Retorts

Scientific Cri de Coeur

I like the Science Monthly. I like it so much that I have decided not to cancel my subscription. And why was I going to cancel my subscription?

It all started at around 5 am the other morning, when I woke in a cold sweat, worrying about my future as a restructured research scientist. "Ah, " thought I, "some light relief: I'll read my Science Monthly." Then out on the bedclothes dropped a glossy brochure for a conference entitled "Commercializing Research and Technology". The logo -- the profile of a man's head containing three cogs, labelled "Market", "Research" and "Profits" -- stared up at me.

"The essential conference event of 1992 for all senior science, research and technology executives" it said. Supported by the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology and the Official Publication -- New Zealand Science Monthly. As I read the programme my stomach churned. Then I turned it over. Registration fee for two days at the James Cook Centra Hotel: $1232 per person.

So this is how the CRI boards are going to spend our hard-won FRST money -- sending executives with cog mentalities to "corporate-speak" conferences? Now maybe this just means I'm an old-fashioned, head-in-the-sand scientist. Unaccountable. Not objective-driven. But surely in my lifetime of research in the medical and agricultural sectors (in the production, no, even worse, reproduction area: lose 30% funding and proceed to jail), I have always been accountable.

What were all those annual reports for, then? And weren't we all taught, back in the days when science was still a lifestyle, a philosophy to aspire to, that every experimental write-up started with The Aim.

Scientists have been disenfranchised. The control of money was the reward for success in the contestable swimming pool. Now we are seen as collections of technical skills, to be poked at problems seen to have short-term dollar outputs. I, for one, have completely switched off. Late at night when I can't sleep, I dream of alternative careers, something to inspire me for the next twenty-five years of working life. Growing herbs perhaps? Working for the conservation of rare species?

I am a scientist, born into a scientific family, with nearly twenty years of research experience and eleven years of tertiary training. It's hard to turn my back on such a way of life. I want to live and work in New Zealand. I want to do research -- my research, not theirs -- to live, breathe and sleep science. I hate what has happened to New Zealand science. I hate what has happened to my soul. But deep inside me, the flame still burns.

That is why I won't cancel my subscription to Science Monthly yet. And I will hold onto the words of Brian Shorland, who recently declared that to be a decent scientist you need "a sense of past, great passion, abject humility, human potential and constancy of purpose". The last factor gives me hope and strength.

Jean S. Fleming, MAF Technology, Wallaceville