The ERC: a contribution to society and the knowledge-based economy Keynote Speech ERC Launch Conference Berlin, 27 and 28 February 2007 Prof Andrea Bonaccorsi, University of Pisa, Italy a.bonaccorsi@gmail.com - Check against delivery! - The launch of the European Research Council is a major step in the modern history of European science. It is the realization of a dream that the scientific community (and also the social science community) has nurtured since the end of 1960s. It has been realized by national governments and European institutions in a relatively short time frame, creating large expectations and enthusiasm. It is a great honour to me to be invited to give a contribution to the ERC Launch Conference. I warmly thank the German Presidency of the Council of the European Union and the German Research Foundation for this invitation, as well as the German Research Ministry, the European Commission and the ERC Scientific Council. I will try to develop the argument that institutional change is needed in the European scientific landscape, in order to meet the challenges of the new scientific fields developed in the last part of XX century and dominating the XXI century. After this argument I will address the topics of the roundtable discussion, why the ERC is of interest not only to the scientific community but also to industry and society. In the last two decades it has been common to maintain that European science, after the impressive successes of the After War period, was leading the world or at least competed on equal grounds. In a very interesting forecasting exercise, system theorist Cesare Marchetti of IIASA published in 1989 an article in Technology Review where he proposed a projection of the shares of Nobel prizes between Europe and USA in the following decade, based on logistics equations. His conclusion, based on historical track record, was clear: Europe would dominate the competition, with around 20 Nobel Prizes against 13 for USA. The reality, as we know, has been largely different. And clearly the distribution of Nobel prizes is the recognition of the status of science one or more decades earlier. What happened that led European science to deviate so largely from its long term trajectory?
It is not only Nobel prizes that make the difference. In the top quantile of publication quality (i.e. highly cited scientists, those 0,1% of scientists that receive most citations according to ISI) US science dominates in all 21 areas in the period 1981-1999. The relatively poor performance of European science in the last 20-30 years, particularly in the top quantile of quality and leadership, must be explained. I will offer a sharp interpretation: governments and institutions of science failed to adapt to the characteristics of new sciences that have emerged or consolidated in the last part of XX century. These sciences deal with complex phenomena- life, information, materials, and with the combinations between them- for example neurosciences and cognitive sciences work at the interface between life and information, bio-robotics work at the interface of life, information, and materials, and so on. Their roots may be ancient, but their scientific status was created after Second World War and they exploded after the 1970s. There are three features of these sciences that call for our attention. I will illustrate each of them with an example and then will articulate their deep implications. I will not deal explicitly with human and social sciences in my examples, although highly interesting comments could be done here. First, new sciences grow much faster than the average. Overall, scientific production grows 1-2% per year. New sciences grow between 5% and 10-15% per year, often for many years in line. As an example, nanoscience has witnessed an exponential growth over the 1990s, then a linear growth with high slope. What are the consequences of this acceleration? Basically, government and scientific institutions are faced with totally new challenges: - priorities must be decided rapidly (witness the short time window between the invention of Atomic Force Microscope and the launch of the National Nanotechnology Initiative in the US); - scientists must be given enough resources to grow rapidly, not waiting years and years; - young scientists face extremely high opportunity costs: when scientific fields grow rapidly either you are in the right places worldwide, or you can create your own right place, or you are out; - mobility becomes the rule of the game. It is important to emphasize the link between acceleration of science and the need for scientific institutions to foster mobility. Scientists cannot plan a steady career in the same institution or the same country, or accept slow developments. We have found that in computer science, top
