and to align with the government’s priorities.

At the same time, they have committed to significant reforms to the science system including the establishment of three - or perhaps four - new Public Research Organisations, two created by merging existing Crown Research Institutes, as well as the establishment of a new regulator for genetic technologies. These reforms will cost money. In this Budget, we learn that they propose to pay for them by cutting yet more money from our core research funds - primarily the Health Research Fund, which has $17 million less budgeted in the 2025/2026 financial year, as well as the Catalyst Research fund, which loses $12 million. The Strategic Science Investment Fund is also hit by significant ‘reprioritisation’ of funds forecast across the next three years, and cuts of approximately $5 million are proposed for the Marsden Fund in 2026/2027 and 2027/2028 as well. The Marsden Fund has effectively not received any new funding for nearly a decade, so it is already very hard-hit by inflation.

As I said last year, I expect to see more job losses across the sector before the end of the year. Many researchers depend entirely on contestable funding to support their jobs and less contestable funding available means fewer researchers will be employed.

I do note that there are small but relatively meaningful increases budgeted for funds supporting the development of mātauranga Māori researchers and organisations, PhD students working on applied science, and early and mid career researcher fellowships. This is good to see. However, at the same time the research system that these researchers are part of is being torn down around them. Small increases cannot make up for that."

Prof Troy Baisden adds: "Today’s budget continues to double down on a pattern spanning four decades, in which New Zealand’s governments have been world leaders in choosing not to invest in the future. We appear determined to fall behind peer nations with our investment in research, science, innovation and technology. This is increasingly true for universities, which continue to see the increasing support they saw across the decade to 2020 reversed.

There’s almost no good news, with significant areas now having gone many years without any adjustment for the pulse of inflation. Areas we depend on such as GeoNet, which helps us understand earthquakes and tsunamis as they affect us, are seeing budget cuts of around 13%. The significant research programmes supported through the Ministry of Primary Industries are not immune, with reductions of $25 million across areas such as sustainable land management and greenhouse gas emissions reductions. We’re seeing not just funding cuts in the future, but also ‘efficiencies’ where underspending has occurred relative to signalled allocations. Relatively small new initiatives in space science, touted as an important new area while Judith Collins was Minister, appear to be petering out to nothing.

The Table of Estimates produced with Budget 2025 also allows us to look back, from an estimate for the year just ended to finalised funding in previous years. Funding for the entire tertiary education sector has flatlined then declined, following the period when Government helped stabilise the sector during the pandemic’s impacts. Up until 2019 the sector was growing consistently. Although the current budget is consistent with the pre-2019 trend in dollar terms, it doesn’t account for the recent pulse of inflation. Institutional budgets are undergoing increasing stress and provide little solace to top research teams who miss out or are now deemed ineligible for contestable research funding such as the Marsden fund. A very disappointing case is the significant cuts to the Health Research Fund, slowing the front of a pipeline into an innovation ecosystem where New Zealand has global companies.

When last year’s budget emerged with cuts to science, we noted that our hope for this year sat with Sir Peter Gluckman’s Science System and University Advisory Groups (SSAG and UAG) to make a case for future funding. The first SSAG report made a very strong case, in part noting that we should focus more on the foundation that core public research investment provides. When carried out with sufficient quality, core public research investment of about 0.6% of GDP ensures that additional investments by government and business have strong payoffs. These payoffs across the economy have been tallied as an average of $11 for every dollar invested in Europe, or $5–20 for every dollar invested in Australia. The government is calling for that further investment, but we continue to undermine the foundation that’s needed for these payoffs to be reliable.

This year’s budget allows us to update our analysis showing how far short of the 0.6% of GDP target we fall. We advocate for alternative budgets that initially restore core public research investment to inflation-adjusted 2019 levels and then proceed to the 0.6% target over 5 years.”

Contact: NZAS co-Presidents: Prof Troy Baisden and Dr Lucy Stewart president@scientists.org.nz

NZAS Updates - SSAG Phase 2 Submissions and more

Fri, 04 Apr 2025 02:00:00 GMT

NZAS has sent made submissions to the final phase of the Science System Advisory Group. In addition its full detailed four page submission (available on our Submissions page), the NZAS Co-Presidents have provided a brief submission outlining their view of what successful reform science system reform should look like.

The overview is reproduced here:

Thank you for seeking this second round of input on the future of our research and science system. We broadly agree with and support the first Science System Advisory Group report and look forward to your final report and hope that it will have the desired impact.

The nature and length of the Phase 2 submissions has led us to submit a brief overarching commentary separately. In doing so, we point to differences in emphasis and sequencing in how we think the most effective solutions to the crises in our research system can be structured. We also briefly highlight our key points provided in response to your question 4.

First, solutions must focus on funding people - it is our overwhelming position that many of the major problems with our system can be addressed by understanding how to stabilise the role of our researchers. The responsiveness and predictability of the current “full-cost” system links all costs to researcher’s time. This must be a central consideration in converting reform to the intended outcomes. At the same time, the system has failed our researchers by making their committed time precarious and fragmented. It saddles them with internationally anomalous overheads, which appear to be escalating through 400% in some CRIs making everything from Fast-Start Marsdens to the future design of the Antarctic Science Platform increasingly unworkable. The anomalous overheads can be attributed to two simple factors, and the inability of our institutions and ministry to understand and control them. They are the hyper-competitive funding system and tendency to see commercialisation and consultancy as the dominant future sources of funding.

It is possible to put efficient, effective delivery of science back in the hand of scientists, by funding a large proportion of their time to deliver accountably on missions identifiable within research communities and their stakeholders. This is a scale at which important issues can be addressed, but much smaller than the scale of National Science Challenges or the failed Priorities process under Te Ara Paerangi. At this scale, reputation and trust are palpable and efficient reporting can populate the neglected goal of effective monitoring through a national Research Information System. What is funded should be funded stably and appropriately for what is needed. Fellowships can play an important interim role in stabilising costs and people at the same time, particularly in areas where rebuilding independence, trust, mobility and connectivity is needed. The support for Māori researchers to succeed permeably between mainstream institutions as well as wānanga and iwi/Māori institutions without being asked to do a ‘’double duty” can be used to test proposed solutions.

Success should rebuild connectivity between PROs, universities and business. It will also continue to attract and build excellent researchers by realising that better institutions will empower their researchers to look after the ideas and knowledge represented by the analogy of a reservoir built and maintained through core public research funding, which then flows through to economic outcomes and other benefits to society.

We also met with the Minister in recent weeks. Keep an eye here - we'll be posting our notes and communications shortly. As you can imagine – what we've discussed with the Minister echoes what we said in the submission.

Release: NZAS Supports Saving Biotechnology Capacity in Callaghan; Asks What Now for Applied Technology Group

Wed, 12 Mar 2025 02:43:58 GMT

Read the full release on our Press Releases pages.

Science System Advisory Report and Economic Growth Announcements

Fri, 24 Jan 2025 01:00:00 GMT

Following on our initial expert reactions, and media appearances, NZAS now has a further press release and statement on yesterday's release of the Science System Advisory Group Report and announcements of changes to the research system linked to economic growth and investment.

Find it as a PDF on our Press Releases page, or reproduced below.

Science System Advisory Group report receives only selective engagement from Government

The New Zealand Association of Scientists Co-Presidents are hopeful yet vigilant in their reaction to the reforms in the science sector announced yesterday. They express concern that ‘following consideration’ of the Science System Advisory Group’s (SSAG’s) long-delayed first report, the Government has elected to focus on big-picture restructures and commercial incentives while leaving aside other fundamental changes suggested in the report. This is despite the report’s executive summary warning that ‘Our recommendations should not be seen as a smorgasbord: to have an effective and productive system, changes in the SI&T system must be managed as a set.’^{^[1]}”

After the most destructive year for the science system in decades, NZAS Co-President Troy Baisden says: “The changes proposed by the government are not individually without merit, but as a set do not line up with an logical or evidence-based theory of change to deliver and implement effective reforms. Merging CRIs to reduce competition and improve coordination is a well-supported idea, but other well-supported ideas such as an independent Ministry for science and a National Research Council appear to have been left by the wayside. Selling changes driven by commercialisation can’t work when we are falling below the thresholds of public investment in a foundation of research which the SSAG report highlights as critical for incentivising business investment in science, innovation and technology.

The report repeatedly laments the problem of inflated, unrealistic valuations for commercialisation of science and specifically warns that “the naive idea persists … that exploitation of IP [intellectual property]” within institutions “can generate significant income – this is just not the case globally.”^{^[2]}

While further work is intended, the long delay and incomplete announcements associated with this report signals likely difficulty with ongoing implementation, including creating an integrated research system across universities and the newly amalgamated Public Research Organisations. Ensuring social licence in the bio-economy sector as gene tech re-enters our landscape, and building in the social sciences and humanities work needed to deliver outcomes around hazards, climate change, and health are missing, as is a clear picture for the place of conservation and environmental research and the role of the growing Māori success in the bio-economy.

Instead the focus in the government’s announcements is on magical versions of ‘value for money’, mirages of investment and economic benefit, while asserting that our under-funded scientists are not delivering enough benefits to the country. While there are real inefficiencies and pointless competition within the system that can and should be addressed, the reality is that New Zealand produces world-class research on tiny budgets, and with growing inefficiency as a result of underfunding and long-term uncertainty. If we further diminish our research system’s role in supporting a productive economy, we may lose our ability to rebuild and remain a ‘small advanced economy.’^{^[3]}

There is a risk of increasing the already high overhead on every dollar within institutions that goes to science, feeding more management and pitching of commercialisation. Directing scientists to focus even harder on squeezing more from existing pools of knowledge by focussing on impossible or unlikely commercial revenue and private industry partnerships will diminish both foundations and pipelines of knowledge and human capital.

All those who have seen the sector chase overvalued potential commercialisation over the last 25 years should be clear that the minister’s unrealistic commercialisation hype over the past year, echoed again on Morning Report today,^{^[4]} has mainly led to escalating overheads in our institutions – to the extent that we undermine innovation pipelines, business partnerships and foreign investment.^{^[5]} The declaration that these significant changes must be managed by re-allocating existing budgets is likely to mean further job losses in order to fund projects like setting up an entirely new advanced technology research organisation. Efficient change is possible, but only by focussing on good architecture and placing experts back in charge of critical decisions and processes as the SSAG recommends.”^{^[6]}

Co-President Dr Lucy Stewart adds, “Sir Peter Gluckman’s report explicitly recommends increased public investment in science, a focus on developing a skilled workforce which will see strong involvement from Māori and Pasifika, and displays understanding that humanities and the social sciences, including mātauranga Māori, have ‘multiple roles in enhancing our country’s well-being’^{^[7]}. It emphasises the need to view research funding as an investment rather than a cost. None of these elements are reflected in the proposed reforms, or in the announcement which is focused on making the science sector justify the inadequate funding it already receives. It is a hugely limited view of what is a considered and thorough set of recommendations that, if fully implemented as the report recommends, could re-build the fragile foundations of our research and science system.”

“In particular we wish to draw attention to the difference between the report’s recommendations for a Science Innovation and Technology Advisory Council and those announced today. The report envisions a council bringing together politicians and distinguished scientists, as well as those with business and innovation expertise, to make long-term decisions about the direction of research in Aotearoa New Zealand. It also mentions the need for Māori representation, as is appropriate. The released cabinet papers describe a council to be drawn from people with “deep and broad experience in business, impact and commercialisation of SI&T and strong connections with SI&T” and do not mention any involvement from a Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor (PMCSA). In contrast the SSAG report envisions the PMCSA as the Council’s executive officer and a continuing source of scientific advice to the Prime Minister and Cabinet. We note yet again that the role of PMCSA was left vacant when Dame Juliet Gerrard departed at the end of her five-year term in mid-2024, and funding for the office has since been wound up and staff let go. The announcement today appears to confirm the government no longer sees a role for a PMCSA. We think this epitomises the government’s attitude towards science and the science system. Scientists are only useful if they can make money – but let’s not risk them giving any advice we don’t want to hear.”

Prof Baisden concludes, “The NZAS has one piece of advice for the government – take to heart what the valuable report you commissioned says. We can do this right, and do it efficiently.”

^{^[1]} Science System Advisory Group (SSAG) Report: An architecture for the future (Gluckman et al, 2024), page 12, paragraph 8.

^{^[2]} SSAG Report, page 60 paragraph 211.

^{^[3]} SSAG Report, page 30 paragraph 74 and 75

^{^[4]}https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/2018971960/science-innovation-and-technology-minister-judith-collins-on-changes-to-science-sector

^{^[5]} SSAG Report, p 20 paragraph 27, and p 40 paragraph 130

^{^[6]} SSAG Report, p12 paragraph 9

^{^[7]} SSAG Report, page 8, paragraph 12.

"Principles" of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill

Tue, 07 Jan 2025 23:00:00 GMT

NZAS identified aspects of our aims and purpose that justified a strong, succinct submission opposing the Bill on the Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi. Go to our submissions page for the formal submission..

Our UAG Phase 3 Submission

Wed, 18 Dec 2024 01:00:00 GMT

NZAS has submitted to phase 3 of the Universities Advisory Group. See our submissions page for the full document.

