M inister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research Senator Kim Carr generated a rush of positive sentiment with his plan to protect the integrity and independence of publicly funded researchers and their host institutions with new charters.
This will find voice on Friday when Carr and at least 18 other speakers spend a day on the topic in Old Parliament House. Organised by the Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies, or FASTS, the forum was booked out soon after it was announced.
Academic freedom is almost as sacred as motherhood. Everyone is in favour in principle, nobody wants to see it threatened, but grumblings regularly arise and from unlikely sources, like last year's call by some climate scientists that scientists who are global warming sceptics should not be reported in the media.
The more likely sources and the subtext to Carr's initiative are governments of the day. In the context of the opprobrium loaded on to the previous government on this count, it was interesting Carr pointedly chose not to accuse it of guilt.
"The Howard government was subject to repeated accusations of political interference with scientific research, especially on controversial issues," he said. Just "repeated accusations". The view from inside the previous government was that it did not actively seek to intimidate scientific critics of its policies. However, some chief executives of research organisations were so keen to maintain favour with the government that they imposed restrictive regimes on their staff.
Conspiracy theories common in scientific circles then emerged naturally, and the chief conspirer was the Government.
Providing a formalised code of rights and responsibilities for scientists seems like a good way to solve the problem for scientists, their managers and governments. However, defining rights can involve limiting them in ways that may not be apparent at the time.
Carr's plan to simultaneously define the rights and responsibilities of individual scientists and research institutions renders this risk more likely and makes the task more complex. To avoid these problems the drafters of these charters could be inclined to make them broad and soft, running the opposite risk of rendering them so anodyne and open to conflicting interpretation that they earn the disdain of the scientists they are supposed to protect.
One person who doesn't see advantage in having formal codes of behaviour in this sector is Peter McGauran, science minister from 1996-97 and 2001-04. "A charter of scientific independence is unnecessary as all that is needed is for the Minister of the day to state unambiguously that he or she will respect all advice whether proffered in private or in public," he told me this week.
He and his fellow science ministers in the previous government workshopped that approach over 11 years and it didn't seem to work very well, especially for the Government.
Ireland seems to be the only country with a national code defining scientific rights. Enshrined in legislation in 1997, it states that academics have the freedom "to question and test received wisdom, to put forward new ideas and to state controversial or unpopular opinions and shall not be disadvantaged, or subject to less favourable treatment by the university, for the exercise of that freedom".
Noble stuff but how well would it do if an iconoclastic academic (you do get them) claims that he/she has missed out on promotion after stating dissonant views and the institution says other candidates were better qualified? Claim and counter claim over "less favourable treatment" would lead to battles in tribunals and the media.
Most Australian research institutions already have a code to define the rights and responsibilities of their research staff.
The ANU's code says that staff "are encouraged to engage with the public and participate in open debate in areas in which they have expertise" while noting that "sometimes contractual obligations with other parties limit the specificity of any public comment by a staff member, or its timing".
University of Canberra researchers "are encouraged to share their expertise with the media and to liaise directly with the media on matters within their areas of expertise" and "are free to engage in public debate and party political, professional, interest group and charitable activities, provided such participation does not impede the staff member's university duties".
CSIRO's "Policy on Public Comment by CSIRO Staff" runs to more than 2500 words and is perhaps the most prescriptive of the three in that it creates rules for dealing with the media and says staff should "avoid making prescriptive comments about Government or Opposition policy".
Another layer is provided by a code jointly promulgated by Universities Australia, the Australian Research Council and the National Health and Medical Research Council. It states, "Institutions are expected to actively encourage mutual cooperation with open exchange of ideas between peers, and respect for freedom of expression and inquiry".
Formally issued last year, this Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research covers the full range of rights and responsibilities of researchers, and must come close to already providing what Carr says we need. With this and the codes maintained by separate institutions to go on, writing his new charters looms as more a cut and paste job than a creative exercise, but Carr has signalled his intention to go a further step by pushing scientists into public debates. "Researchers working in our universities and public research agencies must be and must be allowed to be active participants in such debates," he wrote in The Age last month.
Professor Ken Baldwin, president of FASTS, sees this as creating a new obligation for publicly funded researchers to step outside the ivory towers. "An obligation for good science to inform open decision making and policy debate is critical for a healthy, participatory democracy," he says. "But the idea of an obligation poses some quite profound challenges for science practice."
That almost sounds like the Government could be telling scientists how to do their jobs.
Simon Grose is a science and
technology writer.