This morning we heard from some of the more recent success stories in science and technology. Atta ur Rahman, the former science advisor to Pakistan’s prime minister, described how targeted policies had managed to increase the country’s citations in international journals by 1000% in the last four years.

He emphasised the importance of nurturing excellence, saying that too often, developing country universities lack the creative “soul” of science embodied by the “beautiful” minds that work in places like Oxford or MIT.

Excellence had been top of the list when drawing up Pakistan’s S&T policies, he said. Paying high salaries for mediocre scientists would not give the desired results. So efforts focused on identifying the brightest students used independent auditors to ensure they got the scholarships rather than the merely well-connected.

Quality has been a buzzword at this conference. This indicates a growing maturity in the debate. But not all developing country governments seem to have caught up on this. One South African delegate I spoke to after Rahman’s lecture told me his government would never place such emphasis on top of the line science and technology.

South Africa’s science minister Naledi Pandor would disagree. She is actively promoting excellence, she says. But some academics fear that a more left-leaning government in South Africa will regard elite universities and research as a bourgeois luxury. The country’s mid-term budgets next week may show which way the wind is blowing…

Linda Nordling, SciDev.Net

The University of Oxford - really excellent. Image credit: Flickr / Missy and the Universe

Just a note to point out an inconsistency I have encountered with regards to the last post. Speaking to one of Ezin’s officials after his talk, I was assured that the AU department for science, technology and human resources has quite enough money to carry out their duties, thank you very much!

Still, I queried two of my journalistic colleagues down here, and they confirmed that what I had heard Ezin say during his talk was what they too had heard.

(After Ezin’s talk I spoke to him about what projects were ‘less of a priority’ than the Pan African University and he mentioned teacher training as an example. Which points to there being a problem with funding…)

Linda Nordling, SciDev.Net

The African Union Commission department for science, technology and human resources has run out of money.

This is essentially what Jean-Pierre Ezin, commissioner in the department, told this afternoon’s symposium on the impact the financial crisis has had on research.

The commission depends on three sources of funding—Africa’s 53 states, philanthropists and rich countries’ aid agencies—and all of them have been hard hit by the crisis, he said.

As a result, the department has not been able to raise all the funding needed to fulfil its planned activities for 2009.

Ezin did not mention what projects will fall by the wayside. The priorities for funding is clearer. Apparently, the commission president has asked all departments to draw up a prioritised list of activities for 2010. For Ezin’s department, this will be the Pan African University. Another is the department’s research grants programme.

Out of the speakers, Ezin by far voiced the most concern about the crisis and its effects. Science ministers from South Africa, India and Brazil all said there would be no major cuts for science.

Naledi Pandor addressing the symposium

South Africa’s science minister Naledi Pandor said her ministry will ‘cut the frills’. That will mean less dinners and conferences in 5* hotels, but researchers themselves will not suffer, she said.

South Africa’s midterm budget is due next week, so we will see how much truth there is to this.

But we still have to hear from the poorest countries how the crisis is affecting them. They should be sensitive to the same pressures as the AU commission, so their picture is probably not as rosy as that of the middle-income countries. Where were they at the TWAS symposium??

Linda Nordling, SciDev.Net

Hammersley: a bleak future for science journalism?

The word on everybody’s lips at the 6th World Conference of Science Journalists opening plenary this afternoon was ‘crisis’.

With newspapers around the world migrating online or ceasing publication altogether, science journalists are right to be worried. Nick Higham, BBC correspondent and chair of the plenary, attributed the crisis in part to the rise of new media. He hit the nail on the head when he said “but how can we make it [new media] pay? And where do traditional, professional, properly-paid journalists fit in?”

Three speakers offered their perspectives on “New media for new journalism?”

Krishna Bharat, GoogleNews founder, simply suggested that we must become “smarter about getting the right material to the right people”. This means working in “cooperation, not competition”; using experts to create “living stories” a bit like wikipedia articles; and “packaging up” individual articles with branding and advertising for people to post on their own websites.

Jeff Nesbit, from the National Science Foundation (NSF) in the United States, which traditionally supports science itself rather than science journalism, highlighted a variety of strategies that blend old and new media and, according to Nesbit, are proving crucial in the fight to keep science journalism alive. These range from underwriting the costs of science desks in traditional newspapers, to aggregating news online, to creating new content for radio, television and new media.

