New Zealand Science Review

Cover and Contents

Editors — 2014-01-01

In This Issue

Allen Petrey — 2014-01-01

President's Column

Nicola Gaston — 2014-01-01

How the Marsden Fund has failed to achieve its full potential in the ESA panel: evidence of limitations in scope, biased outcomes, and futile applications

Karin Bryan — 2014-01-01

We have analysed the scope of proposals funded by the ‘Earth Sciences and Astronomy’ (ESA) panel of the Marsden Fund for the period 2004 to 2013. The scope of proposals funded is very limited and does not reflect the full remit of the panel: the successful projects fail to encompass the quality and quantity of research being undertaken within the Earth sciences community in New Zealand, and a number of sub-disciplines that seek to address fundamental and important problems within the Earth sciences are largely excluded. Moreover, nearly 50% of the funded proposals for the past decade have been made to just two institutions. To address these limitations, we suggest that: (1) a review is undertaken to examine and widen the scope of the panel to encompass sub-disciplines that demonstrably are never or rarely funded; (2) the composition of panel members be examined and modified to reflect a much wider scope of sub-disciplines within the Earth sciences; and (3) a review of the wide discrepancies in funding distributions on an institutional basis be undertaken. We want to ensure that a more representative range of sub-disciplines, in keeping with modern and realistic definitions of the Earth sciences, is funded through this panel, and so we also recommend the formation of a new panel for ‘Environmental and Earth-system Sciences’ that could encompass the research involving modern-day processes so that applications in these sub-disciplines are not pointless. In addition, it is clear that a very substantial increase in funding to the Marsden Fund must be sought.

Achieving ‘step changes’ in science and innovation: Towards ‘Pasteur’s paddock’?

Troy Baisden — 2014-01-01

The Request for Proposals for New Zealand’s National Science Challenges (NSCs) emphasises that successful proposals should ‘represent a significant step change in undertaking research and delivering impact’ (MBIE 2014). How can a ‘step change’ be achieved within NSCs where new funding is small compared to realigned funding? In a video released on 4 February 2014, the Minister for Science and Innovation suggests an expectation that ‘additionality’ will play a key role, with ‘collaborative’ and ‘multidisciplinary’ endeavour as important compo-nents of these ‘mission-led’ Challenges (Joyce 2014). This brief communication reviews and describes a timely synthesis of two important components of the science and innovation literature relevant to the ‘step change’ and ‘additionality’ expectations in NSCs.

Can you teach innovation and entrepreneurship? A new postgraduate programme

Kathryn McGrath — 2014-01-01

Every generation has the potential to say that things were differ-ent when they were young; that life was perhaps more simple, straightforward, sure. Equally they might reflect that when they were young it was a time of great change with increased complexity and uncertainty. Considering employment over the past one hundred years, it is evident that with each generation there have been significantly more job choices. In line with this has been the expansion in the diversity of skills and knowledge required in order to take up these employment opportunities and to deliver to the evolving needs of our global society. With choice and opportunity comes uncertainty. How do we deal with uncertainty and the ambiguity it brings with it and ensure that each of us is able to make the most of the opportunities at hand? Mitigation of uncertainty through a reduction of choice, though seemingly initially attractive, does not reflect well the changes that are constantly occurring in any environment or sector of interest. Preparing people to deal with uncertainty, to assess it, understand it and work with it, will ensure that the uncertainty is turned to benefit rather than being a latent barrier to our progress. In doing so, we will expand the proportion of society who will make use of and receive benefit from the consideration of risk and reward.

Explaining uncertainty: a scientist’s perspective

Ken Baldwin — 2014-01-01

This piece was first published in Advance, the public policy quarterly magazine of Crawford School of Public Policy at The Australian National University, Canberra ACT: https://crawford.anu.edu.au/research/content/advance.php

Disease associations between honeybees and bumblebees as a threat to wild pollinators

