Whither science?

I admit to a conflict of interest here, but I also claim significant experience (I am old, after all) - having kicked around between academia and industry over the past, whisper it, 34 years.

I have lived through numerous hard right (Thatcher, Harper), centre right (Chretien, Blair), and a few left (Wilson) governments. The majority have dabbled in the models for conducting scientific research and have almost all come to the conclusion that academic research should be directed to industrial-relevant goals. All very well I hear the redneck hoards - after all, why should their tax dollars (not mine, my taxes go to social programs and healthcare) support a bunch of elitist academics with their high-falutin ideas, their airs and graces, their supercillious attitudes to people with dirt under their fingernails? The rational is that Industry knows what it wants and can best direct research to where it is of most immediate benefit. Yet another fine example of the theory of the wisodm of the market.

Over the past few years, and most noticeably in the past few months, I have experienced the results of those theories. In effect, academics have developed a series of wonderful and very powerful tools which would underpin production of new and exciting products for industry. In this they have delivered exactly what the governments have asked of them. And yet, what do we hear? The question is being asked of industry - 'What do you want, tell us what products you need, and we will show you efficient and powerful ways of making them.' The response is a deafening silence and it appears that nobody knowns what products they want. Other than 'different ones.'

Now, if we think of where the new product opportunities evolve, it becomes clear that they arise through the sort of blue-skies, unfettered research so maligned by the politicians. The whole point of innovative scientific research is that you don't know where it will lead, if you look in the places you already know, you will not make the quantum jump in knowledge. You have to look where there is darkness to find the light.