Marsden Fund Changes Threaten Foundations Of Our Research Sector

13 December 2024

The New Zealand Association of Scientists joins the Australian Council of Learned Academies and over eighty Rutherford Discovery Fellows in wholeheartedly condemning shock changes announced last week to the Terms of Reference for the Marsden Fund, Aotearoa New Zealand’s only major fund dedicated to ‘blue-sky’ or fundamental research which advances knowledge and intellectual pursuits.

Having just celebrated its 30th anniversary this year, the Marsden Fund was created to support investigator-led research, which is research driven by ideas from researchers rather than to meet external targets or missions. The Royal Society Te Apārangi, which administers the fund, says “it has driven world-class research in New Zealand by supporting and incentivising excellent researchers to work on their best and boldest ideas, leading to new knowledge, skills and global connections”.

Last week changes were announced to the Fund’s Terms of Reference which will:

• exclude the social sciences and humanities from eligibility
• elevate impact to a primary objective for the Fund rather than a secondary consideration after quality of research and advancement of knowledge
• eliminate social and cultural impact as considerations
• require 50% of funded projects to demonstrate economic impact.

Co-President Lucy Stewart explains, “These changes fatally undermine the only competitive, peer-reviewed research fund in Aotearoa New Zealand dedicated to all areas of fundamental research. From global evidence we know that it is vital to fund researchers to explore their best ideas, regardless of the immediate impact. This is the foundation which supports the discovery and development of applied research ideas and projects. By removing social sciences and humanities from the Fund, making direct impact a primary objective, and requiring half of projects to have economic impact, these changes turn the Marsden Fund into a poorer version of existing science-specific research funds focused on economic impact. We also know that these changes will disproportionately affect Māori researchers, who operate within a system that already has too many barriers to their participation.”

Co-President Troy Baisden explains NZAS’s position further, “The Marsden Fund has supported researchers for thirty years to build teams and knowledge that provide the foundations for much larger bodies of applied research and teaching that supports our society, environment, and economy. It has received no significant funding increases for nearly a decade. What the Marsden Fund needed was more investment, and what it has received instead is direct political meddling in the research process. Despite claims from the Minister and officials that the Fund will still support fundamental research, these changes say the exact opposite. Their use of the phrase ‘core science’ to describe the focus of these changes is misleading and inaccurate. The eliminated research areas - social sciences and the humanities - have no other major investigator-led funding pool. Research in these areas is now under dire threat.”

Lucy Stewart adds, “Furthermore, we are deeply disappointed by changes on the Marsden Fund website which describe the Fund as supporting “excellence in physics, chemistry, maths, engineering and biomedical sciences”. Aside from the social sciences and humanities, this excludes half of the existing topics still supported by the Fund such as Earth Sciences and Astronomy, Ecology, Evolution and Behaviour, and Cellular, Molecular, and Physiological Biology. This description has more to do with secondary school subjects than it does with the true breadth of research in Aotearoa New Zealand. It is a warning sign about the immaturity of this government’s thinking about science and the research sector.”

Baisden concludes, “The research community has been awaiting reforms associated with report delivered months ago Government by the groups chaired by Sir Peter Gluckman. We are deeply concerned the Minister has acted hastily to break the part of the research system that was considered to be the best-functioning. We go into the holiday break asking if there is even less of a plan for the research sector than the Cook Strait ferries?”

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