Peter Calamai

Current science policy breeds mediocrity

By Peter Calamai

Political incorrectness is cautiously lifting its head among the brambles of Canadian science policy. In the inner circles a few people are quietly using the word “elite.” Even casual onlookers will realize that to talk this way openly would be anathema to the Liberal government and to the senior officials who preside over the doling out of federal research funds. No matter that more than 80 per cent of such funds go to researchers for a mere 12 universities (and their affiliated hospitals). Only university presidents ever dare refer to their institutions as elite in public.

Instead federal science policy pursues the fiction that the best strategy for moving Canada into the front ranks of science and innovation internationally is to distribute its funds so that researchers in each province receive a share each year that corresponds as closely as possible to that province’s proportion of the national population. And if the universities and other institutes in some region can’t cut the mustard with the big boys, a special category is created to make sure that they get their “fair” share.

HINTS OF FOCUSINGFUNDS ON THE ELITE

This approach guarantees that a lot of researchers at many institutions across Canada will get modest research grants, modest that is by comparison to the public funds that “elite” scientists receive in countries like the United States, Germany, Japan and, to a lesser extent, the UK. The approach also contributes to — but isn’t the sole reason for — the mediocre showing of Canada’s research institutions in most international comparisons based on citations and impact of refereed publications.

A recent example are the citation rankings for molecular biology and genetics in the January-February issue of ScienceWatch, published by Thomson ISI, a leading compiler of international science indicators. The University of Toronto is the only Canadian research institution to make a list of 37 based on total citations from 1992 to 2002.

U of T ranked a respectable 21st, ahead of places like the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, Pasteur Institute, Cold Spring Harbor Lab and the University of Chicago. But wait. What about a more exacting metric of scientific quality, papers which are “highly cited,” meaning ranking in the top one per cent for citations by papers in the same field and of the same year?

Using that yardstick, Canada’s only entry for molecular biology and genetics plunges to 32nd on the list. Cold Spring lab and the Salk Institute are first and second respectively.

Under Canada’s current science policy, we could never have a Cold Spring or a Salk. They are elite institutions organized on a national scale. And the states where they are located, New York and California, are obviously receiving more than their fair share of public and private research grants.

Yet there have been at least two recent attempts to start along the path to such elitism, as unpalatable as it is to the Canadian political psyche. As originally conceived, the Networks of Centres of Excellence was geared for research centres which ranked as excellent individually. What NCE has become is sort of scientific bouillabaisse where the total product may be quite acceptable – even in some cases, excellent – but some of the individual ingredients are decidedly dodgy.

More recently, look at the Canada Foundation for Innovation and its initial attempt to push elitism, under the rubric of what were called regional/national facilities. With a few exceptions, Canada’s universities declined to play that game. In recent years, CFI has retained a consultant to review and summarize the reports submitted by institutions on the progress and impact of Foundation investments. The most recent consultant’s report, covering to the end of 2001, does not even contain a heading in its table of contents for regional/national facilities.

Against this discouraging backdrop, consider the money earmarked for research and development in the most recent federal budget. It could scarcely be termed shabby, since there is a $500 million increase in annual A-base R&D funding.

Yet judged against the government’s announced intention to vault Canada by 2010 to among the top five nations in research intensity (measured how is not yet clear), the new monies fall short of the size of annual increases that are needed. For example, the average National Institutes of Health grantee in the U.S receives 50 per cent more money than the average grantee funded here by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, our NIH counterpart. And that’s without converting the US dollars.

FEDERAL RESEARCH DOLLARS SPREAD TOO THIN

Could Canada’s research community have been too lavish with praise for the commendable science-funding initiatives of the Chrétien government over the last six years? At some senior levels in the government there appears to be a sense that it is okay now to coast, that maintenance increases will suffice. Critics argue such complacency is ill-founded when CIHR was forced to cut its grants 15 per cent below what review panels recommended and can’t fund the scores of promising researchers whose proposals received a rating of between 3.6 and 4 on the Institute’s five-point scale.

But the new voices whispering elite are making a contrary argument: There is enough federal money but it is spread too thin among institutions and researchers. The very best in the country must be convinced or cowed into closer collaboration — perhaps in elite national centres — and receive an even bigger share of the funding than they now get.

Our history and culture suggests strongly that the elite argument will lose out. But it may be instructive to note that San Diego was once known primarily as a naval centre. Now it has more than 100,000 people employed in biosciences. And the elite Salk Institute for Biological Studies is in a northern suburb.

Peter Calamai is the national science writer for The Toronto Star, based in Ottawa.