Nicola Gaston: MacDiarmid Institute co-director on the Government's latest cuts to the Marsden Fund

There's strong opposition from the science community to the new Government approach to research funding. 

The Science, Innovation and Technology Minister is refocusing the Marsden Fund on core science projects, disbanding its humanities and social sciences panels.

Minister Judith Collins says it's to prioritise research of economic, environmental, or a health benefit to New Zealand. 

 MacDiarmid Institute co-director Nicola Gaston says it entirely defeats the Marsden Fund's purpose.

"It is equitable because it is not granted with the intention that there should be specific impacts - it's about creating knowledge."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is news talks will be it's eleven enough to
find Dickens Okay, horrified, disgusted, na step backwards? Who said this? Well,
the science community and they found out this afternoon that
there's been a decision by the government to no longer
fund research into humanities and social sciences. Instead, all the
science funding will be directed to physics and chemistry and

(00:21):
maths and engineering and biomedical sciences, the sorts of skills
that the government says will rebuild the economy. So Nicola
Gaston is a smart person and co director of the
mcdarmod Institute for Advanced Materials in Nanotechnology. Hello Nicola, Hello,
So are you horrified, disgusted? And is this a step
backwards completely?

Speaker 2 (00:44):
So I'll just correct you on one thing that you
said in the intro, which is that this is not
all of science funding. Right. So this is the Marsden Fund,
which is the fundamental science basic research, blue Sky's research
in some terms, and there are other research funding mechanisms
for science. There is mb funding, There is the Endeavor Fund,

(01:07):
There is the Smart Ideas Fund. There is also the
Health Research Council funding for health specific medical research. Right,
So there's a lot out there for science, which is
not the mars And Fund. The mars And Fund is
the only funding mechanism that is equitable in the way
that is distributed across research areas. And it is equitable

(01:31):
because it is not granted with the intention that there
should be specific impact. It's about creating knowledge first and foremost,
and so it does that in science and social science
and the humanities as well.

Speaker 1 (01:46):
Get it. Get in the Mars and mars And Fund
will help fund physics and chemistry, maths and engineering and
biomedical sciences. What upside are there in the areas that
they're not going to do, such as humanities and social
sciences In terms of you know, pure economics.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
Yeah, this, oh, in the terms of pure economics. One
of the really funny things around scientific investment because funding
of science is always funding of research is always a
form of investment.

Speaker 1 (02:14):
Right.

Speaker 2 (02:14):
Governments do it because there is an economic upside downstream.
That's clear, it's well understood. But the problem is that
governments the politicians in place, are not very good at
picking what actually has an economic upside downstream. And when
you're doing fundamental research, and it doesn't matter if it's

(02:37):
science or humanities or social science. If you're doing fundamental research,
the impact, the economic up turn, the economic benefit is
a decade or even multiple decades away, and so politicians
are not the people the best second guess what this

(02:58):
impact is going to be. And so we tend to
measure these proposals for research by having experts in that
particular field who look at the proposal and they evaluate
it on its excellence in terms of is this likely
to change the way that we think about something that's

(03:20):
really important? And so it's all about knowledge generation.

Speaker 1 (03:25):
Okay, there was a very eloquent argument. But at the
same time, I don't know if you've noticed that everyone
has been saying, we don't have money. This is this
is the theme of this afternoon program. We do not
have money. People have to be cut. Where there are
cuts happening all over the place, people are being cut,
and all sorts of businesses, all sorts of services are
being cut in this case. I'm sorry, I know this.

Speaker 2 (03:44):
I know this very very well. So I'm a physicist
and a physics department. I've had colleagues who I work
with very closely who've been made redundant over the last
year across our universities. Across our CRI system. I have
had students who have gone overseas because they see absolutely
no prospect of a job in New Zealand, and that's

(04:05):
in the physical sciences. So I understand very very well
the financial constraints that we're working under. But I work
in a field of research that has significant potential for
economic impact, as the Minister sees it. Jenis Collins pointed
to this in her press release today. I lead an

(04:26):
institute that has two hundred and forty students at the
moment across nine institutions working on these areas of physical
science research. In the last three years, we've had eleven
startup companies come out of the type of research that
we do. I have colleagues working in space research. I
have colleagues working in quantum technologies research. I have colleagues

(04:48):
working in clean tech research. Really trying to leverage the
renewable energy resources of New Zealand for all of our
economic benefits. So I get the economic arguments. We are
trying to do this, okay, But well it's not something
that relies on the physical sciences alone. We need our
colleagues and the social sciences nicole, our colleagues and the

(05:09):
humanities as well.

Speaker 1 (05:09):
Nicola, I thank you for your championing and we every
issue needs a champion, and I thank you said very
much Nicola Gaston's point of view there, and Nicola of
course is the co director of the mcdarmod Institute for
Advanced Materials and Natotechnology.

Speaker 2 (05:22):
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