At the beginning of last October, the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, François-Philippe Champagne, announced the creation of an Advisory Committee on the Federal Research Support System. The Minister then had the excellent idea of entrusting the presidency to the philosopher of science Frédéric Bouchard, who is also dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at the Université de Montréal. The symbol is not insignificant, because until then, we tended to think that only a “real” scientist from the so-called “hard” sciences could have the perspective necessary to produce serious reflection on policies. of scientific research.
The Committee’s mandate is to provide advice on the structure, governance and management of the federal system, as the Minister says he wants to ensure that “support for research remains at the height of what the Canadian science community produces and research”.
As Frédéric Bouchard knows very well, the history, philosophy and sociology of science have amply shown that the great scientific discoveries that end up having a significant economic, social and cultural impact are unpredictable. Between the invention of the radio resulting from the theoretical work of physicist James Clerk Maxwell in the 1860s and the very recent development by biologists of molecular “scissors” called CRISPR-Cas9, which results from fundamental research aimed at understanding the functioning of bacteria, there are innumerable examples of unforeseen applications.
In short, wanting to “direct” or “mobilize” basic research is a contradiction in terms. We should remember, however, that all the experts also agree on the fact that a good government must also support the other pillars of a coherent research system: government research, industrial research, but also targeted or oriented research programs that target topics deemed useful or important, but not spontaneously addressed by researchers.
If these facts must be recalled here, it is because for several years we have observed a dangerous tendency to confuse these different ways of producing knowledge. However, the characteristic of good philosophy is to produce a rational discourse based on clear and well-defined concepts, the only way to avoid manipulation and confusion.
Consider a recent example of confusion regarding basic research. In a language with Orwellian overtones, there is insistence in certain quarters on “mobilizing” basic research “in the service of sustainable development”! But if we mobilize research in the service of any task whatsoever, it becomes targeted research… Let us remember that the official definition for national statistics produced by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) stipulates that research fundamental is “made to understand the phenomena without even wondering if it will be useful for something”.
It is obviously completely legitimate to offer programs pursuing certain objectives, such as the 17 “sustainable development goals” of the United Nations (UN) which have become the “SDG” mantra, applied since then wrongly and through — I have even heard the oxymoron: “sustainable innovation”! But require all scholarship applicants and all university researchers who submit free, and therefore untargeted, research projects to justify (“briefly”, they say!) why they do not respond to at least one of the 17 SDGs or, even worse, requiring the researcher to describe the actions he intends to take “to promote EDI in the training of the next generation”, as if he were already guilty of not being “equitable” with his students, clearly constitutes a dubious mix of genres.
Above all, this mixture is not only counterproductive, but also gives the curious impression that the programs of research organizations have surreptitiously put themselves at the service of political (and even ideological) objectives, which has all the appearances of an illegitimate diversion of their purposes.
The granting agencies, both Quebec and federal, however, already have at their disposal all the necessary instruments to meet specific needs without it being necessary to “mobilize” in a completely contradictory way the only program supposed to support basic research (and therefore free) in the service of generous — but most often ill-defined — objectives which come under a completely different level of intervention.
As for the other mantra that has been circulating for some years in the upper echelons of research funds and universities — namely the famous acronym “EDI” — a rational policy in this respect must also be translated into specific programs and not the forced recruitment of researchers who, until proven otherwise, generally welcome with open arms the students who come to them to receive quality training.
We bet that the rational thought of a philosopher of science will be able to provide the government with a report which will remind it of the importance of a fair balance between the different types of scientific research, which will place everyone’s responsibilities at the right level of action and which will let researchers who focus on basic research do it without hindrances or moralizing pressures. Because, against all odds, it is probably from this side that the surprises will come, and not from the side of those who believe they are saving humanity by imposing on all researchers their narrow vision of fair and good scientific research. .