Pure Research vs Applied

"If Canada is going to continue to compete internationally, we must do it through new ideas, new products and opening new markets. In other words, through innovation. The NRC (National Research Council) will now focus on the identified research needs of Canadian businesses. It will be customer pull."
Gary Goodyear, Minister of State for Science and Technology Canada

While acknowledging that the purpose of scientific endeavour is basically to open up our understanding of the world around us, he insists scientific investigation must also be acknowledged for its capacity to effect "social and economic benefit". And according to Mr. Goodyear, the change in investigative direction for federal government scientists is meant to meet a need for research and development to aid Canadian companies.

Research, henceforth, under the auspices of the venerable and traditionally pure-research-directed National Research Council is to target the development of commercial products. Which purpose is to ultimately spur the economy and heighten job opportunities. "Industrial research, new growth and business development" is to henceforth animate research potential at the NRC.

Science and research undertakings to expand our understanding while exploring the world we live within is to take a back seat to the more pressing task of furthering the Canadian economy. "Basic" research, claims NRC president John McDougall is better left to the country's universities. And one is left to wonder what will happen to the current valuable collaboration between NRC researchers and university scientists?

One of the identified objects that Mr. Goodyear mentioned as an example will be a search for improved cultivars of wheat strains to benefit both farmers and consumers. A type of wheat that will ideally be more resistant to drought, cold and disease, and in the process produce more wheat per acre. It should take, he guesses, seven to eight years for this improved grain to be successfully bred.

The president of the Canadian Association of Physicists is not impressed by this prospective loss of "basic" research capabilities through a turn-around in the purpose of the NRC. "We have tried to argue that NRC's capacity for basic research should not be lost. And that seems to be happening", said Gabor Kunstatter of the University of Winnipeg.

According to this scientist, the NRC's tradition over the past century of representing "at the interface between industry and universities to some extent is what made them valuable. What will happen to our capacity to make scientific breakthroughs from long-term research that will lead to dramatic improvements in health care, computing, or information security or to other advances that we can't imagine today?"

Good question, and one that everyone should be pondering.  Why not pursue a two-pronged approach, have tax dollars placed where they matter most; in support of both pure research and applied research?