In December I read a book called “Conversations on the uses of Science and Technology” by Normal Hackerman and Kenneth Ashworth. It really is conversations: the text is structured as dialogue. It is quite short but somewhat boring. Nothing earthshattering about it. The role of science in society, the role of technology, their relationship, how the government should fund it. But I can see why the authors might have wanted to write it. I suspect that Dr Hackerman is probably a wonderful conversationalist and that the conversations were really sparkling in real life. Unfortunately, it just doesn’t come across that way on paper.
The topic, however, is interesting and important. Why should society support pie-in-the-sky research when we have no way of knowing that it will someday be useful? It is, of course, a gamble, but one worth taking if we consider the benefits we now reap from such investment in the past. One of several nice examples they talk about in the book is Frederick Hopkins who investigated the pigments in butterfly wings. It turns out that the chemistry of the pigments are related to folic acids, and that it now forms the basis of research on vitamins and metabolism. It took 60 years before Hopkins’s work became useful. Modern society is driven by a technology explosion, and it would be very foolish not to invest in fundamental research. We might just run out of fuel. We need to train and support scientists as well as the engineers who apply the science, and that means that we need to support universities.
On a related note, there are rumours that the NRF (National Research Foundation) of South Africa is having a little financial trouble. If so, it is hopefully only temporary. But it might just perhaps be a good thing if they cease to exist. According to their annual report, they received R1112 million from the government and oher sources in 2008, and paid R482 million (=43.3%) in grants and bursaries. Salaries amounted to R243 million (=21.9%) and “other expenses” to R246 million (=22.1%). I’m not sure if an agency whose task it is to distribute research money should operate with an overhead of 44%! The spent more money on non-research and on research! I don’t know what happend to the remaining 12.7%: I don’t think it went towards their various properties or their fleet of vehicles, but it might have. But at least we can all be grateful that they doubled the NRF president’s salary from R742,000 (2007) to R1.5 million (2008). How the poor man survived on that meagre amount I don’t know.