Q+A’s Paul Holmes interviews Prime Minister’s science adviser Professor Sir Peter Gluckman.

Points of interest:
- New Zealand science is “frustrated”
- “We spend billions of dollars on poorly evidenced policy”
- New Zealand should “invest where we have a competitive advantage” not spread funding across too many institutions
- New Zealand should specialise in methane reduction research; “dramatic reductions” in methane from livestock still 10-15 years away

The interview has been transcribed below. The full length video interviews and panel discussions from this morning’s Q+A can be seen on tvnz.co.nz at,
http://tvnz.co.nz/q-and-a-news

SIR PETER GLUCKMAN interviewed by PAUL HOLMES

PAUL: PAUL: What, if you could summarise it, what is the state of science in New Zealand?

PETER: Frustrated. I think that science has so much to offer New Zealand, I think the system has been constrained in what it can do, I think the relatively simple things that can be done to make science a core part of New Zealand increasing its status in the world, its productivity protecting our environment etc.

PAUL: It’s wealth…

PETER: Yes, absolutely.

PAUL: The government in fact just recently has cut spending on research and development and generally spending on science in the Budget – was that a mistake?

PETER: Well they didn’t cut spending on science they shifted where the emphasis is somewhat. I think that what we’re seeing now is a strategic look at the science system and that out of that will come, and I think my appointment is a part of that, is an attempt to create a system where the incentives are in the right place. Science can really contribute well to New Zealand’s development.

PAUL: But they’re hardly throwing money at science are they?

PETER: I think first the questions you have to ask first before that – why does a country like New Zealand do science, how should a country of 4 million people a long way from the rest of the world undertake its science – we’ve had a terribly competitive system and thirdly and most importantly how do we actually exploit that science, how do we take it to an advantage be it in the public or the private sector?

PAUL: You believe that science can transform New Zealand, that’s what you say – science can transform New Zealand.

PETER: I think we’ve got no other option but to use science.

PAUL: But how?

PETER: Well first of all, I think by how we spend our own money. We have not used the evidence well in informing policy, science advisors in other countries like England and Australia put a lot of effort into trying to ensure that public decisions, or government decisions, are informed by evidence. We need much more of that; after all we spend millions of dollars on poorly evidenced policy at the present time

PAUL: You also criticise the way we spend the science money – you say the science money is handed out to seven major centres, 20 research institutions, which compete in a very negative unpleasant fashion. What do you mean by that – what are you talking about and how would you change it?

PETER: We have by far the most competitive science funding system in the world. Now, it’s good if it doesn’t mean that it’s good within the limits if you have adequate funding, but at this stage what we’ve done is reduce people to focusing on survival and institutional focus rather than worry about the outcomes. We have 4 million people, half the size of Paris – a third of the size of Paris perhaps. We need to work as a whole, we can’t have eight or nine centres doing the same research and doing it poorly, we need one or two centres – we need clusters of excellence and the last government started to develop that.

PAUL: What does that mean – do you tell Auckland it can’t do medicine and they’re going to specialise in that in Otago?

PETER: No, no, no what it means is that you can do things – take the National Research Centre for Growth and Development which I used to head. It involves seven centres of research around the country working together, collaborating together to do something big in terms of health and pastoral development. We can do these things and be much stronger.

PAUL: In the keynote speech you gave to Ag Research at the University of Waikato, you talk about other countries similar to New Zealand which have really benefited from science. Finland, Israel, Denmark – did they direct science to specialise? Did government say to science “you’re going to do this”?

PETER: You have two kinds of priorities in science – you have priorities around finding the next Paul Callahan, the next Peter Hunter and so forth and you must have a system that helps us identify the people who can lead research, and we must also have a system that allows us to deal with the threat for the future. We also must invest where we have competitive advantage, we must give weight to areas which will help develop New Zealand….

PAUL….like?

PETER: …like the Pastoral sector, like potentially the ICT sector all said and done the way this economy is – the Service Sector…

PAUL: ..Technology we’re very good at..

PETER: Exactly.

PAUL: In that keynote speech you gave to Ag Research, Sir Peter, you said – and you’ve said this already in this interview – that New Zealand is not good at using evidence to evaluate the effectiveness of policy. And you include, when you talk about science in your Ag Research speech, you include the evidence of social scientists. What do you mean?

