Kyle Higham

Indeed - I love this talk, but "we" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here!

Fewer Marsden Fund grants after government cuts A major research fund has been forced to slash its grant allocation by more than $20 million next year.

More cuts to the Marsden Fund. This time $20 million from the annual budget cut starting next year. This is on top of previous cuts by this government. They are trying to skip the 'priming the pump' step of public research as a driver of the economy. How well that is going to work?
#NZPOL

A meme from Breaking Bad with Jesse saying "New Zealand. That's where they made Lord of the Rings".

Want to come to New Zealand this summer? The call for abstracts for the Capital City Complex Systems Symposium 2026 is now open: forms.gle/g22s2dR85oFq... 🧪

I see the ghouls are fretting about higher taxes making rich people leave the country - the dreaded 'capital flight' 😱.
I mean where do you even start with this crap? Well, not by arguing about estimates of how many millionaries we'll lose. Let's rehearse some lines... [1/n]

The 3M ones are available now 🙂

NZ First introduces bill seeking referendum on fluoride in drinking water The bill aims to mandate local authorities to hold a binding referendum on water fluoridation.

Oh do F off

NZ First introduces bill seeking referendum on fluoride in drinking water
www.stuff.co.nz/politics/360...

The IP component of the incoming reforms has gone largely without comment; however, the idea that giving a larger share of IP to scientists will incentivise commercialisation really shows how little this government understands the motivations of those who produce public goods.

Something to keep in mind for 2025

Written by James Miller of A Small Fiction

The competition dynamics between strains is super interesting! Out of interest, why is the wastewater data so noisy? I would have expected more homogeniety, but I suppose this depends on the point of the treatment process at which the measurement is taken?

I know economists love concise paper titles, but this is getting a little ridiculous...

Open letter on importance of research in the social sciences and humanities Open letter on importance of research in the social sciences and humanities   Tēnā koe Prime Minister, The role of the Royal Society Te Apārangi, as set out in the Royal Society of New Zealand Act,...

www.royalsociety.org.nz/news/open-le...

If you think of stock markets as prediction markets, then these papers might be of interest:
doi.org/10.1093/qje/...
doi.org/10.3386/w33056

Observing and calculating economic benefit is basically impossible even in the most clear cut of cases. Treating research funding as an investment in the financial sense is setting our science system up for failure and will likely be used as justification for further cuts.
bsky.app/profile/kyle...

Finally, staying in my lane, others have much more informed understandings of impact measurement in the social sciences and humanities, and I defer to those researchers. (Though I note that their social impact is often MORE measurable and timely than in the hard sciences). \thread

(Side note: I am particularly concerned for environmental research of all kinds. What are the contributions to economic growth of biodiversity or better water quality? If the funder isn't convinced by your economic argument, the pool of funding just got a lot smaller.)

In sum, and ironically, if we want to quantify the economic benefits of research, we need to do a hell of a lot more social science in that direction. Measuring the societal outcomes of research is REALLY COMPLEX, even in the most simplistic version of research progression in the hard sciences.

Many of these questions are impossible to answer definitively and these are also a small subset of important questions that need answering before even attempting to measure an ROI in good faith.

How do we account for intangible effects, such as when a researcher’s work inspires someone to pursue a STEM career? What is the value of maintaining an active and engaged research workforce?

After all of this, we then have to ask: how long do we wait before assessing these impacts? Is a 10-20 year wait for social impact politically acceptable?

5) Say the product improves the well-being of those that can access it - how do we measure the change in well-being? If it is a medical product, it may extend lives - do we put an economic value on this outcome? What if only the wealthy can access it?

4) (cont'd) Who funded the commercialisation process, and does it matter? How should we split the total impact between the initial grant and later investments? What implications does this have for ROI calculations?

4) The private sector may also integrate the research into their products, or even license the patent - knowledge is 'non-rival'. How do we measure this impact? Are profits of foreign firms included in economic benefit, or only those of domestic firms?

3) When follow-on work by others achieves significant success, should the initial grant be credited? Does it matter if this subsequent research occurs overseas in places with more commercialisation capacity? (i.e., domestic growth and domestic well-being are not always aligned!)

2) What happened to the junior researchers that did much of the work? How can we measure the grant’s impact on their future contributions to society? Did the
success of this grant lead to more funding (public or otherwise) success later?

Now, lets look at the nuance at each step, with numbers relating to the list above:
1) How did the project compare to similar ideas
that were not funded? How do we know that this was the best use of funds? Would the researchers have pursued this work without the grant or found funding elsewhere?

1) Project funded
2) Researchers are hired and the work results in a new discovery
3) Papers are published in top journals and become well-cited
4) A patent is granted on the discovery and funding for commercialisation is secured
5) Commercialisation is successful and the product sells well.

It is easy to see how attempts to measure of the impact of research on society can quickly spiral out of control. I will use a simple, linear, example of a funded project working as the current government thinks it should, to illustrate the complexity of impact/ROI measurement:

Traditionally, metrics such as journal articles, citations, patents, and commercialisation outcomes have been used to proxy the success of research. However, none of these metrics directly measure its impact on people. What if commercialised research sells poorly or quickly becomes obsolete?

Inevitably, this lack of direct observability of outcomes (which does NOT imply lack of their existence) leads to a significant undervaluing, and thus underfunding, of research with long-term and broad-based impacts. (Social science and humanities generally fall into this category.)

Of course, this assumes that a causal link can be drawn between the funding and the outcome, which we can sometimes do for commercialisation. However, The vast majority of the benefits of a vibrant research sector simply cannot be linked to a single funding event, or even a 'portfolio' of grants.