The world is increasingly turning to science for answers to global woes. Take the sustainability agenda the United Nations is championing. Many of the solutions to the sustainable development goals (SDG) lie in science.
Science for better energy usage, science for improved healthcare, science for more affordable housing, science for clean technologies, and many more.
It is, therefore, no surprise that science is prominent in the policy discussions of nations, especially the developed economies. In the United States, the president of the National Academy of Sciences presents the state of science to Congress every year. Issues including the latest developments in science, new emerging technologies and the impact of science on society are presented. Congress would debate on the issues which impact their economy and societal wellbeing.
What transpires during such debates becomes guiding inputs to the nation’s investments in science. More importantly, policymakers are made more aware of the issues on science, including the emerging opportunities science offers.
That way, they are better prepared to propose constructive actions on science. For example, one issue which the nation continues to grapple with is science education, or STEM, which stands for education in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
Here, at home, we are also saddled with the same STEM issue. Unfortunately, there does not seem to
be much discussion on this in
Parliament. Whereas we know fully well the implications of such an issue, if left unresolved, on the future of science and innovation in the country.
A recent analysis by the Academy of Sciences on the country’s parliamentary discussions confirms that we lack serious discourses on science issues during sittings. This is unhealthy, especially since the government has for years emphasised the critical role of science in supporting the nation’s socio-economic development.
The only exception to that observation was the time when issues on Lynas (the rare earth mining controversy in Pahang) were hotly debated. Even then, the issues were politically motivated. Not surprisingly, the contents of the discourse were sorely lacking in scientific substance. The other was the bauxite mining issue.
Admittedly, investments in science are not cheap. For decades now, the country has spent billions of ringgit funding research and development in science. Even then, researchers are saying that the allocation for science is still low, going by global standards. Our spending has yet to exceed one per cent of the country’s gross domestic product. Whereas in the developed economies, it is between three and four per cent.
Scientists are asking for allocations to be at least two per cent of GDP if scientific R&D are to have any significant impact. The problem is policymakers in the government have yet to be convinced that the investments in R&D all these years have delivered adequate returns. We are not short of critics who label the R&D that we do as “self-fulfilling” or, in the local lingo, syok sendiri.
Except for the R&D undertaken on palm oil and rubber, which have delivered some noticeable impact to the related industries, the others have yet to be truly felt by the society and nation.
Some reasons have been offered for the poor performance in the rest of the R&D — no clear directions and poorly-defined end game. Take the high impact research (HIR), which was anchored by Universiti Malaya.
We were told that the main key performance indicators (KPIs) of the research were to increase the number of publications in the top science journals of the world. This was aimed mainly to prop up the position of the university in the highly criticised ranking hierarchy. Admittedly, there is no harm imposing such publication KPIs, but it would have been better if the topics chosen for the R&D are aligned to a bigger national agenda of supporting the socio-economic wellbeing of the country.
For example, as in the case of oil palm and rubber, the R&D should be aligned to a long-term 20-year plan to make Malaysia an industry leader in biotechnology or nanotechnology.
That way, we are clear on the endgame which would surely deliver benefits to society and the nation. This is where parliamentary discourses are important to significantly influence the directions of R&D spending in the country.
They should not be left to scientists alone.
Dr Ahmad Ibrahim is a Fellow at Academy of
Sciences Malaysia