Marsden Fund changes threaten foundations of research sector

Thu, 12 Dec 2024 22:23:08 GMT

Following significant media coverage and commentary over the past week, the NZAS has put out a formal press release addressing the shock changes to the Marsden Fund Terms of Reference. We roundly deplore these changes which undermine the very purpose of the Fund, threaten the viability of social science and humanities research in Aotearoa New Zealand, and represent political meddling with what was widely considered to be the best-functioning, if underfunded, part of our science and research system.

2024 NZAS Medals Awarded

Mon, 25 Nov 2024 01:38:24 GMT

We've announced our 2024 Medalists. Please see our Awards page for the details.

Submissions Close on Royal Society Te Apārangi Governance Proposal

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 04:00:00 GMT

The New Zealand Association of Scientists (NZAS) has completed its submission to the Royal Society Te Apārangi (RSTA) on the Society's proposed governance restructuring.

Royal Society Te Apārangi Governance Consultation Submission (pdf)

NZAS firmly opposes the proposed change and believes that if carried out, it would greatly diminish the standing and effectiveness of the RSTA in its important duties.

Co-President Troy Baisden says, "The restructuring would drop the size of Council by half, effectively ending the standing of the RSTA as a representative body.

"The proposed changes undermine the intent of the legislation establishing RSTA with electoral colleges for constituencies deserving representation at the level of governance. Positions on the newly created advisory board would be a demotion as well with a frustrating and convoluted path to any information or influence."

"Māori, early career researchers, member-based organisation, and regional branches would all be effectively demoted. This would undermine over a decade of great progress and improvement at RSTA."

"The most deeply concerning aspect has been the inability of the RSTA to see that the changes, as well as the consultation itself, violate the accepted conventions of Te Tiriti The Treaty of Waitangi. These responsibilities are embedded in the constitutional framework within which the Act establishing the RSTA sits."

An open letter from Māori academics explained concerns and called on RSTA to pause the process. https://www.maramatanga.ac.nz/news-events/open-letter-president-royal-society

Submissions close today 12 November but the RSTA's governing council plans to consider the changes on 5 December.

For those wanting to make a fast submission, we are trialing a starter tool to help (link).

[Note - we've had trouble with website permissions for PDF files recently so here is an alternate link to our submission - via google docs]

Prominent Māori academics call on Royal Society to pause

Fri, 01 Nov 2024 07:51:43 GMT

Further to the ongoing issue of the Royal Society Te Apārangi's flawed governance consultation, a group of prominent Māori academics has issued an open letter calling on them to pause the consultation and saying that failure to adequately provide for Māori participation in decision-making could make an independent Māori academy a path forward.

In our view, this illustrates exactly how deep the problems are with the current proposed governance structure. The Royal Society has played an incredibly important role in the research and science system for Aotearoa New Zealand and still has the opportunity to show its commitment to a bicultural, Tiriti-led future. We urge them to listen to this open letter.

Further Release: Royal Society confirms our concerns and must address to retain trust

Sun, 27 Oct 2024 01:00:00 GMT

We have a further release statement noting the Royal Society Te Apārangi President has effectively confirmed our concerns – they must now be addressed.

"Progress can’t be put back in a bottle. If RSTA pursues its governance reform demoting the diversity representing Māori and the research workforce across career stages, fields and regions, it will cease to hold a meaningful role as our national academy of sciences.”

Link => Read our further release (PDF).

** We are experiencing an intermittent problem with our website so you may need to access the release via the top of our Releases Page if the link above fails. Alternatively, the full text is now below.

Royal Society confirms our concerns and must address to retain trust

An email* from the President of the Royal Society Te Apārarangi (RSTA) acknowledged our concerns outlined in a statement encouraging RSTA to withdraw the proposal for a governance restructuring it has sent out for consultation. Co-President Troy Baisden follows up to note:

● “The RSTA confirms it intends for some sort of Māori electoral college to remain but does not acknowledge that this is demoted from governance to advisory capacity.

● “It is not clear whether future Māori representation would also be decreased from two to a single representative, often criticised as a “lonely only” – which can frequently lead to meetings without representation if the lone voice is not available or becomes unheard.

● “The RSTA has not acknowledged that the demotion of the representation of regional branches from the governing council to the advisory committee appears inconsistent with s23 of the Act establishing the RSTA. Nor has it acknowledged the demotion of representation of diversity including early career researchers and the many professional bodies representing fields and researchers.

“Our deep concerns reflect that the governing council plays a principal role in accountability for an organisation struggling with its messages about retaining excellence while embracing diversity. The President’s email confirms the RSTA is not a “public” organisation but omitted the balance required to maintain the trust justifying its position as a national academy.

“The quality and diversity of governance will matter as long as it can be observed that RSTA’s operations appear to be less transparent and accountable than those of publicly-traded companies, and are not subject to the Official Information Act. Independence has served RSTA and other national science academies well but relies deeply on the quality of governance.

“Progress can’t be put back in a bottle. If RSTA pursues its governance reform demoting the diversity representing Māori and the research workforce across career stages, fields and regions, it will cease to hold a meaningful role as our national academy of sciences.”

If the consultation continues, we encourage RSTA and those attending to expand it to consider what steps it can take to resume its path toward becoming a better performing, publicly accountable, and highly trusted organisation with a substantial role to play in our society.

*email from RSTA President follows.

President, Royal Society Te Apārangi <President@royalsociety.org.nz>

Subject: Consultation on improvements to the Society’s governance structure

Date: 25 October 2024 at 9:12:28 AM NZDT

To: President, Royal Society Te Apārangi <President@royalsociety.org.nz>

Kia ora koutou,

Further to my message on 15 October 2024, you may have seen yesterday’s media statement from one of our constituent organisations, the New Zealand Association of Scientists (NZAS).

I would like to reiterate that the aim of the proposal is to apply contemporary best practice, as typically applied across most, including not-for-profit, organisations, to maximise the Council’s effectiveness in governing and supporting the Society to deliver on its long-term strategy. Alongside this, the proposal articulates a structure that is designed to be far better suited to the task of representation and advice. It is intended to enhance and strengthen the ‘voice’ and representation of all of our member groups (currently not all are represented on Council).

For clarity, the Society is an independent not-for-profit membership organisation. Technically, we are a body corporate with perpetual succession and a common seal, not a “public organisation”. The proposal does not include any change in our founding Act, which specifies, amongst other things, the roles of electoral colleges and of Regional Constituent Organisations (now called branches) in appointment of Councillors. The proposal also retains the Māori electoral college.

If you have questions or would like clarity on any aspect of the proposal, we encourage you to join one of the remaining consultation meetings, noting that any member is welcome to attend any session.

Date	Location	Membership focus
25 October	Online	Fellows and Companions
30 October	Online	Māori Electoral College
30 October	Online	All Members
31 October	Online	Branches and Constituent Organisations
31 October	Online	All Members
1 November	Online	ECR Forum Committee

Please email Fiona (fiona.campbell@royalsociety.org.nz) for links to the online meetings.

We also invite you to share your feedback on any aspects of the proposal, and have circulated a feedback form to help with this. Please send your feedback to me at President@royalsociety.org.nz by Tuesday, 12 November 2024. We will incorporate your feedback into a revised proposal for consideration at the Council meeting on 5 December 2024.

I look forward to hearing from you.

With best wishes,

Jane [with full email signature following]

Royal Society should withdraw governance restructuring

Wed, 23 Oct 2024 19:00:00 GMT

The New Zealand Association of Scientists has issued a statement encouraging the Royal Society Te Apārarangi (RSTA) to withdraw the proposal for a governance restructuring it has sent out for consultation. If not withdrawn, NZAS encourages the members and organisations receiving the proposal to express deep concerns.

Read our Statement (and Press Release)

Cuts to hazards research exacerbate risks and undermine international partnerships

Thu, 12 Sep 2024 21:00:00 GMT

A group of 85 international leaders in seismic hazards research has released a letter outlining that proposed cuts in GNS Science could "devastate" efforts to understand the seismic and tsunami hazards facing New Zealand.

The concerned international scientists have now released the letter and explained their concerns through an article in The Herald.

The letter was originally sent to the Minister for Science, Innovation and Technology, the CE of GNS Science, and the Science System Advisory Group.

NZAS Co-President Troy Baisden expresses concern, "As these international scientists publish their concerns, we know New Zealand faces among the most extreme levels of risk internationally. Insurers and reinsurers are moving to improve their risk-based pricing, and this will have to be important for efforts to maintain investment in infrastructure and housing."

Now is not the time to undermine the experts in New Zealand and the international partnerships that help us understand the hazards we face."

"It is also not a time for us to fall into the usual narrative where international experts defend their New Zealand colleagues, and operational organisations contend they're limited by the public funding they receive, while the Minister says the cuts to staffing are an operational issue."

"This merry-go-round of blame shifting does nothing to address the actual concerns at hand."

Co-President Dr Lucy Stewart adds, “The current Science System Advisory Group process looks set to overhaul our government science sector in the most major changes since the creation of the Crown Research Institutes in the early 1990s. Maintaining and improving our international research relationships must be a key priority of any reforms. As this letter illustrates, losing scientific expertise prior to the conclusion of this process will damage our national capability and international connections in ways which cannot be easily fixed.”

You can read the letter expressing the concerns of the 85 signatories on our website.

We also have a press release on this topic.

NZAS Phase 2 submission to Universities Advisory Group now available

Fri, 30 Aug 2024 05:00:00 GMT

We have submitted our views on the UAG's Phase 2 questions and posted these on our website. Current events, including the recent caps placed on international enrolments in Australian Universities, and an incendiary 'revolt' from the University of Auckland's Senate in response to course reviews and wider curriculum transformation programme.

Link to NZAS' Phase 2 UAG Submission (PDF).

NZAS submission to University Advisory Group now available

Thu, 30 May 2024 20:00:00 GMT

The New Zealand Association of Scientists submission to the University Advisory Group is now available (PDF). The text of the submission appears below.

Q1: What should be the primary functions of universities for a contemporary world?

Universities were an almost magical solution to the problems of the 20th century. The same sense of magic has not applied when addressing the grand challenges of the 21st century. This has left universities lurching forward toward an unstable fate: the primary functions they provided to lift the wealth and well-being of our society in the 20th century must continue yet are not supported through government funding tied to student numbers and research.

We believe that the primary functions of universities should be supported as defined by s268 of the Education and Training Act of 2020,^{^[1]} which are unchanged from the section legislated three decades earlier. These functions, in our words and with our annotations, are:

Providing for advanced learning, with the aim of developing intellectual independence
Teaching is interdependent with research and the advancement of knowledge
Achieving international excellence across teaching and research
Serving as a repository of knowledge and expertise
Accepting a role as critic and conscience of society

The period since 2019 teaches us that providing for the stability of these functions should also be seen as a primary function of universities, sufficient to reconsider adjusting models for funding, governance and leadership as needed. There is reason to optimise and augment but not discontinue the mechanisms that link university finances to current drivers of funding. These driving sources of funding include the provision of teaching through the Tertiary Education Commission’s (TEC) mandate to ensure employment requirements are met, as well as demand for export education, and also the main pipelines of research funding.

With New Zealand’s universities increasingly respected nationally and internationally, by 2017–2019 there became a need to better understand how the functions and funding for universities should be stabilised. The current funding model places an overdependence on growth and future funding models must avoid the fragility we have recently seen, which appears to make their primary functions more visible while losing functions and capacity in areas key to an advanced economy. We remark on the following key considerations.

In (A) and (B) universities are not guaranteed ascendance over other bodies, most notably public research organisations (PROs) including but not limited to Crown Research Institutes (CRIs). They may be best placed to achieve these primary functions through connectivity in the most challenging fields (such as climate change), so that there is a spectrum across a community of experts^{^[2]} spanning teaching and research.
Excellence (C) benefits our institutions primarily through the earned trust and respect of international peers, as well as stakeholders across the nation, rather than as something that must be carefully defined or measured to allocate resources.
There is a need to fund and incentivise the ability of our system to be a repository of knowledge and expertise, able to sustainably replicate senior experts by training future leaders (D) and also act more unreservedly as critic and conscience of society (E). For a number of reasons, training fewer PhDs to a higher quality along strategic career pathways would be highly desirable.

Q2: What should be the long-term shape of the university sector in New Zealand so that it meets these primary roles?

The current shape of the tertiary sector is driven almost entirely by meeting student/employment demand in the TEC model plus full-cost MBIE and PBRF/CoRE^{^[3]} research income. There should be a more complete model that stabilises institutions while allowing adjustments and at the same time ensuring the core functions of universities are funded. This can be combined with the work of the SSAG to ensure the overall needs of the national RSIT system are met.

It is also important to avoid assuming that growth will be inherently foundational within the future shape of the sector. The PBRF grew naturally to fuel uplift in the quality of research throughout the sector until 2019, but the PBRF is ill suited to sustain the excellence it has built with the kind, sustainable and collaborative culture consistent with our national identity. With the magic of universities to solve society’s problems remaining important but not growing, and increasing questions about whether an ever-growing portion of society should be educated through university degrees,^{^[4]} we recommend designing the future of the university sector around an attractive culture that sustainably and stably delivers the benefits society seeks from universities as defined in legislation (above).

