The case for long-term thinking

The chaos and claustrophobia of the Covid crisis fade in the memory, but the accolades for those who found a way out continue to flow.

Last week, it was the big one: a Nobel prize awarded to Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman for the science behind the mRNA vaccine that has now been administered in 13 billion doses worldwide.

In the words of the Nobel prize committee, the work carried out at the University of Pennsylvania had saved millions of lives and “allowed societies to open and return to normal conditions”.

Impact doesn’t get much greater than that.

The newly garlanded laureates have been described as publicity-shy (indeed, Dr Karikó has said as much herself). While this is, no doubt, a natural state for many scientists, it has been suggested that this held them back early in their careers.

Speaking to Times Higher Education in 2021, Bart Anderson, who worked with Dr Karikó during his doctoral studies at Penn, said that a combination of the novelty of mRNA research and a relative lack of networks and communication skills had thrown roadblocks in her path.

“Dr Karikó provided superb science,” he said. “But she is not the skilled salesman needed to promote the science.”

Whether or not this analysis is accurate, it raises an interesting question about the extent to which attitudes towards particular scientific directions are driven by “salesmanship”.

That question is also relevant to universities and their relationship with governments, funders and, ultimately, the public.

This was a topic raised at the THE World Academic Summit, held at the University of Sydney, where a panel of academic and institutional leaders debated the role of universities in shaping public opinion.

When asked whether universities should take an active role, several of the panel were equivocal, arguing that some level of neutrality was necessary, particularly in highly politicised issues.

But Oliver Günther, president of the University of Potsdam, disagreed.

“I think we should be more self-confident about this. Shaping public opinion does not mean that whatever Professor Günther says is what the public should adopt; shaping in our case means primarily that we do research that forms the basis for future public policy decisions,” he said.

“We saw that in Covid. The Covid crisis would have been much worse without our research. The BioNTech vaccine came out of a university research project, while epidemiologists, social scientists and economists advised governments how to handle the crisis. So we did shape public opinion.”

Tony Chan, president of King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, agreed. “BioNTech’s vaccine was not a miracle. There were long decades of basic research that led to it,” he said.

“That is a public opinion that universities should shape: that societies that invest in basic research reap the results.”

This is a persuasive argument, at a time when so much of the discussion is about the role universities play in inflammatory culture war debates – most of which are ultimately lose-lose.

It is also an argument that leans on and supports a fundamental truth about universities: that they are long-term institutions, the value of which is only realised on that basis.

What this means is that it is essential that they are both governed and funded on that basis, and not according to the ever-changing priorities of the government of the day.

But holding that line is not always easy, as Attila Brungs, vice-chancellor of UNSW Sydney, pointed out at the THE summit: “We are public institutions. We exist solely for the public good. But… every conversation you have with government shifts, in terms of how we deliver against that mission and in terms of their priorities.”

One of the things that creates tension with government, he added, “is that universities are one of the few institutions left that can take really long-term perspectives”.

“Some of the research in my institution today will not help the lives of citizens for 20 years. But unless we do it, support it, it will never help them,” he said.

“So we have to both understand that government has its agenda, and we have to help with that, but we also have to balance that with the long term – and that can be difficult.”

It is a balancing act that has undoubtedly got harder over time. It is also a reason that prizes such as the Nobels are so important: helping to remind a harried, short-termist and sometimes sceptical world that the slow work of basic research matters and serves the public good.

When Covid hit, we were grateful for the work quietly delivered over decades in the lab.

john.gill@timeshighereducation.com