HIGH FLYERS THINK TANK
National Research Priorities Strategic Forum
The Shine Dome, Canberra, 26-27 June 2002
National research priorities: A social scientist's perspective
by Leon Mann
Leon Mann is President of the Academy of the Social Sciences and a Fellow of the Australian Psychological Society. He is the Pratt Family Professor of Leadership and Decision Making in the Melbourne Business School at the University of Melbourn, where he is also Associate Dean Research. He is Chair of the Business-Higher Education Round Table Awards Panel for Outstanding Achievement in Collaborative R&D and Collaborative Education and Training. He is a member of the National Research Priorities Consultative Panel and author of five books, 25 chapters in edited volumes and over 80 articles.
I want to start by making a couple of observations or predictions about how social scientists are going to respond to this opportunity, the advent of a national research priority initiative. I think the first thing, at a first level, is that a number of them are going to describe, they are going to analyse, to evaluate, the way in which Australia in 2001, 2002 and the years that follow embraced this initiative, and they are going to try to understand the difference that it made to the benefits that accrue from research, the way in which research is done, the difference it makes to our well-being and our creativity and our innovation. So you can expect the economists, the social psychologists, the educationists, the sociologists to be right now sharpening their pencils and logging on in order to start looking at where else this has happened, how we are going to understand how this great experiment unfolds.
At a deeper level you can also anticipate – and I predict – that the social scientists are going to look for opportunities. Many of them already have these opportunities through the places they work, in CSIRO, in DSTO, in the CRCs, in the great public research agencies as well as, of course, in universities, where they collaborate with colleagues in humanities and sciences, engineering and technology, to say, 'How can we work together, how can we collaborate, in order to provide useful answers, new and interesting answers, to the burning questions which all of us as Australians must face?' They are ones which are no-brainers. They are ones which must be hot candidates for national research priorities – not the total set, but they would include such things, obviously, as Sustainable environment, Healthy Australia, they are going to deal with New and renewable sources of energy, they are going to deal with the way in which we create Healthy but creative and innovative workplaces. That is just to list a few.
So the social sciences are not troubled by this initiative. In fact, they welcome it, because it provides an incentive and an opportunity to do what is already happening, namely, addressing great national and international problems, using the talent and the knowledge that we have right across the various disciplines that make up the world of knowledge.
The four objectives that I think would need to be met or satisfied as part of a national research priorities framework – in fact, I would strengthen that into not objectives but imperatives – are the following: first of all, to enhance the quality of life for Australia and the wider community; secondly, to protect and rehabilitate the natural environment and the world which we inhabit; thirdly, to increase economic competitiveness through new ideas, new products, new processes; and, finally, although it is not a thematic priority and you won't see thematic priorities and their action projects that underline this fourth imperative, to enlarge, to facilitate, to foster fundamental knowledge and understanding of ourselves and the universe.
The first three, I would argue, are ones which in any set of national research priorities ought to be satisfied. Hypothetically, if there are only three national research priorities, there ought to be one in each of those first three categories. We must do something about enhancing the quality of life. Whether we are talking about the family life, about community life, about health, we must be, I think, looking to one thematic priority at least which belongs in that first category. We must, I believe, look for a thematic priority which can be classified under the protection or rehabilitation of the natural environment and the world we inhabit, and we ought to be looking at one which obviously helps to raise and maintain our standard of living through new ideas, products and processes. And there would be a nice little dotted line underneath that third imperative.
Then what we need to do is that we must at the same time protect that very precarious balance between those three and the fourth. Graham was talking in hypotheticals about 'what if', and we are all a bit nervous about it, not only the social sciences and the humanities but right across the wide spectrum of science, engineering and technology. What is going to happen to fundamental, curiosity-driven research if what we do is start rolling out more and more support, in what is a zero sum game or a fixed pie, to the priority areas? In particular, that makes a lot of people very nervous because the power and the ideas which are going to drive those first three are going to be very much dependent upon the curiosity-driven, discretionary research which is really what that fourth objective is all about. So the balance between the first three and the fourth is absolutely crucial. That is going to be, of course, a debate and it is going to be a tension which not only needs to be addressed but needs to be satisfied.
Quite obviously, all the four objectives are advanced to some extent, variously, of course, and more strongly in some disciplines than others, but all of the disciplinary areas that are represented through the four Academies engage in each of those four objectives. But there is a concern that research to increase economic competitiveness, in particular – the code is 'picking winners' – is going to perhaps displace or offset our research commitment to enlarging fundamental knowledge through curiosity-driven research. It comes back to that tension.
There is a question that appears in the issues paper and has come up again: where does the humanities and social sciences fit within this framework? I must say I have struggled with that question, because I don't really understand what it means. Joanne was helpful in explaining that it relates quite a lot to the players who in fact are going to be involved in helping this process, this framework, to evolve – the Chief Scientist, the Minister for Science, the Consultative Panel, which is heavily membered by science, engineering and technology. And I don't think that really is what this is about. It really is a broader question: does the framework itself apply well to science, engineering and technology, indeed all of research activity? Is this one which we can comfortably live with? I would assume that the answer is yes. For science, engineering and technology, one doesn't hear any pain, although it is an empirical question as to, as it does roll out and as it is implemented, whether in fact you might get expressions of pain. But my answer is as far as the social sciences and the humanities are concerned, I don't think there is going to be any pain. I would assume that there will be additional resources of people into a consultative process; I assume that the way in which the Minister, the Chief Scientist and others who are involved in this see it is that it will be broadly across all of our disciplinary areas. So my first response is yes to that specific question.