Poor Nesbit was given a hard time by the audience who questioned both the quality and objectivity of government-funded science communication — several delegates argued that the NSF’s efforts fall into public relations rather than science journalism.

Ben Hammersley, associate editor of Wired Magazine, painted a bleak future for science journalism, suggesting that the next WCSJ might see just half today’s number of working science journalists. The key to survival, he said, is to specialise in a single medium and create “extraordinarily good products”. Audiences go to “where the good stuff is, not where the shiny stuff is”. It’s survival of the fittest.

But we should remember that new media has been on the table for at least ten years. Arguing that it is causing a crisis in science journalism is, said Hammersley, like “being chased down the street by a snail”. If you haven’t got your head around new media by now, he added, you’re in serious trouble.

Sian Lewis, SciDev.Net

Promoting public engagement on science and health in developing countries is a challenge. Knowing that, the Wellcome Trust (an independent organization for human and animal health) launched in 2008 the International Engagement Awards – Engaging with global health research. They are already supporting 20 projects (mostly in Africa) and want some more!

Siân Aggett, Public Engagement Adviser at Wellcome Trust, came to the XI RedPOP meeting to encourage research groups from Latin America to apply for the International Engagement Awards. From the 20 projects already approved, only three are from Latin America.

She said that Wellcome Trust has funded public engagement projects of all kinds in the UK for over 10 years. It has supported international research initiatives, and now it’s time to support international public engagement projects too. “It is very important for the democratization of science that these two things – research and public engagement – are married together”, Siân told SciDev.Net

“Health research is a global challenge, and public engagement with health is very important because people need to own research, research needs to be democratized. And people, in order to own it, need to understand it. One can’t exist without the other”, she added.

The International Engagement Awards support projects with grants of up to £30.000 – around US$ 50.000 – related to facilitating public engagement with health research, stimulating dialogue about health research and its impacts, developing new engagement strategies and so on. Policy engagement projects are welcomed too.

People shall send preliminary expressions of interest until October 2nd (deadline for complete submissions is October 30th). For more information, see www.wellcome.ac.uk/internationalengagement.

Catarina Chagas, SciDev.Net

There is one area of health research where you don’t have to fight for funding.

As Dr Roger Glass, chair of the session on Implementation/Operational Research held on the second day of the meeting, said, ″When have you ever attended a conference where you have three organisations saying there is funding available [for research]?″

So, people interested in conducting operational or implementation research (or as the World Bank calls it: impact evaluation), put in that proposal now to The Global Fund, the World Bank and USAID.

And the best part is, all three groups encourage incorporation of training schemes for local personnel in the field in the proposal for funding, so that meets capacity building agendas as well. This is especially important as most of the ground personnel are usually community workers, and not trained researchers.

However, participants who regularly work on the ground brought up the very relevant fact that although the funding bodies say there is flexibility in funding to include operational research, the reality is many people on the ground are either not aware of this flexibility or those in charge of the funds are not themselves that flexible.

Another interesting observation brought up was the continued usage of paper and pen in conducting surveys when most field workers would have a ″pocket computer″ with them in the form of their mobile phone. Time to bring surveying techniques into the 21st century?

Shiow Chin Tan, SciDev.Net

This week (17–19 November) ministers of health, science and technology will get together with health researchers, nongovernmental organisations, funding councils and donors to debate the priorities for global health research at the Global Ministerial Forum on Research for Health (or Bamako 2008) in Mali.

The meeting is a follow up to the Ministerial Summit on Health Research, held in Mexico City in 2004, which focused on overcoming the ever-evident gaps between research and policy, and policy and action.

SciDev.Net’s coverage at the time concentrated on the dearth of funding for health systems research, the disparity in funding for health research between developed and developing countries, and the need to recognise the burden of non-communicable diseases.

Somewhat depressingly, these issues remain at the top of the agenda today and will likely receive a great deal of attention at Bamako 2008, highlighting just how slowly things have moved on in the last four years.

Will the Bamako meeting be any different? Will the delegates have the opportunity to interact enough with the ministers? Will anything new come out of the ministerial discussions? And most importantly, will the final Bamako Call to Action be acted upon globally and in individual nations?

We’ll be there — the Air France pilots’ strike permitting — to give you the low-down on the sessions, the general mood at the conference, and whether it looks as though the words might just turn into action …

Katherine Nightingale and Shiow Chin Tan, SciDev.Net