Kelvin Ogilvie

PHOTO: OWEN EGAN

Our own worst enemy

SYLVAIN-JACQUES DESJARDINS | The debate over what constitutes "pure" versus "applied" research is holding back Canadian scientists from reaching new heights, warned Acadia University president Kelvin Ogilvie.

The former McGill biotechnology professor was the featured speaker at the centenary Donald D. Mossman lecture, held in the Stephen Leacock Building last Thursday evening.

During his talk, entitled "Research in universities: Purely applied," Ogilvie explained that pure research can be described as "academic," while applied research, he said, is often condescendingly referred to as "industrial."

"In some sense, every important research project is applied in that it is aimed at solving some important question," he argued. "In most cases, there is nothing more pure or more basic in academic research as compared to industrial research."

Ogilvie's own internationally acclaimed 1986 discovery -- that ribonucleic acid (RNA) could be chemically synthesized through the creation of a "gene machine" -- has allowed scientists to investigate ways of combating diseases, like AIDS or some forms of leukemia, that have resisted cures. His discovery was made when he was still a professor at McGill and his findings could be considered pure, but since his research was funded by an entrepreneur, it could also be referred to as applied.

The source of debate concerning pure versus applied research is a relatively new one that originated after the two World Wars. Prior to the 1900s, according to Ogilvie, most research was conducted in museums and observatories and the role of universities did not include fundamental research on any scale, except at a select few European institutions. U.S. universities were mostly designed for undergraduate instruction.

But after World War II, he noted, the U.S. federal government made the strategic decision to contract its research to universities, propelling American learning institutions to the forefront of scientific research and forcing other countries to follow suit to remain competitive.

In Canada, over the last 50 years, university researchers have had the closest thing to totally free access to research funding of any nation, Ogilvie said. Almost every applicant has been guaranteed some funding for a portion of their research project with seemingly no strings attached.

But the drawback of this type of lax funding, he stressed, "is that in Canada we have one of the poorest records in the world of transferring our research results into societal benefit and economic advance."

This has been allowed to continue, Ogilvie said, even though much of this century's most valued research has been achieved in industry -- not necessarily in universities. "If the scientific community could bring itself to recognize this point and stop all this nonsense about purity -- and thus the presumed superiority of academic research -- we might make real progress in funding for scientific research."

The solution, he hinted, is for government research grants (recently restored to 1995 levels) to be awarded to the project with the most merit, whether it originates from an academic or industrial milieu.

If this results in the government funding less university research, he said, "then it means that university researchers are going to have to work in teams and tackle broadly based problems of some potential importance or interest to society.

"The smaller the university, the more critical the need for interdisciplinary collaboration and the establishment of some expertise of value to society."

Universities, he said, make their most valuable contribution in the training of people for participation in the research enterprise. And while most universities have succeeded in conducting research that has a direct utility to society, the current concern is that many have not adequately specialized their students, faculty and facilities towards a specific field of research.

"Research has, however, gravitated increasingly toward organized research units or centres of excellence," Ogilvie said. "These research centres can achieve what departmental structures actively prevent or what individual researchers cannot on their own accomplish, namely quick responses to interdisciplinary directions and (vital) research areas."

Ogilvie said he is not against the government determining what should be critical areas of university research because "those who are capable of doing good science can be good scientists regardless of who determines the research area, target, or problem to be solved."

He strongly recommended that academics try "novel approaches" to their projects and get off the beaten path. At present, he said, "there are only a few truly original lines of research in any science discipline across all of the universities in Canada. Which means there are only a few truly original research leaders and most of the rest are followers -- that is, applied researchers."