PETER: Well, social scientists, like other scientists, base their conclusions on evidence. That is they look at the data, they analyse the data and from that they try and work out conclusions about what might happen to the population. We spent large amounts of money in health, education, social welfare, criminal justice system etc etc, without using the evidence we have to inform how policy is developed. If this was the UK, when the cabinet paper came forward, it would have on it not just the physical implications, but the quality of evidence that has been used to inform policy. Now, evidence doesn’t make policy, it informs policy.

PAUL: Alright, so in your view if social science can show that we’re getting inadequate outcomes from our spending in say social spending, social welfare and health, we should trust the science and abandon the dogma.

PETER: Well, trust may not be the right word. I think the right word is to say we should consider the science and accept the science may be saying something different to the dogma and ask the question why it may require more research, it may require a change in government action.

PAUL: Does that put on the right Sir Peter?

PETER: No!

PAUL (laughs) Let’s go on to what inevitably, probably, you will find to be some tensions between science and what is politically possible.

PETER: No I don’t see it as a tension at all. Now I may be naïve, but I think it’s quite clear science is about assessing the evidence, developing ideas, developing if you like the facts – that must inform the public, the politician and the treasury people. But in the end, the final decision to what is possible is a matter of the politicians assessing the fiscal, and the political and the societal values against evidence.

PAUL: Which brings us very nicely to climate change. In a recent paper you suggest that science, that the science – you’ve written a paper on the emissions trading and global warming and so on – you suggest the science really is pretty solid there is global warming happening. Why are there so many sceptics?

PETER: I don’t think there are so many sceptics, I think its more the sceptics get equal air time so to speak. I think the situation with global warming is simple, in that this is an extraordinarily complex problem the world has never seen before whereby it is warming in a way different to previous warming episodes, it clearly involved human involvement. The difficulty is nobody will know how fast it’s going to warm until it’s already happened because we’re dealing with an unprecedented situation.

PAUL: But you say the science is solid, but you also say we can never be certain.

PETER: Correct, science is about reducing uncertainty, not about creating certainty. The analogy I use is imagine the prime minister is piloting a ‘plane and he got 99 messages saying there’s a bomb on board and one message saying it’s a hoax. What’s the pilot going to do? Now we’ve got the same situation – the world’s climate scientists believe the world is warming at an unacceptably fast rate because of human activity. No rational government in the world is going to gamble the future of the planet on the few bits of argument that say it’s not.

PAUL: International scientists are saying to keep the temperature beneath 2 degrees by say 2090 that the world emission cuts have to be at least 40 percent. What level of reduction have you recommended to the prime minister?

PETER: No level because that’s not my role. My role is science and the role of where New Zealand takes a role in emissions reduction is policy. Whatever New Zealand does in terms of emissions reductions will do nothing for the rate of global warming as it’s such a small emitter. Our role in doing so is what we do to influence the big economies – the US, China, India, Europe to reduce theirs and that is a political decision where quite frankly Mike Moore will have more of insights than I do of how New Zealand positions itself as a leader or as a follower, we have to be part of the global community of reducing emissions. Our science in New Zealand probably is to focus on how do we give the world new tools to reduce pastoral emissions, because New Zealand is unusual in that….

PAUL:…how far away are we from reducing the methane from cattle?

PETER: Oh I think we already have evidence that we get some reductions from changing our husbandry approaches – how we rear the cattle on our farms. I think we’re 10, 15 years away from getting the kinds of dramatic reductions which would meet international requirements.

PAUL: Pure methamphetamine – should we get pseudo ephedrine off the counter?

PETER: As you know I’ve written a report to the Prime Minister which I suspect will be made public in a few weeks – in itself, and the science of it is simple, two questions. Can you have a country live without pseudo ephedrine and the answer is yes, countries have lived without pseudo ephedrine. Holland doesn’t have it, Oregon doesn’t have it. Does it make any difference to the tragic P epidemic – much more debatable except in one clear area, which is the reduction in clan labs which as you know would be of marvellous social benefit to New Zealand. Clan labs are the source of a lot of organised crime, they cause a lot of family disruptions, they cost a lot of money for the police and the ambulance and the hospital and so forth, fire brigades. And so I suggested to the prime minister – not that he needed suggestion as it was clear already – that to do one thing in isolation isn’t going to crack the P epidemic, we need a holistic pack. All I was asked to do was to recommend on some aspect of the science.

PAUL: Thank you very much.

ENDS

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