It is to be reminded that there are the soft sciences as well as the hard sciences, mainly business and technology.

The soft sciences, however, are mainly dialectical, to do with the problems we are mainly facing today, uppermost today being problems of unfair distribution of wealth as in black Africa, and in India still with its caste system, and China doing far better but still a long way to go to better its peasantry. An increasing one, of course, is global warming, and increasing populations, particularly in the Third World.

But in a university, top of the range in the soft sciences, is politics, which includes both social sciences and the political sciences.

So we could well ask which of the sciences should we be concentrating on today?

This might also show how generous and understanding we are, or how much we should be?

Leave out global politics if you want, because if our leaders cannot get together and work it out, how can they expect us to?

The trouble is that today's scientists set such store by consensus. Sir Robert May (an Australian, the Lord May of Oxford was president of the Royal Society in 2000-5) was endorsed in his "The Science of Climate Change" (18 May 2001, "Science" v.292 p.1261) by 17 learned academies around the world - including Australia's Academy of Sciences. His first paragraph was a dithyramb for an ever-warming - and predominantly people driven - climate: "... We recognise the IPCC as the world's most reliable source of information on climate change and its causes; and we endorse its method of achieving this consensus. ..." I promise I am not making this up: that one paragraph invokes "consensus" THREE times. Do these seemingly-sycophantic academies, and their scientist-constituents, REALLY believe that the advancement of scientific understanding is a matter of voting? Today's pressing scientific question is: how might we mitigate the now-dominant herd instinct among scientist - and restore a proud past of INDEPENDENT scientific thought?

fosbob you need to relearn the basic of the scientific method. The very foundation on science is concessus, and its most power tool is peer review. Having other people in the community be able to reproduce their work is great. However when the work is predictive in nature rather then observational then a general concessus is the only valid method. By what other method would you have us do it?

AS for the topic well the most of the current fed government benefited from a free education and look what their doing to the education system. So why are you surprised that they killing publicly funded science as well.

Science is first about OBSERVATION, not concensus.

How long did CONSENSUS rule that the world was flat? How many people were put to death for disagreeing?

How long will global warming and sea level risings be concensus and for how long will observations of the reality imperil scientists who wish to remain employable?

Case in point: Sea Height Anomaly Maps of the Australian-East-Coast(EAC).

* Areas of SHA maximum/minimum intensity are observed to associate with or emanate from Macleay River, Newcastle, Sydney, Wollongong, Bega/Eden and Cape Howe.

* The implication is that pollution from these ports is observed dynamically redistributing itself across the Tasman Sea in a way that allows more surface colloidal polluted zones to heat up and raise the sea surface level at the expense of cleaner zones caused by adjacent clean upwellings.

* Pollution is High entropy or disorder and the Summer heat and evaporation over the NSW plains is low entropy. The second law of thermodynamics dictates that NSW low entropy MOVES to high entropy polluted Tasman sea areas. As it does it takes moisture with it, perpetuating drought.

*At the same time NSW Labour is hoping to secure a mandate to build a Botany Bay desal plant.

*It can't build the plant till dam levels drop below 30%.

*Between Nov 1st and Dec 1st, SHA pattern intensity significantly increased off the NSW coast. This indicates a high probability that a deliberate release of polluted wastewaters took place.
If true, it indicates NSW Labour KNOWS wastwater pollution is causing drought and may have deliberately been attempting to force the 30% desal-plant, trigger-level in local dams. The latest map shows a decrease in SHA intensity (wastewater pollution) and we have had rains. This is possibly due to recent polls suggesting a NSW labour win in March07 and that an emphasis on the desal mandate is no longer needed.

*That desal-plant is signifcant infrastructure needed for massive Euro-style developments, especially elite real-estate, port facilities and GAMBLING Casinos, proposed on and around Botany Bay.

This adds new meaning to "GAMBLING WITH Science Policy"

SHA maps:
Nov 1st:http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/phod/trinanes/tmp/sha1167271319.gif
Dec 1st:http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/phod/trinanes/tmp/sha1167269996.gif
Latest:http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/phod/trinanes/tmp/sha1167269792.gif

"The mystery is how and why we ever came to adopt it."

Ha ha ha, about time OLO got more comedy. We adopted 'industry partnership' funding cos its neoliberal dogma, just like privatising common wealth, cutting wages and labour and enviro standards, and fostering cheap credit & massive indebtedness etc etc. These Hayek-ian policies first emerged back in the 70's, were promoted by a few far-sighted billionaires, and are the only songsheet our political establishment sings from. Now no commercial media will even comprehend any other paradigm let alone honestly report it (e.g. see recent hysteria over reporting of Cuba's educational and medical acheivements).

I'm incredulous that Mr Cribb doesn't know this, more likely he's pulling his punches for fear of ruffling the wrong feathers. Scientists have likewise restrained themselves into the pissweak corner, too bad their bargain with the economic rationalist devil is not going their way but collaborators don't get to make the rules.

I believe a lot of the present dilemma over Private versus Public funding has to do with govts. debt shifting.
How can any sane person go along with the budget surplus tripe. When govt. debt is transplanted into private debt, it's still debt against O/S balances. This then requires regressive legislation to control private investment.
Until the populous has awake'd to this con. govts will still get elected on the spurious claim of good budget management.
Ditto the mess in health funding, cost shifting there has reached the absurd.
Most,to my regret, CSIRO has been emasculated. It perhaps could now be sold off to private enterprise,let it carry the total responsibility for its demise.
Make the budget surlus look even better too.
fluff