A politician, a senior bureaucrat, and a blog

Posted on February 20, 2012 by

Bonjour Dr. Ghoussoub. I very much enjoy your blog… as a science policy junkie I find it a useful antidote to the meanderings of the so-called science and innovation policies in Ottawa and elsewhere … perhaps you already saw this speech given its subject (by Australian minister of tertiary education, skills, science and research, Chris Evans), but hard to imagine someone here giving such a talk. Continue reading →

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Was NSERC there?

Posted on February 18, 2012 by

“Was NSERC listening?” That was a reaction from the Twitter world to yesterday’s plenary address by Mike Lazaridis to the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Indeed, Lazaridis rocked the casbah yesterday with his speech on the “Power of Ideas”. “We need research that tackles big questions, not just research that looks at commercial gains”, he thundered to a packed audience of thousands gathered in Vancouver for the meeting of the AAAS. “The ideas that seem to have no implication at all are the ones that we need to be truly excited about.”  Contrast this with … Continue reading →

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The Physicists debate “the changing role of NSERC’s Discovery program”

Posted on February 16, 2012 by

First, came the editorial of University of Ottawa Physicist, Béla Joós in last July’s issue of “Physics in Canada”. There, he zeroed in on the heart of the matter, which if you think about it, is mind boggling: “Over the last two years, the Discovery Grant Program (DGP) has been changing, not only the way in which grants are allocated but also in its mission statement.” How could this cataclysmic shift happen under the very nose of Canada’s scientific community and who is responsible for it? In his extremely lucid editorial (the best analysis I’ve seen so far on the issue), he declares, “it is time to rise to the defence of the DGP.” Today, the following open letter to NSERC’s President Suzanne Fortier, by a group of prominent physicists and astronomers, also appeared in the journal “Physics in Canada”. Most of the signatories are past chairs of Grant selection committees, and all are well versed in the complexities of grant selection procedures in Canada and elsewhere. When a “system produces a decline in both fairness and trust”, all decent and serious scientists in the country feel it simultaneously. You are not alone!

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When University Presidents send out “few public bouquets” to Government

Posted on February 15, 2012 by

“Even on the most exalted throne in the world we are only sitting on our own bottom”– Michel de Montaigne.

“Sometimes Canada Gets it Right” is a recent joint op-ed by U. of Toronto President, David Naylor and UBC President, Stephen Toope. They were “sending out a few public bouquets” to the federal government in gratitude for the $1.3-billion Knowledge Infrastructure Program (KIP) initiated in the 2009 stimulus budget. Last year, U. of Alberta’s President, Indira Samarasekera, threw a party in Ottawa to celebrate the federal government’s investment of $190-million dollars in the Canada Excellence Research Chair Program (CERC). In a recent op-ed for the Vancouver Sun, Alan Leshner and Stephen Toope pointed at the Perimeter Institute –a recent recipient of another $50-million from the federal government—as a “Canadian example of international research”. Continue reading →

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Leshner and Toope didn’t get all of it right!

Posted on February 13, 2012 by

On the occasion of an upcoming meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Vancouver, Stephen Toope, the President of UBC and Alan Leshner, CEO of the AAAS, co-wrote an op-ed for the Vancouver Sun entitled,  “Innovation, international collaboration go hand in hand”. They were using the occasion to single out recent “Canadian examples of international research.” And on this front, they didn’t get all of it right! Continue reading →

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Reed Elsevier stock price is dropping but …

Posted on February 9, 2012 by

“Noise around the boycott against Elsevier offers short term trading opportunity”. That’s from the investment firm Exane Paribas, which “fully expects the price to rebound once this boycott fails like all the previous ones”.  Indeed, even though more than 4900 scientists have already signed the petition initiated by Gowers to boycott all Elsevier’s publications, the numbers look relatively small when you consider that the movement is international and that it is trying to involve all scientific disciplines. Just take a look at the timid participation of Canada’s mathematical community to see the challenges ahead in facing up to the lousy business practices in scientific publishing. But are we reaching a tipping point, where the career benefits of publishing with Elsevier may now need to be balanced with certain risks? Continue reading →

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Larry Summers’ online sweatshop model for Academia

Posted on February 7, 2012 by

On the very same day that the New Yorker uncovered an unflattering picture of his role in the unfolding of the US stimulus program, Larry Summers was back pontificating about the academy on the pages of the NY Times. This time he was advocating for a cost- and time-efficient new world order for post-secondary education. I had planned to ignore it, until his article was forwarded to me as a member of the UBC Board of Governors on the eve of a strategic session on the University’s current and future finances. As I had expected, the subject did come up in that meeting. After all, Summers’ article could pass for a user’s guide on financial efficiency in the servicing of a university’s undergraduate enterprise.  Continue reading →

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