New Zealand has got eight CRIs (Crown Research Institutes). Roughly 5000 people working in the science industry, sure, we have not included those who do research at the eight universities on the land. Simple words: too many for New Zealand? or not?

    Say each of the CRI has got 10% of the people for administration, 15% running for business management-getting the contestable research funds from the government and private sectors, we are talking about around 1250 people working on non-research area with in the CRIs. What a waste!

    When we talk about science funds, how much we need just to keep the 5000 people there? Roughly $100,000 each, that is about half a billion a year, phew! When they do their research, we probably need another half a billion – that is the 1 billion New Zealand is currently funding for its science. When you really expect good achievement from the scientist to benefit the economy, you need to double the funding to 2 billion dollars, the dollar we do not have now.

    What does the government do when you do not have enough money to keep your scientist work well? The government set up the contestable funds- let them compete with one another for the money. There is nothing wrong to have contestable funds, but imagine this, when 3-6 teams of scientist from the CRIs compete for the fund in certain area, we could only have one winner, then what would the other losing teams do for the next a few years? They wait for the next round of funding, why? Because every one of the CRIs needs to keep the capability to do well for the next round of funding, you know. What a waste again!

    New Zealand is a small country with only 4 million people, a small market to keep so many scientists to work in so many fields. We cannot afford what the America would be able to do in every area. However, we can do so much better if we put our money where the month is, like what have been achieved in Singapore, Denmark and Ireland.

    There are many things we can do to improve our situation. How about we merge our eight CRIs to a national science academy, at least we do not need 8 sets of administration and business management teams.

   How about we make the positions in our future science academy contestable, not the science funds? What we need is to have the best people in one team with sufficient funding to carry out the research, can carry out it well without spending more than 60% of their time writing the bids for funding.

   Science can contribute so my to our wellbeing of our society and economy, when we want it, we want the best out of it. So let’s make our science community in New Zealand a jewel in the crown, not a joke.