It must be said that careers form a defining element of the shape of the sector, and future design must also cater for careers while improving mobility and exchange with government, PROs, business and international counterparts. Embracing indigenous research careers and te ao Māori as defining elements of our nation must also be included in design. Maintaining a geographically diverse set of institutions is important in supporting the uniqueness of te ao Māori found across the motu. Dispersed institutions supporting primary industries have a high social rate of return so care must be taken to prevent competition driving smaller institutions into the ground. Interactions with Horizon Europe provide a glimpse of what this future can look like, and it so far appears that the role of Māori can play at least as big a role as our unique ecosystems and unique place on the Earth do in environmental research.

As such, it would be beneficial to see shaping initiatives that more responsively self-organise while responding to national and institution-wide incentives: 1) improved support for administration at the scale of departments, disciplines and collaborative institutes/centres rather than centralisations that have not delivered efficiencies and often proven counterproductive and lacked transparency; 2) collaborations between institutions, seed funding, and career incentives that can be targeted at the scale of endeavour and from clusters or hubs that represent major initiatives, such as CoREs or initiatives that ensure mission-led research can reach the scale needed to deliver national/sectoral strategies.

Q3: What are the barriers (excluding fiscal) that limit the universities from operating efficiently and effectively for the benefit of New Zealand?

The competition between institutions remains a driving force that has shifted from supporting improved quality and performance to deleterious net effects that result in under-resourcing and poor culture or well being. This includes the potential for historic factors to contribute to a rich-get-richer dynamic as well cyclic hiring temporarily favouring younger units, potentially at the expense of retaining long-term knowledge and expertise.

Q4: Can the eight universities function better as a holistic system to meet New Zealand’s needs? If so, how to establish a more differentiated yet cooperative sector?

Yes, better and more holistic function should be expected: collaborate more; compete less. Good models that sit between a single University of New Zealand and eight separate, competing universities must be identified and tested. It seems unlikely that eight largely undifferentiated and competing institutions serve a population of five million or less in a stable way. Other nations, states or provinces with similar populations, including those in the US, Australia, and Canada, clearly create mechanisms where less deleterious competition exists and differentiated institutions fulfil more structured expectations. A re-envisioning of PBRF that still provides for monitoring and evaluation but is targeted to more structured expectations would be beneficial. Most of all, the basic systems theory that competition can be positive to orient growth phases but tends to be deleterious at steady-state equilibriums should be adhered to. Where a dominance of oversubscribed contestable funding interacts with systems like PBRF in the UK and Australia, we would ask if evidence exists that the deleterious effects of hypercompetition can be ameliorated. We fear the long-term impacts.

Q5: How research-intensive do New Zealand universities have to be? Do they need to be research intensive in all subjects?

As noted above, the long-standing legislative definition of universities implies they should be “a repository of knowledge and expertise” and enable teaching by leaders in research, which meets international standards of excellence. Inevitably there will be some fields where expertise may dominantly comprise full-time researchers in present or future PROs. It is likely that most areas of research expertise are better concentrated in a few rather than all universities. However, the CRIs have observed publicly that our universities do not train work-ready doctorates in many of their areas of work, requiring overseas recruitment. This speaks to a need for greater research capacity in universities, which can more ably replicate the expertise needed to support our nation, particularly in areas where knowledge is unique including geology, soil science, agriculture, ecology and indigenous research. Of similar importance, universities may play an outsize role as ‘critic and conscience,’ which should be grounded in sufficient research and expertise to convey credibility and trust.

Q6: What is the appropriate mix of offerings in teaching, research, and knowledge transfer across the system to meet economic, environmental, and social challenges?

The mix of offerings should be as broad as can be supported in a stable way, because future needs and innovation will emanate from the edges and gaps in knowledge more than well-trodden ground. We recommend a mix that is self-organising to propose and test solutions to major challenges across these three areas. We note also that for large-scale challenges, polycentrism may generate emergent solutions^{^[5]} that we too often stamp out with calls to eliminate duplication.

Knowledge transfer focussed on commercialisation may be counterproductive when IP considerations prevent dissemination of research, impacting the perceived productivity of researchers when viewed through an output-metric lens. This aspect of the offering from a university should be carefully balanced with the potential for a more comfortable fit in other institutions (e.g. through secondment) while acknowledging participation of teaching academics in this process can be beneficial to students.

Q7: What are the most appropriate approaches to ensure excellence in teaching, research, knowledge transfer and community engagement?

The CoREs have long been recognised and even loved as a solution to every aspect of this question. They continue to have wide support from academics but are currently funded at ~2008 levels per CoRE. The CoREs served as one possible model for National Science Challenges (NSCs) as collaborative hubs,^{^[6]} but the relatively monolithic activity typical of NSCs has displaced and distracted from the value of CoREs. The underfunding of CoREs is now so severe that funding either needs to be tripled or quadrupled or these bodies canned and combined with other funding (e.g. PBRF and SSIF mainly from CRIs) to rebuild coherent excellence in a sustainable form within clusters of activity representing significant national missions for research and teaching. We strongly recommend properly funding CoREs to achieve scale while effectively remaining collaborative hubs for excellence around key missions. They have well-functioning engagement, selection, evaluation and monitoring to deliver sustainable and often collaborative excellence, outshines the processes run or approved by chancelleries to allocate PBRF and other funds to research initiatives.

Q8: How to ensure universities play their role in advancing all segments of New Zealand society without compromising on the goals of excellence?

Defining excellence is a problem that isn’t solved neatly across segments of research or expertise. Among the problems induced by this term is the simple reality that maintaining a constancy of excellence is an oxymoron. Yet administrative overheads seem to grow as a managerial burden from efforts to provide assurance or accountability around excellence that cannot be easily defined. Our nation would do better to embrace a series of goals from which excellence tends to evolve. Among these, it would be useful to include incentives to seek insights, develop adaptive approaches to solve grand challenges and wicked problems, and accept that sometimes accepting the risk of failure is a prerequisite on the path to success.

Q9: What is the appropriate size for the domestic student body in the New Zealand universities?

This question seems to conflate the growing query about what proportion of school leavers should attend university with the question of whether larger universities with greater critical mass, smaller units focussed more on teaching (perhaps more focussed on liberal arts – learning how to think), and having universities more accessible to students through smaller more dispersed campuses. This conflation should come as no surprise in a per student funding model, larger universities are better funded, and the rich get richer. The answer to all these questions appears to be that a more differentiated university system funded largely on a needs basis would service the nation and adapt to its needs far better than a search for an appropriate student body size at a campus.

Q10: How well are universities performing in the role as critics and consciences of society?

Universities currently perform well in this role where the academics involved don’t come up against major funders of the university, and do not require substantial resources to be kept safe^{^[7]} as has occurred as the era of misinformation and disinformation^{^[8]} has grown to place experts at risk. Unfortunately, the situations where the critic and conscience role remains fully functional appear limited. The instability resulting from the financial crisis recently facing most of our institutions overlays with the growing risk of mis- and dis-information driven threats, and has combined with the escalating problem of precarity^{^[9]}and workloads to undermine the expectation that the critic and conscience role is appropriately supported.

Q11: More appropriate questions should be developed. The UAG needs to consider a more complete high-level approach to historical inequities, institutional racism and the removal of wānanga from the s268 in the Act. Comparative case studies involving different universities and episodes in time are also worth pursuing.

^{^[1]}https://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/2020/0038/latest/LMS202213.html?search=sw_096be8ed81e0ce4d_s268

^{^[2]} Concepts such as community in this submission should be seen as consistent with and linked to our SSAG submission.https://scientists.org.nz/news/13360052

^{^[3]} The Performance Based Research Fund (PBRF) and Centres of Research Excellence (CoREs)

^{^[4]} https://www.economist.com/international/2023/04/03/was-your-degree-really-worth-it

^{^[5]} Loorbach, D., Frantzeskaki, N., & Avelino, F. (2017). Sustainability Transitions Research: Transforming Science and Practice for Societal Change. Annual Review of Environment and Resources, 42(1), 599–626. doi.org/10.1146/annurev-environ-102014-021340

^{^[6]} Jordan, N and others. 2010. "How to enhance the value of New Zealand's investment in Crown Research Institutes." Report of the Crown Research Institutes Taskforce. Wellington

^{^[7]}https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/siouxsie-wiles-v-university-of-auckland-threats-against-high-profile-scientist-played-to-court/PWNWS4UL5RHSTNDXXKTOVQI4PI/

^{^[8]}https://www.nzsis.govt.nz/assets/NZSIS-Documents/New-Zealands-Security-Threat-Environment-2023.pdf

^{^[9]}https://www.oecd.org/publications/reducing-the-precarity-of-academic-research-careers-0f8bd468-en.htm

Budget 2024 is worse than a nothing burger for science

Thu, 30 May 2024 07:20:51 GMT

NZAS Co-Presidents Lucy Stewart and Troy Baisden have made initial comments on the Budget released by the coalition government today, expressing their concerns about the ongoing collapse in funding for the research and university sector. More investment in research and universities helps to lift nations out of recessions, enhances future wealth and productivity, without fuelling inflation.

Dr Lucy Stewart comments, "Normally when assessing a Budget from the science policy perspective, we can look for bright spots - new spending and initiatives. Analysing this year's Budget is an exercise in determining how bad the damage will be, on the back of previously-announced cuts such as the cancellation of the Science City infrastructure programme and the failure to renew the National Science Challenges.

There is one genuinely welcome new initiative - funding for Geonet, the National Seismic Hazard Model, and the National Geohazards Monitoring Centre has been extended out until 2027, acknowledging the long-term nature of the funding needed to support this vital work in our geologically active nation. However, this funding reduces over the forecast period, leaving uncertainties in this area in the long-term. Looking out to 2027 the Budget has also forecast a total of $35 million dollars of actual cuts to the Marsden Fund, the Health Research Fund, the Strategic Science and Innovation Fund, and the Endeavour Fund in that year - perhaps to generously give researchers three years to find new jobs overseas. Otherwise spending is essentially flat, in a time of record inflation and on the back of decades of underfunding of the sector. Certainly there is no sign of anything which could come close to making up for the loss of the National Science Challenges, which we have already seen translate into proposed job cuts in the public science sector.

I expect to see more job losses across the sector before the end of the year. This failure to invest, at a time when the research and science sector has struggled to do more with insufficient funding for years already, will have inevitable consequences in loss of expertise as people move to better-funded research sectors overseas, as infrastructure continues to fail, and as research simply does not get done."

Prof Troy Baisden adds: "Today’s budget doubles down on a pattern spanning four decades, in which New Zealand’s governments have been world leaders in choosing not to invest in the future. Aside from 1991, I doubt there’s ever been such a clear case that we’re determined to fall behind peer nations with our investment in research, science, innovation and technology. The same goes for the tertiary education sector.

The budget is worse than a nothing burger for science. The relatively positive support for GeoNet and key capability GNS Science appear to be propping up areas previously funded by the Earthquake Commission (EQC) and the National Science Challenge on Resilience.

There are no other bail-outs for areas of national importance that had been supported by National Science Challenges, which received about $97 million per year in their peak years, with $64 million this year and no funding after next month. There are also no new bail-outs or capex support packages for the ‘Science City’ institutions in Wellington, most notably Callaghan Innovation.

Given the composition of the coalition, farmers might have hoped for some new research, but if there is I can’t spot it. Instead, the Ministry of Primary Industries is cutting about $4.6 million per year from its Sustainable Land Management and Climate Change Research in coming years (a total cut of $13.6 m over 3 years).

The total lack of new funding comes on top of the inflation over the past year, and on a background of flat or decreasing funding. Out in 2027 and beyond, there’s a plan to pare back flagship contestable research funds, including Marsden and Endeavour by a small but significant amount.

The Table of Estimates produced with the budget also allows us to look back, from an estimate for the year just ended to finalised funding in previous years. Funding for the entire tertiary education sector has flatlined, following the period when Government helped stabilise the sector during the pandemic’s impacts. It seems there is no expectation of resuming the growth rate of about 24% between 2012 and 2019.

Government research and development (R&D) increased even faster, but is now declining. Excluding the R&D Tax Incentive and similar categories, our investment appears to have increased from about $820 million in 2015 to $1.4 billion or more in 2020 and 2021, falling back to $1.15 in recent years before stabilising at $1.1 billion.

This explains why times feel tight in parts of the sector doing well, and desperate in others. That should come as no surprise, as cabinet papers from 2021 to the present have expressed a lack of confidence and sought reforms, which will now extend in the university sector.

The pressure is on Sir Peter Gluckman, leading two advisory groups which must make a case for the reforms to help us rebuild the mojo that drives investment and success across the science system and universities. The groups will need to provide vision and hope for science and technology to address our biggest challenges with effective strategies in areas such as primary industries, and coping with climate change and hazards. Peer nations are investing more and more, and we should as well."

Save Science Coalition

Tue, 28 May 2024 02:45:37 GMT

The NZAS, together with the PSA Te Pūkenga Here Tikanga Mahi and other organisations representing scientists, have launched the Save Science Coalition to campaign against government cuts to science and advocate for the importance of a well-funded public science system to meet the needs of Aotearoa New Zealand. See the campaign web page here and our first press release.

