Opinion: The inaugural ALS honour roll of screw-ups

Readers of the April/May issue of Australian Life Scientist may have noticed a little boo-boo on the cover. Not the gorgeous image of the Coathanger that so popularly represents Australia to an international audience and that so terribly irritates people from other states. It was in fact the direction of the DNA double helix, which in our depiction screwed to the left when it should have screwed to the right.

I am indebted to Philip Kuchel, professor of biochemistry at the School of Molecular and Microbial Sciences at the University of Sydney, for pointing out my screw-up. (I of course blamed it on our designer Stephen Lennox and his "artistic vision".)

Kuchel tells me that he and his colleague Tony Weiss have a little competition going to see who can be the first to spot left-hand screwed double helices in scientific publications, which provides the duo with hours of fun.

He informs me that there is a highly productive website dedicated to the tracking down of left-handed screws, a website that is vigilantly updated by those screwed-up and under-employed scientists out there.

This international pedants' collaboration's greatest achievement to date has been to point out to the publisher of an academic text for undergrads that its DNA screwed left and that they, of all people, should have known better. And shame on them too.

Kuchel accepted with great good humour my accusations of nerdishness and pedantry and it is in his honour that ALS has decided to launch a new competition - the inaugural Where's Wobbly award for spotting our little screwy friend.

Wobbly the left-handed screw is lurking somewhere within these pages, and the first to track him down and send me an email (kate_mcdonald@idg.com.au) pointing out his location will win a framed certificate testifying to the winner's vigilance and fine eye for detail. You can proudly hang it on the wall next to your family photos and your PhD.

This contemplation of screw-ups led me to ponder the wondrously named Productivity Commission - quick, everyone work faster! - and its recent report into Public Support for Science and Innovation.

What this fine group of anonymous people have done is spend thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours inquiring into a vital area for most scientists in this country. After all, most are paid out of the public purse and we are all interested to see whether we do a good job, we are valued and whether this essential public support will be increased (yeah, right), decreased (shivers) or continue in the status quo.

What the Prod Comm has come up with isn't exactly a screw-up but it certainly is a mish-mash: 900 pages of discussion and summaries of how the public funding of science and innovation works and whether it is a good thing or a bad thing or a so-so thing. The end result is that it is a good thing but could be done better.

I won't bore you with the details of what the report states because I fell asleep a quarter of the way through. Suffice it to say that public funding for science is popular, reasonably effective and while the monetary returns cannot be fully evaluated, everyone reckons it's pretty good in the long run. And we needed 900 pages to tell us this?

Here's one of the key points from the Prod Comm's executive summary: "The pursuit of commercialisation for financial gain by universities, while important in its own right, should not be to the detriment of maximising the broader returns from the productive use of university research".

I must admit I've got no idea what that means. I do understand this, however: "The report is surprisingly good given the fact that very few working scientists contributed to it - probably they were too busy trying to survive ... The opinions of the 'bureaucratic infrastructure' of science are just that." That's from biologist Professor Adrian Gibbs, formerly of ANU.

And this from Queensland's chief scientist Professor Peter Andrews: "This report is completely lacking in aspiration - we are what we are and forever will be."

And this from biochemist and molecular biologist Dr Graeme Laver: "Never, ever try to commercialise the discovery process. Commercialise things that are discovered, yes, but not the discovery process itself. It is not possible to predict what will be discovered. Many people seem to have not grasped this simple concept."

Many other commentators were a bit more diplomatic, including the CSIRO and Science Industry Australia. And I do thank Dr Rowan Gilmore from the Australian Institute for Commercialisation for giving me 20 minutes of his time trying to explain the AIC's position in terms that would not piss off the government.

But the fact that the Minister for Science Julie Bishop has not even bothered to release a public statement on the report speaks volumes. It might have something to do with point nine of the Prod Comm's key points: "The costs of implementing the Research Quality Framework may well exceed the benefits".

That albatross left hanging around Bishop's neck by her predecessor, the Minister for Saluting Flagpoles, is beginning to stink.