1000 scientists of the world have changed their affiliation 4.5 times in their career. They are a highly mobile scientific community. But a small number of leading universities in the field account account for almost 20% of changes of affiliation of top scientists worldwide. If you are attractive good scientists in fast moving field will make at least one stop in their career with you, bringing knowledge, ideas, connections, excitement. If you are not at the frontier, staying with you is too costly for those that want to play the big world game. By the way, these universities are MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, and Carnegie Mellon. Second, new sciences are subject to a proliferation pattern. New research programmes, new theories and sub-theories are born at an impressive rate and point to different directions in the search space. This can be explained using an interesting map proposed by physicist John Barrow, after a suggestion of mathematician David Ruelle, in which sciences are categorized according to the uncertainty about the explanation (i.e. mathematical equations governing phenomena) and the complexity of phenomena. Sciences born after the Scientific Revolution in the modern era either deal with phenomena whose governing equations are less known, but in simple systems (e.g. quantum physics), or deal with very large and complex systems, but whose governing laws are well understood (e.g. fluid dynamics in turbulence or meteorology). New leading sciences are located above the frontier of established sciences: their equations are subject to considerable uncertainty, and still they study very complex systems. In hard sciences, living systems are a clear example, as are computers or materials (mentioned in the text by Barrow). All human and social sciences are located here. Now, how can science deal with these new challenges? The answer of new sciences has been one of applying methodological reductionism to systems of increasingly large complexity. Reductionism in principle should lead to theoretical unification and the progressive elimination of alternative theories. Scientific progress should reduce uncertainty and reduce diversity of theories. Interestingly, this does not happen when reductionism is applied to complex systems. Here a unifying explanation (a causal law) generates a large number of specialized subtheories that link the different layers of organization of complex phenomena. The AIDS is an impressive case: after the discovery of the causal explanation (the virus HIV) there has been a proliferation of specialized sub-theories that accepted it but then articulated differently the specific biochemical mechanisms, the entry points in the infected cell, the reproduction dynamics and so on. This proliferation pattern is common across these new sciences, from molecular oncology to Alzheimer, from bio-nano to nanomaterials. What are the implications? Again these are dramatic both at the macro and microlevel: - governments should not make early commitments into specific directions of research, but rather habilitate diversity;
- proliferation creates strong epistemic uncertainty, which implies a premium given to top quality universities, as the result of a signaling effect (if it is impossible to evaluate ex ante the merit of a project, the fact that it has been generated in a top university gives sufficient information); - funding mechanisms must be able to support a variety of potentially competitive programmes, so centralization is challenged; - there is a strong need to mobilize research projects in parallel- the most efficient way is a well developed post doc system with the possibility for junior scientists to apply competitively as principal investigators; - there is a large cognitive distance between senior scientists and junior scientists: this means that models of doctoral supervision based on exclusive relations must be substituted for by doctoral education based on competitive allocation of proposals. Third, new sciences are based on new forms of complementarity. I will illustrate this point with respect to a recent study on knowledge flows from academic research to firms. In the period between 1981 and 1999, a crucial period for our discussion, the top 200 firms that are active in publications made more use of academic production (approximately 1 million citations) than of industrial publications (600.000). In advanced industries (Software and business services, Communications services, Computers) between 40% and 50% of citations made by companies point to publications in Physics, particularly matter physics (Adams and Clemmons, 2006). Thus companies source their knowledge at a great distance. New sciences are based on complementary contributions from researchers located in different institutional contexts- academia, industry, hospitals, private labs. We need different institutions collaborate systematically in order to advance science. The most important example is the strong increase in collaboration between academia and industry we see today. This is not dictated by short term needs- technical problem solving for firms, additional funding for universities. More deeply, new sciences make it possible new combinations between scientific explanation (that is, knowing the properties of nature) and engineering (or manipulating nature for an instrumental purpose). With the advent of life and materials sciences, the fundamental properties of matter cannot be discovered unless a specific configuration is designed and manipulated. The realization of artefacts then becomes an extraordinary basin of attraction for new scientific discoveries. At the same time industry cannot develop artefacts unless it learns which functions are thinkable and feasible. Science needs engineering, engineering needs science. The extent of this complementarity has no precedents in the history of technology and science. This is why I believe that not only the scientific community but also the European industry has an interest in seeing the European Research Council establish and grow.