NZAS submission to SSAG now available

Wed, 22 May 2024 01:00:00 GMT

The NZAS submission to the SSAG is now available (PDF).

The text of the submission is below (apologies for any formatting issues). The submission was authored by Troy Baisden with Lucy Stewart and members of NZAS Council.

NZAS submission to SSAG phase 1 consultation:

In this submission, we express views developed since 2020 on what’s required to make key foundational improvements in the New Zealand RSIT^{^[1]} system. These improvements would enable the restoration of our processes, institutions and careers to the high-quality system Aotearoa New Zealand deserves and was once known for. We first express concern that the SSAG and UAG processes, while offering some improvements on previous processes, are too limited in fiscal budget, timeframe and diversity of expertise to address the breadth of the Terms of Reference (ToR), particularly in the manner outlined by the initial consultation questions.

We express frustration not with another genuine effort at consultation, but rather the nearly four decades of navel gazing^{^[2]} where valuable system diagnoses and recommendations are repeatedly lost to an affliction that the OECD’s 2007 analysis^{^[3]} identified as “automatic steering syndrome” – where oscillations between a few policy principles are accompanied by a lack of monitoring and evaluation. This has resulted in a confusing RSIT system with decreasing performance, capacity, respect, and trust. We wish to assist the SSAG in defining urgent repairs in the right direction.

As previously expressed^{^[4]} and updated for SSAG’s ToR, our two key recommendations are:

First, because great science needs foundations, we must rebuild careers and capability with a focus on addressing the nation’s challenges and making RSI attractive to young talent, particularly to Māori. We express concern that your questions do not address careers and success in the global competition for talent as an essential ingredient in restoring a successful RSIT system. Career paths play a pivotal role in rebuilding and sustaining capacity. They deserve consideration as an essential prerequisite for furthering international leadership in indigenous research.

Second, we must reforge an outward looking system able to address our big challenges. Rebuild compatibility with international collaborations and funding. Reconnect across industry, universities and all research providers. Retain and improve the ability to address challenges in areas like health and the environment. Reimagine enduring, integrative and international solutions using our collective failures to design RSI to tackle the biggest challenge – climate change – as a guide. By defining and brokering the win-win opportunities that diverge from perceived environment-economy trade-offs, RSIT must help lead the response to climate change as the biggest shift in industry and innovation in generations.

How can we get there? The creation of the SSAG reflects a systemic problem defined by almost four decades of growing confusion. We applaud the coordination and intent of the SSAG and UAG, yet observe that the long-standing problems cannot be solved in the timescales defined for your reports nor in 3-year electoral cycles. The stated commitment of the coalition government to fiscal austerity^{^[5]} makes solutions more difficult – and change more treacherous. We therefore strenuously note that the SSAG’s recommendations must be more parsimonious and targeted than the questions for consultation imply. Further, we suggest the SSAG and UAG should begin to frame a call for a process that can recommend serious and coordinated change over a longer timeframe – such as a Royal Commission.

We begin by addressing your Q8 because of the problematic role that prioritisation of government research played in Te Ara Paerangi as the substantive case for justifying new RSIT funding and structures. Around Wellington, and in the reports provided to the Priorities panel, it is apparent most government departments neither respect MBIE’s capacity in RSIT nor have clear strategies for their sector ready to prioritise research needs, and prefer that cases to Treasury address current needs. We can conclude that, with few exceptions, our concerns about the nation’s economy, environment and societal well-being cannot be separated from weakness in RSIT: we lack and actively erode our long-term strategies in areas critical to our nation that cross government, industry, and society.^{^[6]}

A prominent exception demonstrates what is achievable: in the sector around Plant and Food Research (PFR), we see that a successful institution plays a critical role in the development, delivery, and maintenance of an industrial strategy for the sector. However, it is the sole success from excellent 2007 and 2010^{^[7]} recommendations, which worked to guide a self-organising system through the merger of two Crown Research Institutes (CRIs) to better achieve their core purpose.

To restore a broad, successful self-organising system that builds trust and innovation, we must solve some conundrums of science policy, including a hierarchical prioritisation of research funding where each level can identify mechanisms for strategy, funding and evaluating success. Problems can be linked to embedding siloed policy development within MBIE rather than allowing the self-organisation as recommended and implemented^{^[8]} but later reversed following the 2010 CRI Task Force report. Developing a more capable stand-alone RSIT ministry remains an alternative. We argue that the acid test for formulating strong science policy is the ability to take responsibility for developing a capacity for monitoring and evaluation – achieved by neither FRST/MoRST nor the present structures in MBIE. In the current environment, such a function should provide an early warning system for areas of nationally significant capability at risk of collapse. We argue that specialist science-led institutions are more capable of these roles than a ministry, but only if competition is decreased and trust rebuilt.

Further, there must be greater clarity on whether applied outcomes should primarily be funded by Vote SIT or the relevant funding Votes of other ministers, and how science policy supports cases to Treasury’s processes. For example, research for conservation and environment outcomes provides an illustrative example because it has been the subject of detailed studies of the lack of accountability between environmental outcomes and the funding of research by the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment.^{^[9]} Yet perhaps most importantly, it has been an area where our natural and managed ecosystems needs place us at a pinnacle of international interest and attractiveness, yet the confusion and funding culture has led almost all potentially visionary leaders to leave the country or be lost to invisibility or efforts to manage and fix the system.

Specifically, FRST’s ‘Outcome-Based Initiatives’ funding (2005-2015) has spawned enduring confusion about whether key research should be funded by Vote Conservation and Vote Environment versus Vote Science Innovation and Technology. A choice must be made to solve this challenge and must also stabilise funding caught in the grey area between the funding sources from each Vote. We argue that this issue is fundamental: a democratic society expects researchers and academics to be the beacons working at generational time horizons to guide and attract strategies, rather than follow the whims of 3-year parliamentary terms. No system delivering the morass we’ve seen for 20 years can muster the public funding and support that scientific leadership and vision requires. The system we must reforge may be most notable for depending primarily on ‘earned trust’ for quality assurance, as highlighted in the diagnosis of the UK system’s woes by Sir Paul Nurse.^{^[10]}

We can contrast the desired state of RSIT in which the overall system and its components are appropriately funded and trusted to deliver outcomes with the present situation, where quality assurance and steering of public funding is provided largely by the consultancy revenue that funds ~50% of many CRIs. Much of this consultancy is effectively short-term research undertaken for government clients or in response to government policies and resulting litigation, which means we have developed a system that erodes public trust and is seen in too many cases as a source of rent-seeking sales pitches from ‘scientists’. We argue that the erosion of trust relates to our own bespoke version of The Big Con^{^[11]} – whereby we’ve created and effectively subsidised Crown consultancies that recreate our own version of the syndromes of “infantilising our governments and warping our economy” generated by overdependence on the Big Three and Big Four management and accounting consultancies. The dominance of consultancy must be replaced by focus on strategy and transforming CRIs away from for-profit structures that sit under the Companies Act.

A principal step toward a better future for science must involve a shift away from this problematic model – which we picture metaphorically as buying a fleet of well-regarded used cars that have performed well internationally, rather than continuing to panel-beat our rusting Trekkas.^{^[12]} Ultimately, government research should give rather freely to our firms and our society wherever net benefits and spill-overs occur. The return of the global political economy to trade barriers and competing industrial strategies amplifies the importance of rethinking the need for a public research system that aligns the role of government research with industrial strategies that now need to address the problems of the 21st century including climate change, overlapping hazards and threats.

This leads to a clear case for reform of our public research organisations (PRO) (Q4 and Q5) within a larger RSIT system (Q3). They must be better able to connect to universities, government, business, communities, and with their international counterparts. Their ability to build innovation and trust is crucial yet lies on a spectrum that defines a need for different forms of industrial strategy, which guide their public face and internal ethos, as well as their approach to intellectual property. The future system should consist of PRO that are closer to or embedded in universities, as well as wānanga and Māori organisations, in ways that further public good, innovation and the closing of gaps and transaction costs. Our CRIs were formed to enclose applied research and consultancy at a time when this made sense – before understanding of Post-Normal science evolved^{^[13]} to suggest different structures are required to address the challenges of the 21st century, including climate change.

Although it is possible a single organisation combining today’s Crown Research Institutes could function with divisions able to follow differing strategies, it seems by far best to allow the potential strategies to set the future form in the following areas:

Primary production sectors - these sectors operate differently from tech or health and are subsidised internationally. Our dependence on primary exports requires this area to be given appropriate priority and thought. PFR serves as a leading example that must not be destabilised. It can aid AgResearch and Scion toward similar success, and accelerate progress toward capturing more complete segments of the value chain reaching consumers.
Environment and Hazards – Research in environment and conservation, climate change mitigation and adaptation, as well as seismic, volcanic and weather hazards all share cases where their primary value is public. These areas can be prioritised by assessment of value to the public, as well as the value of quantifying and managing risks affecting our nation as a prerequisite for investment. In addition, almost all of our research in these areas is largely or entirely unique to our nation, our ocean or territories such as Antarctica, so that the knowledge, IP, and researcher capacity has limited transferability with the rest of the world.
Resources, Technology and Innovation – there are clear opportunities and roles for research that can be done anywhere in the world, yet grows successfully from clusters that build on our strengths. Sir Paul Callaghan referred to our likely successes as ‘weird and weightless’ – now exemplified by the emergence of leading rocket and space technologies. There is a role for the legacy of DSIR’s success, but it must be reconstituted to better connect today’s Callaghan Innovation with the successful parts of Industrial Research Ltd that entered Victoria University of Wellington, and a growing range of other university and independent capabilities.
Health – research in the health sector provides an important additional area where CRIs have not played a dominant role, yet the emergence of the Health Research Council and other structures have enabled successful research and strong leadership to build on itself across many institutions with clear national benefits. The relatively high transferability of health research internationally has helped fuel success, brought recognition of leaders, and made investment and IP management relatively straightforward, and even able to address issues of Māori data sovereignty.

There may also be strong justification for a number of smaller special cases, which have at times thrived or struggled as independent research organisations. Notable also is the need to support museums and the unique services their curators and collections provide to research and society.

Each of the four major areas above (especially #3) as well as the special cases should have the ability to scale up appropriate yet differentiated mechanisms to fund innovation and scale globally where appropriate (Q6). New Zealand’s funding should be rationalised to support a measure-to-manage approach, questioning the Research and Development Tax Incentive’s effectiveness as it balloons well past half a billion dollars.

Clarifying these strategies would return us to a more optimal structure for funding research (Q7) that favours collaboration over the global tendency toward contestability that has fueled ‘hypercompetition’. We believe the correct steps are to identify the strategies that define PROs and Universities and provide stable funding bases that are more internationally compatible (lower overheads). Missions might have to partially await the development of improved national strategies, but can also catalyse and coordinate them. The most competitive funding should aim largely at seeding fundamental research and filling gaps. A clear opportunity to move away from our system’s problematic combination of high overheads and contestable funding can be outlined following Mazzucato’s book sequence from strategies, value, missions, and questioning alignment with consultancy. We believe that the failure to prioritise this sequence was a major error in Te Ara Paerangi’s White Paper process that deserves reconsideration.

The RSIT system and its funding must also take steps to enhance connectivity and stability and clarity of accountability for delivering public value; remove contorted governance, false accountability with high translation costs linked to managerialism. We must remember that the delivery of research outputs and outcomes is only possible through the capacity of institutions and researchers with stable and vibrant careers. Currently little is done to incentivise these aspects of the system, nor encourage meaningful diversity in thought or delivery.

We conclude by answering your Q1: the public RSIT system and its funding must provide a foundation of support for the economy and wellbeing that the nation expects. It must rebuild a compact between science and society, so that society feels served by a system that also represents their needs and exudes competence deserving of trust. It should contrast from the present system which too often feels self-serving in ways brought on by commercialisation of state-subsided institutions. Your recommendations, and their implementation, will determine the degree to which the transition is made to respect and trust in public RSIT versus continuation of the warnings of the 2010 CRI Task Force report, that our institutional structures would choose a million dollars to their bottom line over 100 million to New Zealand’s bottom line.

Finally, we recommend that the SSAG consider a list of key documents and submissions that provide a view of what’s gone repeatedly wrong, despite valid diagnoses and incisive recommendations. The past problems with implementing successful system change should be targeted in structuring your group’s recommendations, in part through clear recommendations for evaluation and monitoring. Our co-presidents and councillors would be happy to discuss these matters with you.

Notes:

^{^[1]} We use RSIT to define Research, Science, Innovation and Technology, purposefully including ‘research’

^{^[2]} https://scientists.org.nz/Reshaping/13350462

^{^[3]} OECD. 2007. OECD Reviews of Innovation Policy: New Zealand. pp. 12-13. doi:10.1787/9789264037618-en

^{^[4]} https://scientists.org.nz/news/13274451

^{^[5]} Including elimination of the Productivity Commission and evidence units and roles in key ministries.

^{^[6]} Mazzucato, Mariana. 2014. The entrepreneurial state : debunking public vs. private sector myths.

