Professor,
Would you expect any other outcome when you have the Howard Government flushed with funds, spending so little on education of all levels. If you have 2 items, take away 1 you will have 1 left. There need not be a lot of analysis on this subject, except "You get the government you deserve."

Are we really that bad? Australians shine in all walks of life...not just sport...of course the government could do more and hopefully the next one will. Right now, however, be thankful for what we have achieved and are achieving right now. Perhaps the media could help by paying a little more attention to our achievements away from the sporting field and give credit to those who really do achieve ...actually they do a fair bit of this already....so are we really that bad? .....no we are not.

Economics has supplanted the religions of old. The "rules" of economics are a matter of convenience, not measures of what IS.

As in days of old, those with no inclination to explore the rough edge of nature with the naked hand, join the ministry.

As in days of old, progress is bounded by the imagination of the priesthood and shackled by their power.

Those ideas which reinforce the power of the priesthood get a guernsey, those which don't are heresy.

Monotheistic souls need a parable for their inspiration. Perhaps the parable of ZERO is a case in point.

There was a time when the concept of ZERO had no formal place in our language. One day, some philosopher-genius gave it the symbol "0" and wove it into the language of mathematics. This was the Industrial Revolution of mathematics no less, because the power of that idea revealed the workings of Nature.

What a heresy that must have been in those arcane days, no matter that we have all benefitted from it since.

What would be the modern day equivalent of such research in our learning institutions? So much enquiry depends upon the un-learning of pre-conceived notions. Surely heresy and anarchy must be given a pre-eminent role, but who will sponsor that?

The West's sun is setting and the East is raising again this is just one aspect of it.

A sily question:
how do you propose to do it?

Who would do it, what would be their motivation, resources and strategy?

regards

Paul
(Ph.D. MSc, + two other post-grad degrees)

The author says that Australia "faces a real crisis in the availability of taxonomists". That may be so but I guess we can be truly thankful that there is not an over-supply of taxidemists, otherwise we'd all be stuffed.

GeeEner, in your case, that might just be a good idea.

I couldn’t agree more Julian.

“There is for example, a real crisis in the availability of taxonomists.”

There sure is. The Queensland Herbarium, which is the centre of botanical taxonomy in Qld, has only a couple of taxonomists left, and yet its core business has been taxonomy, for many decades. It has been almost entirely usurped into the arena of vegetation management. This is an important field in Qld, but by crikey so is botanical taxonomy.

Taxonomic problems exist throughout the Queensland flora, and not only in the small herbaceous or inconspicuous species. We have a very poor understanding of the ironbarks, which are the dominant and diagnostic species for vegetation types and regional ecosystems over very large areas of the state, and beyond into NSW, NT and WA. Nobody knows how many species there. All we know is that there are many species including a host of unnamed ones, and that massive confusion reigns.

A few named species of ironbark are on the declared rare and threatened flora list. There could well be others yet to be described.

I know of quite a few unnamed ironbark species in my part of the world (the Mackay – Mt Isa – Gulf of Carpentaria - Cape York area). But there is no support for my long-time push to get them sorted out. There are also lots of things to be sorted out in other dominant genera such as Acacia and Melaleuca… and a host of known but unnamed species from tiny forbs to rainforest trees that need formal descriptions and names.

It is simply extraordinary that species groups as dominant as the ironbarks (and bloodwoods and some other eucalypts) are still so poorly known, and that the prospects for sorting them out are so grim.

But this situation is nothing compared to the invertebrate fauna at the Qld Museum. There are massive holes in our knowledge of many large groups of insects… and no work being conducted on most of them.

“Another example of the low value we attach to Australian knowledge is the state of our scientific collections. Despite all the care and efforts of their guardians they remain fragmented, under-curated, unco-ordinated, badly resourced, under-utilised and neglected.”

Absolutely.

I am a botanist who has been an avid collector for 30 years. I have thousands of specimens lodged in the Qld and WA herbaria, and quite a few in other Australian herbaria and overseas. I also have an enormous photographic collection of plants. A lot of my early collecting was of Acacia species in WA, over a hundred of which were unnamed at the time, a few of which I have the first or type collections of and one of which was named after me.

The situation has got worse and worse over the years. There is now a very large backlog of at least a couple of years, for the processing of collections at the Qld Herbarium, as funding cuts have caused staff to be cut to the minimum.

But these collections and the field data that goes with them are the basis for taxonomic research, ecological studies, determining rare and threatened flora, hotspots of biodiversity and hence areas of high conservation value, and the spread of weed species.

I am constantly finding new records of both natives and weeds across north Queensland, many of which are new for 1:250 000 map areas, and some of which are new for pastoral districts and bioregions. I recently found the first record of Verticordia for Qld – a wonderful genus of spectacular woody shrubs; the featherflowers, predominantly from WA.

The scope for exploration and discovery is still huge in the botanical realm…. and vastly greater in the invertebrate realm.

And yet our collections, and our collectors are grossly undervalued.

A reason why Australian students do not study science, engineering or technology might be because the areas have poor employment prospects. Students are generally steered into areas of study where it is hoped they will earn enough to pay off their HECS debt.

For decades science graduates worked as science teachers or for the CSIRO on 3 year contracts. The CSIRO scientists must have PhDs.

About 30 years ago I joined a ski club where 25% of the membership worked in biochemistry. They all had to have PhDs and they were paid peanuts to work in internationally acclaimed world class research centres on rolling 3 year grants. They struggled to provide as good an education for their children as they themselves had enjoyed.

Previous poster makes a cogent point. A major factor in career path choice is perceptions of future financial rewards (an economist could have told you that, if he wasn't so busy making your milk turn sour and your hens barren), and obscure scientific disciplines generally don't have a good reputation with the young in this regard. I think a program of (a) making the material rewards of a technical education better known to young people, and (b) increasing those rewards where they are inadequate would go a great distance to solving the problem.

I HAVE HAD AN AIR WATER MAKER ON MY HOME NOW FOR 12 MONTHS AND USE IT CONTINUALLY FOR DRINKING,COOKING,THE IRON, BATTERIES ETC. I HAVE LOOKED AT THE WEB SITE ON THESE MACHINES AND THEY MAKE ALL SORTS OF MODELS. HOW IS IT THESE ARE NOT MORE POPULAR HERE IN THE SE CORNER OF QUEENSLAND.
THE PROBLEM WITH WATER TANKS IS THAT IT STILL HAS TO RAIN.

Scientist, engineers etc etc are already a part of the global economy. To a large extent one's country of training is of minor importance.

So in worrying about the supply of scientists one should look on the global scale. The global scene is of massive over supply hence the poor job prospects.

It is probably important that the Government keep funding such bodies as the CSIRO to ensure that clever,creative people who have made a wrong career choice are kept off the streets were there is no knowing what mischief they might get up to.

Good points, but there is more to it. There also needs to be a fusion between scholarship and practice. Recently, I conducted some research into new product development targeting US university marketing professors. 108 out of 108 professors had not developed a new prouduct in the "real world". At the same time, senior practitioners do not involve themselves in "academics" and seem apart from the scholarly process. Herein, an unfortunate dichonomy has evolved.

The sad reality is that the current situation will continue - until the economists themselves are outsourced.

I intend to promote tourism, retail, and real estate as careers for any children that I have in future.