DEBATE on whether science should be the business of government is alive and
kicking. On 20 June, Ian Lang, the Cabinet minister responsible for coordinating
science policy, weighed in reassuringly on the affirmative side. Yet for many
years Terence Kealey, a clinical biochemist at the University of Cambridge, has
been proposing opposite views, which he summarised recently in New
杏吧原创 (鈥淵ou鈥檝e all got it wrong鈥�, 29 June, p 22). It is important to
examine why it is Kealey who is wrong.
Kealey鈥檚 thesis focuses on the economic role of basic science. He claims that
publicly funded basic research is a luxury made affordable only after wealth has
been created, and that it plays virtually no part in the creation of wealth. He
equates economic growth with technological growth, then goes on to argue that
鈥�90 per cent of new technology arises from the industrial development of
pre-existing technology鈥攏ot from academic science鈥�.
It is self-evident that the possession of wealth allows a nation to invest
more in basic research. To conclude from this that basic research can contribute
nothing to the creation of the wealth in the first place is simply bad logic.
Kealey says that the agricultural and industrial revolutions of the 18th and
19th centuries owed nothing to publicly funded science. But conditions now are
very different. There is indeed some sort of correlation between per capita
wealth and expenditure on research and development; but to infer that the former
is therefore the cause of the latter is simplistic, and to call this inference
鈥渁 fundamental economic law鈥� is mere advocacy.
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Kealey is right to say that technology builds on technology more than it
builds on science. But the more advanced technologies could now continue to
develop without a substantial input from science. (This is in fact what
Technology Foresight鈥攖he government鈥檚 master plan for commercial science
and technology over the next decade鈥攁nd many other policy initiatives are
all about.) And it is true that a substantial measure of industrial
competitiveness derives from the continual introduction of small advances rather
than from major technological or scientific breakthroughs. Science is only one
of the determinants of competitiveness.
Companies invest in science in order to stay ahead of the competition. This
involves maintaining awareness of global developments鈥攅xactly as it does
for front-rank scientists in academe鈥攂ut it also demands in-house
research, which is recognised as vital to the company鈥檚 own programme of
innovation. The same applies at national level. Japan鈥檚 recent decision to
increase massively its basic research effort is driven by the goal of long-term
national competitiveness.
Given that basic research is important to national goals, the key element in
Kealey鈥檚 thesis is that it should not be funded by government. 鈥淕overnment money
for science only displaces private funding, and private funding works better.鈥�
But his evidence on displacement is unconvincing. Ben Martin and his colleagues
at the Science Policy Research Unit at the University of Sussex provide a new,
authoritative review of the literature on the subject and conclude to the
contrary: 鈥淧ublicly funded basic research seems to have had a substantial impact
on productivity, and that trend is likely to continue.鈥� (The Relationship
between Publicly Funded Basic Research and Economic Performance, SPRU,
1996; and Keith Pavitt, 鈥淩oad to ruin鈥�,
New 杏吧原创, 3 August, p 32).
Let me give just three examples, from the MRC Laboratory of Molecular
Biology, of publicly funded basic research that has already had important
applications and commercial impact but that no company could justifiably have
supported from its own funds. One is Cesar Milstein鈥檚 unexpected discovery of a
method for making monoclonal antibodies, during research on the esoteric problem
of the generation of diversity in the immune system. Then there is Fred Sanger鈥檚
work on devising a method for sequencing DNA, without which recombinant DNA
technology could not have developed. And finally, there is Max Perutz鈥檚 work on
the 3D structure of proteins鈥攂elieved at the outset to be
impossible鈥攚hich is now a key to modern drug design in medicine.
It is not a question of either/or: both public and private funding are needed
for research. As Richard Sykes, deputy chairman and chief executive of Glaxo
Wellcome, writes: 鈥淥ld divides between science and technology and between
academic and industrial science are disappearing. . . Success in science and
technology now lies in our ability to create networks between the public and
private research sectors鈥� (Daily Telegraph, 26 June).
In his introduction to the Department of Trade and Industry鈥檚 1996 UK
R&D Scoreboard鈥攖he league table that ranks companies by their
spending on R&D鈥擨an Taylor, the junior minister responsible for science and
technology, rightly expressed concern at how inadequately British companies were
investing in R&D. But unlike Kealey, he did not infer that the solution lay
in the government ceasing to support the science base. And Lang, in his speech
on 20 June, concluded: 鈥淚t is critical that government continues to invest in
fundamental, speculative science that has underpinned the spectacular advances
in application of technology and understanding.鈥�
That is right. We may worry that neither government nor industry spends
enough on research. But there can be no doubt that science is the business of
both government and industry, and that each has a vital and distinctive part to
play.