Universo Viviente
Related Articles
Managing the COVID-19 pandemic is leading governments around the world to walk a delicate tightrope between controlling the spread of the virus and the interactions needed to support daily life. Savings and national budgets were under tremendous pressure.
This means that budgets are reduced. And one area that is affected is research. In South Africa, for example, in 2020 the national science budget was reduced by 15% – a direct result, the government confirmed, the effects of the pandemic. In May 2021, he has been increased, but only 1.4% – below inflation.
A shift in public spending is likely to continue in the months and years to come. So where does that leave blue sky science? Will it also be a victim of COVID-19?
Blue sky science is the kind of research that is driven by curiosity. Its real-world applications – or its relevance to society – are not always immediately apparent; it starts because scientists ask a simple question: “why?” For example, wifi was born from a technique which was developed by radio astronomers in the late 1970s to analyze radio waves from black holes, and the discovery of the neutron in 1932 led to new areas of applied science, including energy production and materials diagnostics.
The pandemic has underscored that the world needs agility to survive. This makes the science of the blue sky – which encourages curiosity and the agility of thinking – perhaps more important than ever. But it will require a long-term vision from governments and donors, especially providing decades of funding and freedom to allow scientists to ask the “why?†questions.
I have been fortunate enough to spend almost two decades working in astronomical research, which is about as “sky blue” as you can get. It was the support and vision for South Africa’s commitment to blue sky science, especially astronomy, that brought me and many other researchers back to the country. from a post abroad. In my role at Bureau of Astronomy for Development, I saw with my own eyes how blue sky science acts as a gateway to the fields of science, technology and data science and how a combination of applied science and blue science skills can contribute to pressing socio-economic issues.
Now budgetary pressures are intensifying. But, I would say, unless there is increased support for researchers in exploratory fields and in forays into interdisciplinary projects, the expertise, momentum and benefits that have accumulated over the years. decades will be lost. There may be short-term successes, but they will likely come at the expense of longer-term, potentially more important science.
Ongoing funding for blue sky and applied science is needed as the boundaries between the two become more porous. This is important because it would mean that scientists could increasingly contribute to an immediate societal impact, while following paths out of sheer curiosity.
Scientific agility
In the year since COVID-19 emerged as a global pandemic, my colleagues and I have observed scientific agility in action in South Africa on several fronts.
One example is the role the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory has played in helping run the country. national ventilation project. Ventilators are essential for people with severe COVID-19, but there were a limited number around the world. The National Ventilator Project aimed to manufacture simple, non-invasive ventilators using locally available materials and processes.
The Bureau of Astronomy for Development, the African Planetarium Society and the African Astronomical Society collectively reoriented funding to mitigate the effects of the pandemic. With some organizational agility, funding could be redirected to causes slightly outside the core mission of these organizations.
We have also seen scientific agility at the individual level. Statisticians and simulation scientists in many fields have answered the call work with epidemiologists to model the pandemic.
Likewise, many science projects on the blue sky, such as the IceCube Neutrino Observatory and the Charles W. Brown Planetarium, provided computing power to model the properties of SARS-CoV-2 viral proteins.
In it for the long haul
Building strong research capacity is a long-term endeavor. It is often funded and operated internationally and can last for several decades. An example is the Square Kilometer Array (SKA). A multinational company is ram technological breakthroughs and industrial spinoffs.
Read more: Big Moment for Africa: Why MeerKAT – and Astronomy – Matter
Projects like this have significant momentum. Due to high sunk costs as well as transnational mutual accountability, they are unlikely to be discontinued, even if subject to delays or reduced scope.
They are even likely to survive the immediate impact of budget cuts. These, however, have an immediate effect on a series of short-term research projects. They also affect students and training. Most students and early career researchers are funded by “soft money”, allocated to a particular project over a short period, usually two or three years.
Having less soft money to move around means fewer graduate students to train and fewer early-career researchers to hire. For funded students, it may also mean reduced opportunities to receive training that will help them harness the available research infrastructure. This funding pressure is accentuated and the impacts become visible in the medium term: fewer publications and projects are undertaken on these facilities, and there are fewer opportunities for development and skills development.
After that?
The value of blue sky science compels us to look beyond the obvious. It also forces us to consider deadlines longer than the political.
The issue is not so much to redirect funding, but rather to design a research environment that can accommodate the integration of ideas into traditional research “silosâ€; an environment in which experts have the opportunity to apply their skills outside their areas of expertise. As a collective, society would have much more to gain from blue sky research.