First, large companies know they have to master new leading sciences. A recent PRIME project on nanotechnology shows that 50% of top R&D spending companies (defined according to the IPTS Industrial R&D Scoreboard) are already actively involved into nanoscience and technology, either publishing and patenting. In this field there is also an impressive amount of university-industry collaboration. Science-driven engineering is a reality here. Furthermore, firms experience how important is to hire talented and creative people with a strong scientific and technical education. Supporting young people in research in their most creative years means creating the industrial leaders for tomorrow. Second, at the same time all firms have to change their model of management of R&D. After the decline of large corporate labs, in fact, R&D departments located close to business units now experience how difficult is to manage the huge complexity created by acceleration of technology, systems integration, and the new relations between science and technology. The imperative is now accessing external knowledge, developing sophisticated models of division of labour between firms, universities and public research organisations. In these new models companies increasingly relocate their R&D, often outside Europe. Third, along these lines, the issue of appropriability of the R&D investment, although relevant, is no longer the dominant problem. In fast moving fields it is more important to access timely the relevant knowledge than preventing competitors to do the same. For these reasons, companies know they have to be close to frontier developments, accepting they cannot control the overall evolution of technology but rather building new ways for accessing knowledge. It is important that industry develops long term partnerships with the ERC. This will give European science strong flexibility in arranging for new forms of complementarity. Summing up, we can locate scientific fields in a space. I will locate them based on quite general characteristics, admitting there may be exceptions and clarifications to be made. On the vertical axis we represent the rate of change or speed. On the horizontal axis we identify two regions, depending on whether a proliferation pattern is at place. Sciences stabilised before the end of XX century grow slowly or moderately, follow a non proliferation pattern (perhaps with the exception of mathematics). They can be characterized by low complementarity (e.g. mathematics or traditional chemistry) or high complementarity with physical infrastructure (e.g. particle physics, astrophysics). On the contrary, new sciences are located in the first quadrant: they grow rapidly, are subject to proliferation patterns, and require strong complementarity. The big issue is that they share all these challenging characteristics together. What is the institutional response to the challenges of this new scientific dynamics? European Humboldtian universities are perfect institutional tools for fields where science grow rapidly and also can manage proliferation, but are rather poor in arranging all the institutional
complementarities needed for new sciences. The big issue is when you have at the same time fast growth, proliferation, and new forms of complementarity. Europe has been great in creating dedicated institutions to arrange for complementarities dictated by physical infrastructure, in high energy physics, astrophysics, ocean research and the like. But Europe has proved very rigid in providing new emerging fields with the required institutional complementarities. Think how difficult has been for Europe to arrange structural and lasting relations between molecular biology labs, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, startups, private labs, not to say venture capitalists, in life sciences. Think how limited is, still today, the mobility between academia and industry in fast moving computer science or advanced engineering fields. It is in this context that the European Research Council has been proposed and approved. With its emphasis on frontier research, investigator-driven projects, evaluation on merit, grant portability, the ERC addresses some of the major weaknesses of the institutional texture of European science. The expected outcomes are much more mobility and fluidity, the possibility for talented young scientists to set up laboratories and demonstrate the validity of ambitious ideas, an implicit competition between universities to attract ERC grant winners, strong reputational effects. We welcome the ERC as a much-needed institutional innovation and congratulate the European Commission and the Member Countries for having accelerated its introduction. At the same time, as a social scientist, I cannot ignore that the ERC is only the starting point. The relative under performance of European science is the result of a deterioration in the last 20-30 years. Taking the lead will require a long period. In this period European governments and the Commission must address the issue of fragmentation and lack of coordination between government strategies and funding agencies at national level. ERANet and Technological Platforms go in the right direction but the European Research Area is still far from being a reality. Talking about funding agencies two models are possible: (a) top down substitution for national funding (e.g. a federal model); (b) bottom up policy coordination. The existence of ERC does not solve this dilemma and cannot offer governments the justification to relax on these issues. Rather, the ERC must be the occasion for a deeper strategic reflection. Let me conclude. At a recent conference, Nobel Prize Rita Levi Montalcini, aged 98, kept the audience emotionally engaged by recalling her long history with young brilliant researchers in the United States and Italy. And concluding with inspired words, she said she wants to be among us the day when young scientists all over Europe will trust a system in which the merit, only the merit, will rule scientific careers and funding. I hope we can say that, with the European Research Council, this day has come.