^{^[7]} Jordan, N and others. 2010. "How to enhance the value of New Zealand's investment in Crown Research Institutes." Report of the Crown Research Institutes Taskforce. Wellington

^{^[8]} https://www.beehive.govt.nz/sites/default/files/CRITaskforceFinalreport.pdf

^{^[9]} https://pce.parliament.nz/publications/environmental-research-funding-review/

^{^[10]}https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/research-development-and-innovation-organisational-landscape-an-independent-review

^{^[11]} Mazzucato, Mariana, and Rosie Collington. 2023. The Big Con: how the consulting industry weakens our businesses, infantilizes our governments, and warps our economies. New York: Penguin Press.

^{^[12]} https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Trekka&oldid=1218920808

^{^[13]} Funtowicz, Silvio, and Jerry Ravetz. 2020. "Post-Normal Science." In Science for Policy Handbook, 14-18.

NZAS Release: Science System Advisory Group can’t address the biggest threats

Fri, 03 May 2024 00:00:00 GMT

The New Zealand Association of Scientists says, “The Science System Advisory Group’s (SSAG’s) consultations and Terms of Reference (ToR) send worrying signals when combined with recent comments from the Minister for Science, Innovation and Technology (SIT), the Hon. Judith Collins.”

As science faces the largest cuts in decades, NZAS Co-President Troy Baisden says:

“There is wide agreement this panel is set up to take short-term action. Consultation in the most recent reform has confirmed the sector knows action is needed. Yet, we watched in horror as the window for action passed and Te Ara Paerangi Future Pathways left critical national capability headed for ‘fiscal cliffs.’

“The latest interview^[1] from the Minister is a flashback to failed thinking from the 1990s, aimed at ‘efficiencies’ and commercialisation, that keeps recreating the same problem. We need a national foundation of publicly funded research to build an economy that keeps us safe from hazards and climate change, enhances productivity, and the connectivity of knowledge. Only on a stable foundation can innovation thrive to drive economic growth and well-being.

“Despite a Terms of Reference aimed at action, the Minister’s comments and consultation questions make it clear the SSAG’s first phase could be lost by reopening 40 years of navel gazing,^[2] failing to produce the improvements needed now.

“In addition to stabilising the foundations in our workforce, institutions, and infrastructure on top of which future success as a nation lies, we now face two cavernous problems.

“First, in an era when peer nations not only invest more in research but are reinstating trade barriers linked to industrial strategies, we almost universally lack strategies for our industry sectors that can mesh with our unique responses to climate change, hazards or risks of economic, supply chain and similar shocks. Plant & Food Research leads a sector that is one of our few bright spots but could be put at severe risk by doubling down on expectations that commercialisation is the future.

“Second, societal and business responses to climate change, hazards or risks of economic, supply chain and similar shocks are built on public knowledge and trust. Our public research institutions dangerously depend on consultancy models for half their revenue, which growing evidence suggests can infantilise our governments, weaken our firms and warp our economy.^[3]

“The SSAG does not appear well-placed to address these problems, despite being formed to take fast action, presumably guided by the views of its chair.^[4] In the long run, a more diverse panel with less commercialisation focus is needed. Ultimately, we need a considered process which acknowledges the uniqueness of our nation’s challenges and opportunities, and the long history of attempts to reform our research and innovation system.

“As nations become more focused on strategies for industry sectors and the challenges of the 21st Century, such as climate change, the NZAS encourages submissions that identify immediate fixes; while also calling for a process better able to address the troubled history and scale of the challenge facing our nation’s research, technology, and innovation needs.

“With the Minister and Ministry placing so much focus on another hack at improving our commercialisation we must ask how the critical foundations of the publicly funded research system can be preserved in the face of the largest cuts in 30 years. There is real danger that unless stakeholders think beyond the SSAG’s ToR, the immediate good the SSAG recommendations can achieve could be outweighed by damage to the national capability.

“We need fixes now but must also rebuild the research system New Zealand deserves for the 21st century, so we once again punch above our weight to collaborate and innovate. The NZAS will post a draft submission next week, calling for a process such as a Royal Commission to overcome the repeated failures to reimagine our national research system.”

Contact: NZAS co-President: Prof Troy Baisden president@scientists.org.nz

PDF version of this release

[1]https://www.researchprofessional.com/0/rr/news/new-zealand/2024/4/Judith-Collins--counting-on-commercialisation.html

[2]See our compendium at https://scientists.org.nz/Reshaping/13350462

[3] https://marianamazzucato.com/books/the-big-con/

[4] NZAS Council agrees with approximately 70% of the Prof Sir Peter Gluckman’s submission: https://informedfutures.org/green-paper-submission/

Support SOS (Save Our Science) Messages at #SS4C

Wed, 03 Apr 2024 21:00:00 GMT

Friday April 5 will see what organisers intend to the be largest School Strike For Climate #SS4C since 2019. We have a press release embargoed until Marches begin at noon.

This occurs at a time when government support for research including much of the climate and environmental research in the $97m per year National Science is falling off a fiscal cliff. Many additional research programmes will end within 18 months. No clear replacements mean an end to many careers in vital areas of climate science when we need more work. Read more in a group statement from climate scientists.

To signal support for science in signs, pins and banners at #SS4C:

Please use #SOS #SaveOurScience
Also your areas of science relevant to climate change, and design simple messages.
Encourage groups of scientists to attend together to support the rangitahi youth – we will get separate message out to media about science.

Find out more about events around the country. https://www.ss4cnz.com/locations

Stay safe for science: keep your message and yourself safe. Remember that protests can attract radical elements, as well as counter protesters. Either may be looking to cause tension, conflict or even violence.

Always be ready to escape safely, including meeting points and contact details for friends, family or colleagues you've come with.
Check with organisers for stay safe guidelines and contacts.
Diffuse or avoid tension. Stick to simple messages.
Take up concerns afterward, and be visible on social media or commenting on mainstream media blogs if there is confusion.

Below, we're sharing some signs you could print and bring along:

End of NSCs and Wider Cuts Look Inevitable

Tue, 19 Mar 2024 05:30:00 GMT

More news is starting to cover cuts hitting science and research in New Zealand. At first the cuts seem unbelievable and unthinkable.

First off, the 11 National Science Challenges are coming to an end. Although they're initially a process that might replace them, it stalled and came to nothing. That means that 11 areas deemed to be the most important areas of research 10-12 years ago will fall off a funding cliff in just over 3 months.

Second, over $400m of funding for infrastructure in institutions around Wellington was mooted by the last government and cancelled by the new government. Can aging and unsafe buildings be replaced just off of overheads and operating when most government budgets are being slashed by 7.5%? That's leading to painful cuts across a range of institutions, including the 'strategic reset' in Callaghan Innovation, which seems to lack any visible strategy.

This weekend Lucy Stewart appeared on NewsHub explaining the wider consequences of Callaghan's 'reset'.

RNZ had pieces including me and a good, long interview with a National Science Challenge director on Monday Morning.

Today I did a good 5 minute Q&A explainer for Wired show and podcast on 95b FM.

I've run that one through a transcription so the interview appears below.

"You're listening to a 95 b FM podcast.

National Science challenges were established in 2014. With the aim to tackle New Zealand's biggest science based issues and opportunities. They are funded through the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment. The challengers have invested over $680 million of funding over 10 years. However they are due to expire at the end of June. This year, I speak to co president of the New Zealand association of scientists and honorary professor at the University of Auckland School of Environment Professor Troy Baisden about the impending expiry the significance of this loss and the future of science research funding in Aotearoa.

For those who don't know, could you please explain the national science challenges and what they intended to do?

The National Science challenges were a group of 11 different topics are challenges that were to attract scientists and stakeholders to work together to solve some of the biggest problems New Zealand could identify back around 2012. They included areas like the impacts of climate change uniquely coming from the Southern Ocean across us making the seas around a sustainable, as well as areas like high value nutrition, and keeping people healthy, if slightly touched on this a little already. But what sort of science does this cover? Do you have some examples of current research projects that are funded under these schemes? Well, I mean, it's hard to pin down any single area of science. But one of the ones that we're most worried about losing is the climate modeling and associated observations that cover large areas of the Southern Ocean. There's also a lot of research that covers seismic hazards and how, and also other natural hazards like storms and floods in volcanoes and how they may play out in New Zealand, and how stakeholders can engage to help protect us from those hazards. Those are the types of things that we worry most about losing. If indeed anything happens that we suddenly need that research or the information from it.

So the challenges are set to expire at the end of June this year. What is the significance of this loss for not only the science sector, but also for the research and contributions for the wider society.

This is a huge sort of disaster in planning processes around science. There was a process designed to replace these big Challenges with something else that would work better than they've worked. One of the problems is possibly that they were underfunded for what they needed to do. And now we're going to cut them away entirely. That doesn't make any sense if in fact, they were working on the most important areas of research for New Zealand. The other logical thing that comes from that is what are the people going to do? And there, we're really looking at a situation where a number of scientists and particularly the leadership level are often leaving New Zealand as quickly as possible or have already arranged new positions elsewhere. People are retiring and there are real questions about what happens to the information and relationships that have been generated while these Challenges were running.

How if anything, as the government replacing contestable, funding for science research, what do you hope will be done?

The ideal situation would be two things. One is lifeboats for the areas of critical national capability that would allow the researchers to maintain and continue important research areas that matter both for New Zealand and internationally. The second thing would be to reinvigorate a new process that resembles but doesn't have to be like the process the last government ran, called Te Ara Paerangi, which was trying to find pathways forward for our national research system, which has been through multiple reorganizations over the last 30 years. Each one has been worse than the last.

So do we know what the government is doing? If anything?

No, there's essentially budget confidentiality around every level of discussion. And that's not doing us any good in the next two months, while researchers are leaving and institutions are planning their budgets, redundancies and cuts for the coming year. Most research organizations are planning difficult road shows, or have already announced major programs to cut researchers like the Callaghan Innovation strategic reset, no one has any clear strategies from the minister on down the only strategy seemed to be to cut red tape. But what that often means that only minor changes happen at the management and governance level. And it's the researchers that suffer and that quality of research and its ability to actually be the frontline when New Zealanders need research is what could be lost here. The biggest question is do we actually need National Science Challenge is to do what's required and the answer is no. What we do need is a funding level that's commensurate with our with peer nations and New Zealand has lowest levels of funding for government and university research of any peer nation. And that's really the issue here. It's getting some research in place that is stable supports researchers and their careers and can deliver for New Zealand.

That was co-President of the New Zealand association of scientists Professor Troy Baisden speaking about the impending expiry of National Science Challenges and the future of science research funding.

That was a 95b FM podcast to hear more head to 95bfm.com/b casts"

You can also find this post (and comment) on LinkedIn.

Conference and awards

Mon, 13 Nov 2023 22:30:00 GMT

Our annual awards are happening today as part of our conference. Announcements begin at approximate noon. A livestream will be available with link on our awards page.

NZAS Releases Briefing for Incoming Minister of RSI

Thu, 02 Nov 2023 00:00:00 GMT

The New Zealand Association of Scientists (NZAS) is releasing a Briefing for the Incoming Minister of Research, Science and Innovation (RSI).

NZAS Co-President Troy Baisden says “Crucial decisions will be needed quickly to rebuild our RSI system to lift our nation’s performance and standing among peer nations.

With our universities in crisis and the National Science Challenges due to end with no clear replacements, urgency is required.

Our recommendations should be of use to the new Minister of RSI, and may also inform coalition negotiations to recognise the importance of this portfolio.

Our nation’s ability to innovate and respond effectively to the largest challenges, most notably climate change, hangs in the balance.

We define the need for focus in two areas. The first focus is rebuilding careers and capability as a priority. Secondly, we must reforge an outward looking system, more able to connect internationally, with business, with te ao Māori, and across our research institutions to achieve results.”

We are providing these recommendations because we are the main independent body of scientists able to comment on entire system, with a focus on science policy and the history of science.”

Access Briefing for Incoming Minister as PDF

Access Press Release as PDF

Voting opens today – what was our take on the party's positions?

Sun, 01 Oct 2023 19:00:00 GMT

From our election panel, the Science Media Centre's Q&A with parties, and other events, we've gotten a sense of where the parties stand in this election. None has earned an endorsement from the perspective of science. All have positive points, but ultimately none are committed to both of the things that are most needed to create a research sector that delivers and can attract and retain the talent needed to address the challenges we face in the 21st century. These two things are to provide the funding required to do the job and the institutional and career arrangements to provide stability.

Here are our main points:

We are disappointed no party is going into the election talking about the 2% Research and Development (R&D) target set by Labour in 2017 as something that will be achieved. Worse, most of the new spending is Business R&D though a tax credit. This boost of Business R&D can’t be lauded as a success when we have no idea what’s that is doing or is even real. We know it isn’t hiring many PhDs and isn’t improving connectivity between business and CRIs or universities in an obvious way. This need review.

Labour continues to promote Te Ara Paerangi. We agree the initial stages of this reform did a great job of listening inclusively to the sector's concerns, but that was well over a year ago now. Unfortunately, there is little evidence that Te Ara Paerangi is generating policies or reform agendas that will meet the concerns scientists expressed so clearly. Those that have followed the process are losing hope, and seeing lip service matched neither with funding nor actual change.

