The lessons we've learned over time

Q: What have been the biggest changes in science since you received your doctorate nearly 65 years ago?

In my time, the ratio of good ideas to productivity was about one to one. Now I think in many ways technology has taken over, and today it may be 10 times more important than ideas. You still can't be stupid to succeed in science. But if you are just clever, but very good at using the technology, you can do extremely well indeed.

So it is important to have the best technology?

Important isn't a strong enough word. It's vital. But there are other vital things as well. We apparently have to keep learning the value of collegiality. Today, everyone seems to be very much more self-interested than when I began. But maybe the biggest problem is that today universities tend to be bastions of democracy, and science is not democratic.

With that elitism in mind, let me ask you a bit about the lessons that can be learned from the Ontario Research and Development Challenge Fund for which you were the biomedical point person.

To begin with, the government of the day wished to make an impact but it didn't really know how to do so. Nonetheless, the major infusion of money which went into Ontario research from the Challenge Fund - $50 million a year over 10 years - was truly transformative. For the first time, scientists had serious money and that money allowed people to dream and do things that were both big and different. Much good was done without too much "direction."

What sorts of good?

I think the $70 to $80 million we were able to invest into genomics was exemplary. So that when Genome Canada came along with its vision of expanded genomics research across the country, no other province was in a position to take advantage of this as quickly as Ontario.

What didn't work well?

To be frank, we were not really effective at PR in respect to the Challenge Fund. It was important to make everyone aware of the importance of what we were doing, including the scientific community, the government and the public.

Could the same be said of OIT?

Yes, absolutely. But it also should be acknowledged that although we were pretty practical-minded in terms of to whom we awarded grants and did insist there be evidence of potential connections to industry, in the end the Challenge Fund did not produce any, or at least many, companies.

Why?

There was not a financing substrate, for one - a real lack of venture capital. And a second feature was that the university offices that promoted translation to industry were by and large ineffective.

And what does all of this mean for the future?

I said to begin with that there was a lack of self-awareness on the part of government as to what it wanted from the Challenge Fund. We can't have that in the future. Government, together with the scientific community, must ask themselves: What have we learned from the translation failures and how can we do things not only better but, hopefully, best? However, this can't just mean more translation regulations, for the other great truth I have learned in my scientific life is that seminal discoveries are always made by creative individuals. For science to advance, administrators should get out of the way and allow creative people to dream their dreams.