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Brain Drain

I have, until recently, been sceptical about whether the brain drain of scientists really exists. Many is the time when I have sat around the staffroom of a research campus and debated the issue with scientists who have argued that the brain drain is real, and that I ought to take notice of it. My scepticism has been based on the observation that the participants in these discussions have often argued their case in a noticeably British, American, Indian or Australian accent...

Recently I decided to research the issue through immigration statistics and settle it once and for all. I found, to my dismay, that I was wrong. New Zealand is losing scientists. Scientists flow freely over our border in both directions, but they flow out faster than they flow in. In the last 20 years, we have lost 1,500 scientists, over 500 of them in the last five years.

A panic response is not called for, but a reflective and considered response is. At least part of the reason for the outflow is that scientists are highly mobile. They can, and apparently do, move to and from New Zealand with a good deal more ease than the average citizen. If it is true that the New Zealand economy is on a long-term slide, then that presumably is a motive for our scientists to move.

However, a second, and probably more important, reason is the status of science in New Zealand society and the fluctuations of that status over the last two decades. It is my view that we have seen New Zealand science move from a lofty position into a trough, from which it has only just started to climb. It is important that this climb is maintained.

Perhaps the most poignant example of the poor recognition that New Zealand science accords its scientists was when Dr Vaughan Jones was awarded the Fields Medal for mathematics. He is the only citizen of a southern hemisphere nation to ever receive that medal, the mathematical equivalent of the Nobel Prize.

Vaughan Jones is not a household name. Bob Jones is. Michael Jones is. But Vaughan Jones is not. Nor, for that matter, is the Fields Medal itself. The Nobel Prize is, but the high profile prizes are peace and economics.

New Zealand scientists are not household names. They are not to be found in popular magazines and there is no "Scientist of the Year" award. Whilst such glitzy manifestations of "status" are unlikely to appeal to our scientists, a lack of them nonetheless helps prove the point.

So does a cursory look at the Honours system. I feel sure that the prospect of a knighthood does not exactly crowd the mind of our best scientists. Just as well. New Zealand does not give knighthoods to scientists. In the last 30 years, 253 New Zealanders have been knighted. Only three were scientists, with most honours going to those in the judiciary, commerce, community service or politics. The only area of expertise which recorded a lower score than science was industrial relations, at two.

And so the pattern is established. New Zealand scientists do not have a high profile in general society, despite the extraordinary contributions that our indigenous science has made to our economy and quality of life.

The brain drain is not a problem in itself. Rather, it is a symptom of a problem. New Zealand culture is not sufficiently receptive to research, science and technology. It is no-one's fault, it is just a fact.

But we are the poorer for that. Poorer to the tune of 1,500 scientists, and poorer because we haven't adequately received and put to use the research efforts of those who haven't left.

That simply will not do.

Pete Hodgson is Opposition spokesperson on research, science and technology.