Labour’s defence and promotion of Te Ara Paerangi is missing in action on urgent topics like climate change research, which was the only specific science area prioritised in audience feedback. Having described them as intractable in the cabinet paper and as wicked problems in more recent times, the Minister seems to be saying she supports researchers working on these topics but not enough to convince Cabinet, government departments and Treasury to fund them. Unfortunately, the Greens – despite their strengths on climate action – are missing in action on this important ingredient in long-term success.

There’s no coherent narrative around how the murky National Research Priorities (NRPs) will work, despite an urgent timeline to create and fund them by mid-2024. Verrall has been caught promising that NRPs will deliver impacts that simply cannot be promised. Clustering and targeting work to priorities would deserve support, but that’s not what is proposed. Discussion of the NRPs at first sounds like an effort return to 2015 and repair what National Science Challenges could have been, yet the claims being made create alarming flashbacks of the 2005 funding experiments that still haunt our conservation and environmental research communities.

An interesting gap in discussion is the formal commitment to joint the European Horizons funding framework. While good for collaboration, it is concerning that we are joining only Pillar II, which is committed to specific European research priorities, rather our own.

An area where the Minister deserves substantial credit is elevating the stated importance of early careers as a foundation of the research system. They’ve been neglected for over a decade. The intent of the policies to support careers is excellent but it is baffling that the funding is half or less of what is required to rebuild the early career support system in place until 2010. This funding gap also makes a mockery of Labour saying their budgets are fully costed.

Biotech regulation was not a priority expressed by the audience, yet parties like National and TOP may be onto something suggesting reform of biotech regulations is more achievable than the NRPs.

The Wellington Science Hubs have become a point of discussion rather than an easy win.

At least 3/4 of Te Ara Paerangi reform agenda remains good but, unfortunately, is not being discussed or supported for implementation by the four largest parties. That said, the TOP candidate, Dr Ben Wylie-van Eerd, show us that minor parties can demonstrate competence on details and contribute to valuable policy discourse during elections. The NZ First candidate wasn’t far behind.

Our audience’s upvoting of questions may have made the strongest statement. Given the challenges faced and the lack of fundable progress on solutions, isn’t it time to stop being pragmatic and recreate an independent and visible ministry for research science and innovation capable of thinking through these challenges?

This year's statements from the parties give us pieces to choose from, and we will soon arrive at uncertain hope that will come from assembling the pieces supported by a new governing coalition.

I'll close with the compelling opinion piece just out and ask voters to ponder its central point. The problem runs deeper than universities alone, but why is our politics unable to stabilise and support the people, institutions and knowledge we need to support our future as a nation?

Troy Baisden, co-president NZAS

Keeping scientists safe: election season matters for two reasons

Fri, 08 Sep 2023 02:00:00 GMT

Since the 2016 US Presidential election, it has been apparent elections can play a pivotal role in the deterioration of the information space where our societies consider the most important issue. In Aotearoa, the election matters for two reasons. The first is that elections may focus risks on issues such as climate change and aftermath of the suite of issues raised by the protests on Parliament's lawn. The second is that you, as a scientist or researcher, might want to consider removing your name and address from the published electoral role if having this information easily available to the public may put you at risk. (If so, read on and do this now!)

Our 2022 Conference featured a session* where we compared the experience within research institutions versus journalism in keeping people safe when speaking out about important issues, as well as the mis- and dis-information that has increasingly become a threat.

We came away determined to implement key steps journalists have taken more successfully than research institutions to protect personal safety for those who may be speaking or writing publicly and attracting attention that can shift from mis- and dis-information to personal threats and attacks.

The most universal step those concerned can take is removing their name and address from the published electoral role. The process is explained here, and we have become aware that employers and other authorities may be confused by the requirement for a letter of support.

This is explained here, and we are able to provide a letter for members who meet the criteria. (We've been advised you can email us your application for us to submit with an our letter for expedited processing.) We also provide our template here for employers and other institutions to use.

We have recently become aware of a deadline of Sunday 10 September for the provisional processing of applications.

Please note that going on the unpublished role means your voting process will be akin to filing a special vote, since your name and address won't appear to be crossed off.

The application must be accompanied by or followed by a letter of support like the one above, outlining a basis for risk that is not simply a request for privacy. It can be from an employer or a body like NZAS but cannot be signed by the individual requesting their name be removed from the electoral role.

More broadly, we aim to provide support for scientists engaged in public issues and engaged with media and social media as they do so in the era of increasing mis- and dis-information. Let's begin by getting a better understanding of that a major change in risk has been observed since 2020, and is resulting in unprecedented levels of personal threats, including death threats, against scientists and researchers. These threats increasingly appear to be coordinated and designed to dissuade public engagement of experts in providing information of value to the public and countering mis- and dis-information.

Our Association plays an important, independent role in these actions. Evidence for the step change in the information environment, the magnitude of threats in general, and those directed at scientists, researchers and experts includes:

SIS: New Zealand’s Security Threat Environment 2023
Feature Film: Ms Information https://www.nzonscreen.com/title/ms-information-2023
The Disinformation Project https://thedisinfoproject.org/resources/
RNZ: Undercurrent Podcasts https://www.rnz.co.nz/programmes/undercurrent-podcast

The most important awareness arising from these sources is the need to keep experts engaged on public issues safe by proactively removing information such as their residential address from general access on sources including the Electoral Roll. Existing cases of threats to individual experts and understanding of the speed of disinformation emphasise that it is too late to do so as threats are beginning to occur or are observed to be escalating.

Another place where names can be matched to addresses is the companies register. This and similar risks can be ameliorated by employers allowing the use of work address for the appropriate mail that may not directly be affiliated with formal roles.

An imporatant step we are working on is understanding how it may be possible to help navigate the many workplace policies that help to keep public facing scientists and communicators safe.

A final step that we can suggest but can't help with in detail is considering your home and personal security.

In closing, it is important to note that these steps may seem to you, your employer, or others as if they are overkill, until they needed. If that day comes, an ounce prevention is worth a tonne of cure.

*The session was unadvertised to assist in protecting the safety of the in-person panellists Kate Hannah and Marc Daalder. We thank them for sharing their knowledge and experience!

Election 2023

Wed, 06 Sep 2023 21:00:00 GMT

We've now hosted our election panel, held jointly with the PSA as in 2017 and 2030, for this election cycle. You can watch the video on our page or on youtube. We'll develop a summary of our thoughts. The panel has been covered in BusinessDesk and Research Professional if you have access to these paywalled sites.

We also recommend checking out the Science Media Center's Question & Answer with political parties.

2022 NZAS Medals

Mon, 14 Nov 2022 06:00:00 GMT

The Marsden, Hill-Tinsley, Shortland and Cranwell medals for 2022 were awarded. More ...

NZAS Council Perspectives on Mātauranga Māori and Science

Mon, 29 Aug 2022 20:00:00 GMT

New Zealand Association of Scientists Council has prepared a short article providing some background and perspectives on Mātauranga Māori (Māori knowledge) and science, from the point of view of predominantly non-Māori scientists. It is intended for people who are new to New Zealand and/or are interested in understanding why organisations such as the New Zealand Association of Scientists (NZAS) support the recognition of mātauranga and its integration with science.

NZAS Council Perspectives on Mātauranga and Science.pdf

Te Ara Paerangi Future Pathways submission

Wed, 16 Mar 2022 21:39:41 GMT

After a mammoth effort from everybody across the RSI sector, submissions on the Te Ara Paerangi Future Pathways green paper closed yesterday. You can find our submission here as a PDF:

NZAS Te Ara Paerangi Submission (1).pdf

or on our website as an html page.

We also encourage everybody interested in this process to join the Te Ara Paerangi Community Hub, an unofficial website by and for the research community, which has been set up to help people archive and share submissions as this process continues. A fantastic amount of work is being done to envision a better research system and we believe it is important that this remains visible.

Reshaping the Science System: Future Pathways

Sun, 31 Oct 2021 07:00:00 GMT

NZAS has been calling for many of the elements in the Future Pathways Green Paper. Here was our official release. Read our Renewal Discussion Doc for ideas on how to respond to Future Pathways, to help make the future of science work for the people who do science!

(Originally posted 14 May 2021)

Building back better through a renewal of the science system?

We all talk about building back better after COVID, and its time to talk about what this can look like for science.

Here's our discussion document (link) on renewal of the science and innovation system, also featured in the New Zealand Science Review.

Below is our press release on the subject at the time of release.

14 May 2021

Advances or Austerity: What Will Budget 2021 Bring For Science?

“Many New Zealanders credit science and scientists with the successful strategies that saved us from the worst of the pandemic.” said NZAS President Prof Troy Baisden. “Yet most if not all the nation’s scientists got the message this week that their institutions fall into the broad areas of the public service expecting a pay ‘freeze’. Now is the time to read the signal: will we invest in advances and build back better?”

“Other nations, notably the United States, appear poised to invest massively in science and technology to stimulate their economies. They’re building off wide public support for the biotech that built vaccines.”

“If Aotearoa wants advances and excellent use of science like we’ve seen during COVID, we have to invest like other nations. Instead, our scientists are coping with 30 years of austerity. Scientists are wondering if the current Government’s pledge to double R&D investment is real.”

“If the budget signals no new path for New Zealand’s science funding, this means that smart Kiwis going into science face many difficult years of low pay. Top PhD scholarships were once close to a living wage, but have now crossed under the minimum wage and even under training wages for apprentices. They risk no pay if their work stretches into a fourth year, and then years of gruelling applications for grants and fellowships while juggling short contracts.”

“Next Thursday, the Government’s Budget will let our scientists know if they get their wish for a society that supports them, and the advances they create across issues ranging from health, to climate change, agriculture, and technology. Government investment spills over into society and the private sector in nations with higher well being.

“Australia’s Budget delivered austerity for their scientists this week. If our Budget copies our neighbour’s, we failed to understand that New Zealand science’s emergency response to COVID was a special case. Do we need a renewed and reformed science system that looks and feels like the COVID response? What would this look like?"

The New Zealand Association of Scientists has developed a vision for rebuilding the science system Aotearoa deserves. Here are two starting points that deserve highlighting as we look ahead to the Budget and beyond:

Value stable science careers that can take a steady path to big advances, with a strong focus on repairing support for young Kiwi researchers.

Repackage high overheads into renewed stable funding for trustworthy institutions acting as strategic stewards of science and research, within international norms.

“Scientists are asking whether the budget will bring advances or austerity? Will they finally see the end to 30 years underneath a sinking lid of austerity that has weighed on them and left our international competitiveness on the back foot? What’s needed to build back better? How can we all work together to build the science system New Zealand deserves?”

Juliet Gerrard: Science in Dark Times, NZIFF documentary

Sun, 31 Oct 2021 06:39:34 GMT

At the New Zealand International Film Festival (NZIFF) this year is a new documentary on Dame Professor Juliet Gerrard, the PM's Chief Science Advisor.

Directed by Shirley Horrocks, Science in Dark Times follows Dame Juliet through three years of dramatic crises, including the Whakaari White Island eruption and the unfolding of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Tickets available now for screenings in Wellington November 7-9.

Flicks.co.nz interview - Shirley Horrocks on new doco about the PM’s Chief Science Advisor

Reshaping the science system - government green paper released

Sun, 31 Oct 2021 06:12:47 GMT

Te Ara Paerangi Future Pathways, the long-awaited government green paper on reshaping Aotearoa New Zealand’s science system, has been released, and consultation is open now. This is a very wide-ranging consultation covering many issues including the setting of national science priorities, embedding Te Tiriti in the system, addressing science careers and precarity, improving opportunities for mātauranga Māori, research funding and overheads, institutions and infrastructure.

You can find the green paper, supporting documents and a recording of the video announcing and introducing the green paper from Minister of Science and Innovation Dr Megan Woods and Associate Minister of Science and Innovation Dr Ayesha Verrall, on the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment website.

Te Ara Paerangi - Future pathways

MBIE will be running webinars on the green paper on (November 2,3 and 10) which anyone can register for here and future workshops and detailed meetings on the consultation are planned.

Submissions are due 2 March 2022 by 5pm.

Release of the Research, Science and Innovation Report - 2021

Sun, 31 Oct 2021 05:23:03 GMT

The latest edition of the report on the performance of the New Zealand research, science and innovation system has been released by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment.

The Research, Science and Innovation report – 2021

This is the third report on the performance of the science system since the release of the National Statement of Science Investment 2015-2025

The two previous reports can be found below:

Science & Innovation System Performance Report – 2016

Research, Science and Innovation System Performance report – 2018

New NZSR thematic issue released - Feed Our Future: A New Zealand Sustainable Food Systems Dialogue

Sun, 24 Oct 2021 07:03:31 GMT

Just published for NZAS members a thematic issue of New Zealand Science Review covering presentations at the Feed Our Future conference run by The Riddet Institute in Wellington, June 9, 2021.