But I think a far better, more interesting question is: what research can be encouraged and supported from all disciplines and domains so that we are bringing all of the talent and resources to help meet a designated thematic priority area? I think that the empirical test then will be, 'Can we see that for, let's say, a sustainable environment as it gets defined, all proposals are candidates?' Whether it is primarily a humanities-driven action plan or a social sciences – primarily, but it will not be entirely, it can't be by the very nature of that particular thematic priority, but in collaboration therefore with other disciplines – would that be eligible and not be ruled out by being told, 'Well, next year. This will be your turn next year. Wait'? I cannot contemplate that as happening, and I am sure it won't. But that is the better question, in my opinion.
For the record: last year when PMSEIC, the Prime Minister's Science, Engineering and Innovation Council, had a taskforce which invited submissions on national research priorities, the Academy of the Social Sciences put forward its wish list of eight.
Clearly there are at least two or three that you will see as candidates for ones which engage directly science, engineering and technology to provide solutions – in particular, Societal impact of technological and economic changes that are occurring. All of these new, high-tech, breakthrough, blue-sky, innovative technologies are going to have all sorts of fascinating and perhaps unexpected effects on society and on community. We know that is happening with information, communication and technology. Vijoleta tells me that it is very clear that this is already happening in nanotechnology. So the societal impact must be addressed, even if it is for the pure utilitarian function about whether we are using it correctly or misusing it. What are the opportunities, if we understand the human response to new technologies that we need to take into account, either to refine the technology or to make it more effective?
The same is true, obviously, for Human response to environmental change – to climate change, to the effects of what is going on in Australia's land, its water, its salinity et cetera et cetera. Only half of the story can be told if we look at science, engineering and technology, and look to science, engineering and technology for solutions. Quite obviously, the human response and the way humans adapt, the way humans cope – something, incidentally, where the Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering and the Academy of the Social Sciences are working together in an important project on social impact of changing water regimes – these are the kinds of collaborations that are absolutely crucial for the research priorities that we have on the list.
We do not apologise for those research priorities. It is conceivable that this time next year, if we are having this conversation, Indigenous Australian culture (as mentioned by Lawrence) will be very, very high on our priority list – that goes without saying – and there are a whole lot of others, such as Australian population which I think came up in the conversation a little earlier this afternoon, which quite obviously are going to require a broad multidisciplinary approach in order to be able to address the question of what is a sustainable population for Australia.
There are some opportunities and challenges in this whole great experiment that we are embarking upon. It is an interesting question about whether the national aspirations and goals shouldn't start the process, making it a lot easier then for national research priorities to come in train. In a way, it is interesting because it is both a bubble-up and also a top-down process in which, excitingly, the opportunity is there through this kind of exercise, which is very public, to be able to ask the question, 'What are we interested in? What do we do? What do we research? How do we spend our time? Why do bright people do these things?' – to be able to actually clarify national goals through this process. There is also an interesting opportunity for us to be able in our minds to say, 'Well, what is it that I do, and what difference does it make? How do I know it makes a difference? And why do I care about what I do?' and to communicate that.
Secondly, I think there is an opportunity to refocus and redirect some of our work towards the national research priorities. Some researchers might say, 'Hallelujah! I've got an opportunity, even though I'm going to grunt and grumble, to actually say there is a new opportunity here and there are all sorts of interesting things that are occurring, and collaborations that are opening up. Here is a chance to change the problem I've been working on for the last five to 10 years and to try my hand at something different.' It is an opportunity to build new structures for interagency and interdisciplinary research, both in project selection and in project evaluation. I think we can expect that there are going to be very interesting things that come from that, and again the social scientists are going to be watching this with great interest. This new policy initiative is, at the very largest scale, a challenge and a social experiment to produce significant benefits. And there there is a lot that can be said about what it is, when we talk about a social experiment, that is required in order to know that it is working. There will be, I think, a great need to be able to say, 'Who are we benchmarking against? How are we going to be able to say, in five years' or 10 years' time, arguably it worked?' If we looked at science or knowledge as usual, would we see a real quantum leap in the kinds of productivity in the impact, whether it is patents or publications or citations, whether it is collaborative work with the international scholars and so on? So there is a challenge of making sure that we understand the social experiment and that we test it and we evaluate it.
Finally, there is the challenge to participate in the national research system, to share resources, to collaborate and to apply knowledge. This may in fact be one of the great outcomes, that in a nation where I think we have been traditionally reluctant to share – there is a lot of knowledge which sits in the silos – we are going to be given real incentives and a real message to collaborate and work together.
So, looking ahead, the prediction would be that this great experiment is going to have a significant impact on how we plan and how we do our research. It is going to have an impact on how we communicate, because we have to much more clearly communicate to the public and to our colleagues in other disciplines what we are doing and why it is that we are enjoying priority status and they are not. So communication is going to be very, very important, about what we do, about how we nurture our research talent, which is about education and training, and, finally, about our goal of striving to become more creative and innovative, and the difference that will make to Australia.