M Fürst — 2014-01-01

Emerging infectious diseases (EIDs) pose a risk to human welfare, both directly and indirectly, by affecting managed livestock and wildlife that provide valuable resources and ecosystem services, such as the pollination of crops. Honeybees (Apis mellifera), the prevailing managed insect crop pollinator, suffer from a range of emerging and exotic high-impact pathogens, and population maintenance requires active management by beekeepers to control them. Wild pollinators such as bumblebees (Bombus spp.) are in global decline, one cause of which may be pathogen spillover from managed pollinators like honeybees or commercial colonies of bumblebees. Here we use a combination of infection experiments and landscape-scale field data to show that honeybee EIDs are indeed widespread infectious agents within the pollinator assemblage. The prevalence of deformed wing virus (DWV) and the exotic parasite Nosema ceranae in honeybees and bumblebees is linked; as honeybees have higher DWV prevalence, and sympatric bumblebees and honeybees are infected by the same DWV strains, Apis is the likely source of at least one major EID in wild pollinators. Lessons learned from vertebrates highlight the need for increased pathogen control in managed bee species to maintain wild pollinators, as declines in native pollinators may be caused by interspecies pathogen transmission originating from managed pollinators.

Nature 506: 364–366 (19 February 2014)

Why do academics blog? An analysis of audiences, purposes and challenges

Inger Mewburn — 2014-01-01

Academics are increasingly being urged to blog in order to expand their audiences, create networks and to learn to write in more reader-friendly style. This paper holds this advocacy up to empirical scrutiny. A content analysis of 100 academic blogs suggests that academics most commonly write about academic work conditions and policy con-texts, share information and provide advice; the intended audience for this work is other higher education staff. We contend that academic blogging may constitute a community of practice in which a hybrid public/private academic operates in a ‘gift economy’. We note, however, that academic blogging is increasingly of interest to institutions, and this may challenge some of the current practices we have recorded. We conclude that there is still much to learn about academic blogging practices.

Studies in Higher Education 38(8): 1105–1119 (2013)

NZAS Conference 2014: Science and Society

Nicola Gaston — 2014-01-01

Teaching Entrepreneurship to Postgraduates

Kate McGrath — 2014-01-01

Teaching, Entrepreneurship and Postgraduate, separately and collectively embrace very broad areas, so based only on the title of Colin Jones’ latest book, exactly what you are going to get with this monograph is anyone’s guess. Jones’ focus is on the one hand very narrow and specific (mature post-graduate students studying a business school entrepreneurship programme) while simultaneously he espouses his generic teaching philosophy for guiding students in ‘World 2.0’.

Māori Research Development: a National Challenge

Editors — 2014-01-01

The New Zealand Association of Scientists (NZAS) is seriously concerned by comments made by Dr Leonie Pihama on the exclusion of Māori voices from science funding processes in New Zealand.In a statement published on the Te Wharepora Hou blog site [1], Dr Pihama discusses the impact on the Māori research community of the decision to discontinue Centre of Research Excellence (CoRE) funding of ‘Ngā Pae o Te Māramatanga’, the only CoRE that addresses Māori research needs and capability building in the Māori research community.We acknowledge that the Royal Society of New Zealand and the Tertiary EducationCommission have run an open, contestable process. The Association does not want to criticise individual funding decisions, and observes that these decisions have been made in a highly competitive environment after a process of peer review.However, Ngā Pae o Te Māramatanga plays a unique role in New Zealand’s research landscape, and a strong case can be made that its goals are simply incommensurate with any other CoRE to which it might be compared.We also consider that the points made by Dr Pihama about the wider impact of this decision are well made, especially in the context of the National Science Challenges (NSCs). These ten challenges were not selected in a contestable process but rather after a long consultative period.Of serious concern, then, is the claim that ‘MBIE also took a position against ensuring specific Māori input and aspirations in the process’. The process and timeline of consultation throughout the NSCs has caused some concern in the broader scientific community, but it is scandalous that they did not incorporate the views of Māori from an early stage in their development.The President of the NZAS, Dr Nicola Gaston, said ‘The scientific community struggles with diversity, as was highlighted in the case of gender in a recent Herald article [2].That Māori researchers have struggled to be included in the National Science Challenges is a disgrace and an embarrassment’. The NZAS endorses the recommendations made by Dr Pihama, and urges MBIE to give them serious consideration.

[1] http://tewhareporahou.wordpress.com/2014/03/06/the-denial-of-maori-researchdevelopment/

[2] http://www.nzherald.co.nz/science/news/article.cfm?c_id=82&objectid=11216759