Feed Our Future: A New Zealand Sustainable Food Systems Dialogue

Feed Our Future – an opportunity to discuss the science of sustainable food systems- Warren McNabb

Congratulations – Allen Petrey, for NZAS Council

Nutrition comes first

Back to the future food systems – Barbara Burlingame

Healthy and sustainable diets: providing nutrition, not only nutrients – Thom Huppertz

The availability and affordability of nutrition – Nick W. Smith

Discussion Session 1

The current food system conversation

Origin of the current conversation: An exploration of the animal/plant divide – Frédéric Leroy

Producing animal source food with respect for human and planetary health –

Hannah H.E. van Zanten, Benjamin van Selm, Anita Frehner

Discussion Session 2

Food systems impact

Our connected future with the turn-key technologies that are reducing food waste and improving nutrition – Wayne Martindale

Environmental footprinting of New Zealand agricultural products and implications for food nutrition – Stewart F. Ledgard

Discussion Session 3

Changing the food system?

The changing face of protein production – Paul Wood and Mahya Tavan

Consumers are central to any change in the food system – Joanne Hort

Discussion Session 4

Overall conclusion on the audience discussions

Concluding commentary

Feeding the future: Reflections on the food systems discussion – John Roche

Open letter to Marsden Fund Council: PhD students deserve the living wage

Mon, 27 Sep 2021 04:00:00 GMT

Our early career researchers Lucy Stewart, Khoon Lim, Georgia Carson and Ben Dickson have prepared an open letter to Marsden Fund Council, and obtained over 700 signatures.

Shouldn't our nation's leading research fund attract the best and brightest by paying the equivalent of a living wage?

Here is the Open Letter to the Marsden Council.pdf.

ScienceNZ releases two discussion documents on the future of research

Mon, 13 Sep 2021 23:37:54 GMT

Science New Zealand, the consortium of Crown Research Institutes (CRIs), has released two major discussion documents.

They're slightly messy to download from issu.com, here they are (as PDF):

The Value of CRIs in the New Zealand Science System

Pathways to the Future

What do you think of their recommendations for the future? Do they make sense? Can you see the science? Does CRI leadership provide a clear and compelling view?

Recommendations from Pathways to the Future:

An RD&I Council establishes a small number of high-level priorities (or Missions) for Aotearoa New Zealand that science can contribute to
MBIE increases the level of institutional funding to the PRIs to empower them and enable them to deliver on the commitments they make as part of the Mission Strategy Teams
Each Mission has a clearly identified impact target and a defined timeframe for its achievement, e.g., reduce methane emissions by X% within X years
For each Mission a National Science Strategy is developed by a four-way coalition of Industry, Government, Māori and Research.
Government engage with Māori to understand the changes they require the Crown to make so that Māori are empowered to take a full partnership role in both the establishment of priorities and the development of Mission strategies
Missions replace existing mechanisms to drive vertical as well as horizontal alignment of effort to achieve national priorities
The RD&I Council review the alignment of PRIs with end users to ensure that major end user groups have a simple and clear alignment to a single PRI – this may involve the creation of a new PRI if there is a significant gap
Existing collaboration mechanisms are reviewed and where possible removed in order to both save cost and increase the focus on the new Mission approach
Domain leaders who are able to represent the key stakeholders in their domain are appointed to the Strategy Teams
Each of the key organisations needed to support Mission strategies is empowered and enabled to act rather than contracted into acting via funding mechanisms
Discussion on co-location of research organisations be broadened to include all 4 strands of the quadruple helix and all 3 layers of the RD&I system
Repayable grant mechanisms are expanded to support emerging sectors and companies in priority areas

NZAS has no overall comment on these documents, but our Council has identified that:

The CRIs and their SSIF funding do have value, but there's not a coherent compelling path presented for change of $190m of ongoing support.
The value of the current and future science workforce seems obvious, but is not clear in Future Pathways. It is not clear the current dependence on overseas recruitment of science leaders can continue sustainably or is in the national interest.
At first glance, the success of NZ's COVID response is used as a case for mission-led research, but the proposal points to prioritisation of mission-led silos that would eliminate the collaborative mechanisms underpinning the COVID response.
Removing overcomplicated or unworkable governance remains a laudable goal, but not when the future might be valued and decided by varnishing hard-to-define concepts like 'the quadruple helix'. There is no indication of what future science should be prioritised.
There remains a need for implementation of more uniform approaches to help the growing diversity of Aotearoa New Zealand navigate and get successes from the current science system. Such success would should make the whole nation value research, science and technology more, aiding the case for future investment. Implementing the existing diversity policy would be a better start.
The role of Callaghan Innovation and the diaspora of applied chemistry and physics researchers from the former CRI Industrial Research needs further consideration.
Improving the system requires better understanding of barriers and gaps, including the unnecessary gap between fundamental and applied research, and the gap between our government-funded research sector and the applications and development in private sector. Better flow of research across these gaps is highly desirable, and deserves further exploration.

As a reminder: NZAS has a recent discussion document, developed over the past year, out on the future of the research system. It considers many of these issues.

NZAS Statement on Mātauranga and Science

Tue, 27 Jul 2021 05:00:00 GMT

A statement prepared by NZAS Council on Science and Mātauranga is now available (linked here).

Our statement makes an effort to respond to requests from Māori colleagues to reaffirm the value of mātauranga and also address specific concerns.

I'd like to take a moment to acknowledge that the sudden focus on this discourse has been between upsetting and hurtful for many Māori scientists, and for tau iwi. It has also been unsettling for many scientists – the discourse asks us each to reconsider the values and assumptions underlying the ways we use science to understand our world.

Finally, I'd like to acknowledge the commitment and energy of authors and contributors on our Council who have debated the difficult points within this statement.

Troy Baisden

President NZAS

Mātauranga and Science Revisited

Sun, 25 Jul 2021 01:00:00 GMT

NZAS Council is working on a new statement following new debate on the topic of Mātauranga and Science, following on the Double Special Issues in our New Zealand Science Review last year.

Those special issues are available at the link above. To further support their use, the following around now available as separate pdf documents links.

Foreword – Juliet Gerrard and Tahu Kukutai (pdf)

Mātauranga and Science – Introduction – Ocean Mercier and Anne-Marie Jackson (pdf)

Juliet Gerrard and Tahu Kukutai write:

"To turn the tide on anti-science sentiment we need to reframe our science as ‘here to serve’, and ‘here to listen’. Science in Aotearoa New Zealand, and indeed the world, has much to learn from Māori ways of doing, as well as ways of knowing, to bridge these divides."

Science and gender

Thu, 15 Jul 2021 22:52:25 GMT

As an organisation, the New Zealand Association of Scientists (NZAS) recognises the importance of inclusiveness and kindness in science. Transgender, intersex, and gender diverse Kiwis experience significant discrimination within our society. This is partially due to our science system’s inability to even engage with them as part of our population - only this year has Stats NZ offered guidance for collecting sex and gender data which addresses the full scope of gender diversity in Aotearoa.

Additionally, misinformed claims of ‘science’ are often used as a tool of oppression against these groups. It concerns us to see incorrect claims being made that ‘science’ supports the definition of all humans into one of two categories based on assignment of sex at birth. We see science as one of the most important ways we have of learning and talking about ourselves, our world, and everyone within it (we are, after all, scientists). The NZAS recognises that the scientific consensus tells us that gender cannot be reduced down to any simple combination of an individual’s chromosomes, hormones, genitalia, or any other characteristic: it is not a simple binary. The principles of inclusiveness and kindness in science tell us to engage with people as who they are, recognising the world around us, and within us, as it is rather than as we think it should be.

Despite the challenges they face, we already work with trans, gender diverse, and intersex scientists of all genders. They are working and leading in science in Aotearoa as scientists and equals. We support them and all efforts to make science and society in Aotearoa safer for everybody, by taking the stance that this is not only the moral thing to do, nor only the scientifically most valid perspective: supporting trans, gender diverse, and intersex scientists of all genders produces better science for all of society.  

NZAS 2020 Science Medal recipients

Mon, 14 Jun 2021 12:30:37 GMT

The winners of the NZAS 2020 Awards have been announced:

Marsden Medal: Prof. Martha Savage

Shorland Medal: Prof. Mark Costello

Hill Tinsley Medal: Assoc. Prof. Frédérique Vanholsbeeck

Cranwell Medal: Dr Dianne Sika-Paotonu

Congratulations to all of the medal winners!

For full details of these outstanding scientists and their achievements, see the 2020 Awards Recipients page.

Glyphosate: Call for information

Sun, 23 May 2021 08:09:50 GMT

The Environmental Protection Agency is calling for information on the use of the weed killer glyphosate in New Zealand. See Glyphosate: Call for information | EPA

This request is the first step in deciding whether to change the rules around its use. Glyphosate is used in weed killers, such as Roundup, by gardeners, farmers and councils, but the possible environmental and health effects have been subject to public debate.

If there are grounds to reassess glyphosate and a formal reassessment application is made, the public will have an opportunity to make submissions on the application once it has been publicly notified.

The EPA's current position, similar to Australia, Canada, the US and the EU, is that glyphosate products are safe as long as all the rules for use are followed. Its use is currently being reviewed in Europe.

Meantime you may read an extensive review of glyphosate’s discovery, use of Roundup® in New Zealand and its impacts on human health, livestock, and ecosystems by Ian Shaw Professor of Toxicology at Canterbury University.

Is it time to round up Roundup®? The changing science of glyphosate - Prof. Ian C Shaw - NZSR article advance publication

NZ Science Town Hall events start 5 February

Sun, 17 Jan 2021 23:00:00 GMT

The reach of online events was a highlight from 2020 that brought science communities together. For 2021, NZAS will bring you webinar panels in an interactive 'town hall' format.

Mark the first in your diaries for lunchtime Friday 5 February (start at 12:15):

Shaun Hendy hosts a panel of young scientists:

Kannan Ridings, University of Auckland

Audrey Lustig, Manaaki Whenua

Anastasiya Kiddle, University of Auckland

Nicholas Steyn, University of Canterbury/Auckland

"How did early career scientists contribute to NZ's COVID-19 response?"

Please look for more information, and registration (which will email you the zoom link) on our event page. Or post our flyer (pdf).

On the Week: The Whakaari White Island Anniversary

Thu, 03 Dec 2020 23:30:00 GMT

The announcement of charges laid against a science institution involved in advising emergency response in relation to the 2019 Whakaari White Island eruption has shaken many in the New Zealand science community, yet scientists have also felt reassured by the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor's (PMCSA’s) blog post released on the day charges were announced. The PMCSA provides a timely reminder of the paramount importance in emergencies of free and frank scientific advice to decision makers, and one can note that the advice provided must also be fast and unfiltered yet expert and careful.

Increasingly, our science community and wider public look to the PMCSA for steering on difficult issues that go beyond her central role of coordinating science advice to government, which is the focus of the blog post. Many are surprised that the PMSCA isn’t able to comment further in this case, but in a small nation it is inevitable that any important person or office will sometimes have conflicts of interest or confidential involvement that prevents public engagement. It is important for others with relevant expertise to fill the void.

I do that here, and point out that there are two additional issues that need consideration in this case. First, the success of advice to government also depends on public trust in science and government institutions, and this requires an adequate level of public and media access to scientists as events unfold.

In addition, a unique and unusual second factor has now appeared. Prolonged and possibly expansive silencing associated with the as yet undefined scope of Worksafe's prosecution of a science institution could create a cone of silence and confusion around the same areas of scientific expertise that need to be called on in an emergency. So far, the apparent silence is worrying with only one university academic, Prof Shane Cronin, commenting and appearing widely in the media. Comments available from Prof Tom Wilson help on key issues, but many other voices are missing.

To help keep New Zealand as safe as possible, we can ensure a public conversation is occurring about the free flow of scientific information and advice in emergencies ranging from pandemics to earthquakes and eruptions. It should consider how science can best provide advice and public information, but can usefully extend to whether scientific expertise is sufficiently involved in the funding, management and governance of our science institutions. Such a conversation will have to be separate and hypothetical to avoid the cone of silence around the Whakaari White Island investigations.

In this case, we need to keep in mind that hypothetical does not mean irrelevant. New Zealand remains at high risk of natural hazard emergencies that can occur at any time.

Troy Baisden

NZAS President

NZAS now hosting an Early Career Researcher (ECR) group

Wed, 02 Dec 2020 18:28:52 GMT

Responding to the challenges of the pandemic's impacts on hiring, travel, migration and other factors, we are now hosting an ECR group. Our goal is to support NZ ECRs (from PhD students onward) across institutions and disciplines. We currently have over 60 participants, initially on Slack and email deciding what to do next. A group of ECRs has joined our Council in November.

Please contact our Councillor and ECR group coordinator Georgia Carson to join.

79th AGM Tuesday 17th November at 5.30pm, by Zoom

Sat, 07 Nov 2020 22:26:10 GMT

Tēnā koutou NZAS Members

The New Zealand Association of Scientists AGM will be held on Tuesday 17th November at 5.30pm, by Zoom. The agenda and Zoom link are below.

Nāku iti noa, nā

Fiona McDonald, Secretary to NZAS Council ,

Please write to contact@scientists.org.nz if you are interested in the AGM and have not received the zoom link.

79^th Annual General Meeting of the New Zealand Association of Scientists

Tuesday 17^th November, 2020

5:30pm

AGENDA

1. Introduction and apologies

2. Minutes of 78^th AGM of NZAS

3. Matters arising

4. Correspondence

5. 79^th Annual Report – President’s address

6. 2019/2020 Financial Report

7. Election of officers

8. General Business

Zoom: NZAS AGM

Time: Nov 17, 2020 05:30 PM Auckland, Wellington

Video available from pre-election science panel

Thu, 03 Sep 2020 23:01:05 GMT

In the lead-up to the election, the New Zealand Association of Scientists, the Public Service Association and the Centre for Science in Society collaborated to bring you a political discussion on Government as the funder of science and employer of scientists.

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A panel of science spokespeople from the major New Zealand political parties were invited to join us for this pre-election discussion, hosted and facilitated by Rebecca Priestley, Associate Professor in Science and Society at Victoria University of Wellington.

Rebecca Priestley served as MC and the panel was made up of

Eugenie Sage (Green)
Parmjeet Parmar (National)
Ayesha Verrall (Labour)
Ben Wylie-van Eerd (TOP)

New NZSR special issue released - Mātauranga and Science Part 2

Sat, 22 Aug 2020 07:28:08 GMT

Published this month - part 2 of a two-part Special Issue of New Zealand Science Review

Mātauranga and Science

Guest Editors: Ocean Mercier and Anne-Marie Jackson

Foreword – Jessica Hutchings and Willy-John Martin

Mātauranga and Science – Introduction – Anne-Marie Jackson, and Ocean Mercier

Māori Astronomy and Matariki – Hēmi Whaanga, Pauline Harris, Rangi Matamua

A Pūtaiao Resource – Georgina Tuari Stewart and Peter Buchanan

Marine Management Futures – Kura Paul-Burke, Tuwhakairiora O'Brien, Joseph Burker, Charlie Bluett

Visualising Mātauranga – Maui Hudson, Hēmi Whaanga, Jordan Waiti, Hohepa Maxwell, Kyle Davis, Te Awhina Arahanga, John Proctor, Matt Sword, Thalia Ullrich, Mike Taitoko

Environmental Decision-Making – Doug Jones, Dan Hikuroa, Erica Gregory, Hana Ihaka-McLeod, and Te Taiawatea Moko-Mead

Dismantling Cook's Legacy – Arama Rata

Part one of this special issue of New Zealand Science Review is also available freely online.

Extended Q&A from PSA Progressive Thinking Webinar

Sun, 07 Jun 2020 02:30:00 GMT

There were some great additional questions at my recent PSA Progressive Thinking Webinar, "Restoring research for the restoration of well-beings." You can see the draft chapter at the PSA page. If you want to see the video, I hope it goes up at the PSA page, but for now the best option is to catch my main presentation (also below), and then the rest of the Q&A.

I'm posting answers to most of the additional questions below. Register here for the next PSA session Wednesday 10 June at Noon.

Q: Do you think that it will be easier or harder for scientists to speak out in the post COVID world? On the one hand science has never been more important but on the other their is a populist reaction against science.

A: It will be harder if jobs are at risk and the finances of institutions are fragile. I hope society will review and reinforce protections, because we need our researchers and thinkers to be active, creative and unafraid to propose and develop bold and innovative solutions.

Q: Can Troy also explain where "reusable' fits in - by the citizens who fund science research via their taxes?

A: My idea of reusable is that the principles, data, or models science develops should be accessible, useable and useful. Reusable is the ultimate proof of this: we want to see knowledge being re-used and adapted.

Q: Please don't forget all of the research done by local, regional and even central government. We are doing a lot of applied research. Local govt does have a problem connecting to the CRI's because of funding stream linkage gaps (the money does not flow) and this can limit our research capacity.

A: I agree, and that’s one of the strengths of having the PSA (which represents CRI, central government and regional council staff) host this webinar and chapter. I tried to highlight the opportunity without going too deep into this. Recall that I explained research can be both fundamental and applied, and we often create an unnecessary separation by assuming it is one or the other. One of the newest research classifications driving our funding is investigator-led vs mission-led. Again, big mission-led initiatives may not serve local needs well, and appear to limit the innovation we need. There’s no reason small investigator-led research can’t aid in larger missions, by working well with communities and local government. That’s an idea that I hope the next speaker can develop further.

Q: As a Maori academic researcher I've found it really difficult to feel heard or understood during Covid by my university who seem to be very much focused on doing BAU as if all that changed over lockdown was the venue. My observation was that with the anxiety and concern in the early stages of lockdown when we were unsure as a country how this was going to pan out, was borne out more obviously in Maori because most of us can name those in our whakapapa we have lost to other pandemics. The push to continue on without concern seemed so disconnected to me. Even now as researchers start returning to the university grounds, I feel confused by the disconnect between what just happened and now. I'm interested in your response. Do you see this too?

A: From my perspective, this is a very good observation, but not a question I can answer. What I do see is strong international evidence that existing inequality divides in education and engagement with knowledge are quickly turning into chasms during lockdowns. It’s less clear what’s happened in New Zealand: there are some worrisome stats, but also anecdotal reports I’ve heard of whānau and hapū doing well. Reports from well-engaged students at Waikato are really positive, but we all worry about the students we don't hear from. I particularly worry about staff feeling overtasked and undervalued, and experiences like yours.

More broadly, I’m pleased that equity and diversity was an important part of multiple pieces of modelling undertaken by Te Pūnaha Matatini to inform NZ’s response, so there wasn’t a vacuum of information nationally. That work did point to inequality in outcomes if we didn’t make progress toward elimination of the disease.

Frankly, everyone’s heads are spinning. No one has really planned for what comes next, and particularly how economics and finance in our institutions will intersect with the disconnect you note.

Q: One very big issue is the storage and shearing of data. We need a database that can hold all of the data sources and types and interface with all of the institutions. How do we resolve this issue?

A: Unfortunately having a single big database for 'everything' never works. Databases and applications that use data need to be purpose built. The databases are best if they’re simple and durable; the apps have to deal with a lot of the complexity, and need to be refreshed. This requires funding, policy, and strategy.

One of our big problems is institutions that limit access to data in the hope of being able to sell or license it. This limits use in the public good, and often prevents development of the biggest, most compelling uses that were hard to imagine at first. Good practice making data useable is one of things that can be funded by ’shovel-ready’ support for research institutions (and some was funded during the week since my talk).

Q: While CRIs and regional councils have a good relationship generally and the research the CRIs do often has to provide buy-in from councils, when it comes to regional policy development, you can really only get fully impartial science direction from regional council scientists because CRIs have a commercial imperative to, for example, generate research programmes that tie the council in to ongoing dependency.

A: I’d argue that applied sciences can never be truly impartial. An important tenet of the environmental and health sciences is that that humans are part of the system being studied. Recognition of this was a revelation for scientists when I was doing my PhD during the 1990s in the newly formed Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management at Berkeley. That recognition has been slow to come to New Zealand (at least in environmental science), but it will be important to understand that neither councils nor CRIs can be fully 'impartial'. Councils will be influenced by their policy, planning and operational objectives, and CRI scientists will have more or less independence depending on how they and their institution is funded. A key point of the webinar and chapter was that more stable funding can help.

Roger Pielke, Jr, has provided widely used model for understanding the challenge, where scientists are perhaps most effective and trusted as ‘honest brokers’. Often a solution is to include social scientists, who have long been familiar with this problem in research, in multi-disciplinary teams. But we can’t always afford big teams, so it will be best if we encourage scientists to understand rather than deny their biases, as they interact efficiently with policy, management and other decision processes that use knowledge and research.

Q: I would have liked to ask Troy if he identifies the presence of any cognitive biases on the part of researchers or funders in the NZ science research system? (i.e. confirmation bias, optimism bias, status quo bias, loss aversion etc. )

A: There absolutely are. There are many of us at the interface of science and policy who have found Daniel Kahneman’s Nobel Prize winning work extremely helpful, across many of the biases you mentioned. Combinations of loss aversion and status-quo bias seem to pose a real risk in coming months. I tried to highlight another relevant concern: the potential fallacies in separating basic and applied science. If I’d talked longer, I would have underscored that the conception of ‘pure’ science is dangerous simply because it encourages ignorance of potential and actual biases.

Putting this into practice, we can recognise that many issues (including those I talked about) relate back to the ability to access science and research as process or as a body of knowledge and human capability (Elite Pluralism). This realisation underlies Pielke’s classification I mentioned above. There’s also a risk or invisible bias when science gets silenced. These books and simple recognition of gender bias in science are good starting points. For gender bias, mentioned one recent study, and an impressive new one appeared this week. Yet, let’s not forget the risk Māori and Pacifika representation in the research system faces during this crisis. This matters because the crisis can worsen the impact of our biases if we remain blind to them. With an uncertain road ahead, we need to keep our eyes open, be wary of biases, and keep working together as a team of five million.

Troy Baisden – NZAS President

NZAS 2020 Science Medal award applications are open - deadline 31 July, 2020

Sun, 24 May 2020 07:43:55 GMT

Applications are invited for the 2020 Science Medals from the New Zealand Association of Scientists (NZAS). Full details of the application process can be found here.

Applications are due in by 31 July 2020.

Research Published Showing NZ's Gender Pay Gap in Academia

Wed, 22 Jan 2020 22:25:15 GMT

An article published today in PLOS One uses NZ university data to show that female academics earn $400,000 less over their careers than their male counterparts, after adjusting for covariates. The results and their implications have featured prominently in NZ's major news outlets, including RNZ, Stuff, and the Herald. Audio from RNZ's Morning Report (short) and Nine to Noon (in depth) is also available.

The analysis separates out fields of academia, showing one of the largest gender gaps occurs in science. That gap will not close by 2070 under current conditions.

Expert commentary has been compiled by the Science Media Centre. Included in it are these comments by President Troy Baisden representing NZAS.

“Anyone who counts the number of men and women along the hallways of New Zealand’s research institutions or speaking at conferences, and compares their job titles, will tend to suspect we have lingering problems with gender equity. Yet, many remain blind to the issue, and assume we have a meritocracy.

“Institutions, including the New Zealand Association of Scientists, have already observed enough evidence in the science workforce to raise concerns about our problems with gender and other diversity issues. The study by Brower and James massively sharpens our view of the problem, and shows its lifetime impact. An extension of their powerful analysis shows that, with current settings compared, there will be little improvement in most areas of academia by 2070.

“Simply put, New Zealand’s academic and research hierarchy does not appear to be the meritocracy it claims to be. Those who start out ahead appear to stay ahead.

“The evidence for inequity in salaries and promotion provided in this work may also extend to the resources required to be successful in research. Further, gender is only the most easily quantified diversity and equity challenge. These results suggest that underrepresentation of Māori and Pasifika in academia also need action to correct inequity.

“Ultimately, these diversity issues matter because audiences and the public may dismiss evidence from research when they can’t see their own faces or stories represented among the experts speaking on an issue.”

Former NZAS President and "Science is Sexist" author Nicola Gaston also featured in commentary, and Stuff's coverage profiled former NZAS Councillor Natalie Plank.

Having these clear results added to the growing evidence and analysis on gender and equity issues should help us move toward solutions that fix this problem.

PS. For those interested in an academic perspective on the methods and data, the University of Auckland's Prof Thomas Lumley has weighed in with a StatsChat blog post.

New NZAS President and agenda for 2020

Tue, 19 Nov 2019 23:00:00 GMT

The following has gone out as an NZAS Press Release.

The New Zealand Association of Scientists (NZAS) new President is Professor Troy Baisden, based at the University of Waikato.

Baisden says, “I’m the first recent NZAS President based outside Wellington or Auckland. By taking on this role, I can help represent the large number of scientists working out of regional centres, including those focused on primary production and environmental issues.”

“A large proportion of public research funds relate to primary production and environment, and the nexus between these issues is a matter of deep public interest. These areas will get some extra focus within NZAS’s main objectives, which are to support scientists, promote and communicate science, including sound science policy.”

“For years, NZAS has raised concerns that a lack of stable positions for scientists immediately after their PhDs undermines the science sector. The problem is most acute in research disciplines including agriculture and the environment where New Zealand careers require unique knowledge that takes years to build.”

“Our focus on supporting early career scientists intersects with our focus on diversity issues in science. There are widespread concerns that Māori and Pasifika are underrepresented, undermining the role of science in addressing equity and Treaty of Waitangi issues.”

NZAS will also continue to consider MBIE’s recent draft Research, Science and Innovation Strategy. Baisden worries that, “it doesn’t signal clear directions, particularly across environmental science and the primary sector. These areas differ from industrial and technological innovation, which dominate science policy internationally.”

“In addition, the draft Strategy’s focus on connections raises concerns that National Science Challenges are not achieving their intended level of connectedness and deserve more transparent review.”

NZSR Volume 75 issues 2-3 online now

Mon, 02 Sep 2019 11:12:44 GMT

The latest issue of NZSR is finished, and it's a double issue, volume 75 issues 2-3.

Members with print NZSR subscriptions can expect the hardcopy version to be on its way to you now, and all members can find the pdf version right now by logging in to your account.

Direct link to pdf.

NZAS 2019 Science Medal award applications are open - deadline 31 July, 2019

Sun, 26 May 2019 10:45:02 GMT

Applications are invited for the 2019 Science Medals from the New Zealand Association of Scientists (NZAS). Full details of the application process can be found here.

Applications are due in by 31 July 2019.