Science as process, business as end product

The desire to be more independent of FRST funding, to be a successful business, and to satisfy Government policy for a knowledge economy, led to a clash between the science and business cultures within AgResearch. In the past, the end product of science practice was further understanding and knowledge of biological and agricultural systems. The knowledge gained was seen to be part of a much larger whole. This knowledge was to be used – these workers are applied scientists – but it was to be used by other people, for the country, for science or for the protection of the environment. The aim was ‘out there’. This may still have been the aim of the company but it was to be fulfilled through the company, by the company making a profit from exploiting the knowledge of those who work in it. The science institution had become a business. While scientists emphasised the conduct of science,

AgResearch management emphasised the development of finite products from which money could be made for the company. Andrew summarised this change:

… CRIs were formed to service the sectors they are related to – dairy, meat, seeds, fertiliser, dah-de-dah. And between the chairman of the Board, Neil Richardson, and Keith Steele [CEO] … they took a very liberal interpretation of that and even started to get to the culture of telling us that we weren’t there just to service the industries, we were there for the interests of AgResearch as an entity itself. So it was important for us to capture intellectual property and to exploit that in the best interests of AgResearch - not necessarily the sector groups we were set up to support. So if the biggest return for us with certain IP was to go to America or Denmark, wherever, to get a return on that then we should do that rather than New Zealand. And I felt uncomfortable about that … I felt the obsession with maximising profit and chasing after commercial revenue at the expense of public good science revenue was harmful on science (Andrew, ex-employee).

Nearly every scientific worker I spoke to defined science as a process: a process of discovery; a process of gaining knowledge always incomplete; a process in which the scientist was only part. A scientist was building on the knowledge of those who had gone before, hoping that the knowledge s/he produced was reliable and trustworthy so that it would be a firm foundation for whatever came after it. A scientist was driven by a curiosity to find out, “What was going on here?” A scientist was a person who found that a solution to one problem just meant more questions and other

problems! At the same time it must be remembered there is an endpoint of sorts. Part of the process of science is usually publication and this is a way of documenting the work done in the public arena. It is a record of a worker’s contribution.

This process view of science contrasted with business goals. In business, the end product is something that is saleable. It did not seem to matter that it still might have a few associated problems. In science, a product has to be tested and demonstrated to be of use, whereas in business the customer rules. Tim (business manager) talked of examples where a customer wanted something and a scientist refused to sell it because he said it had been scientifically demonstrated to be useless. The way the customer used it seemed to be for a different purpose than the one the scientist had in mind. For Tim, as a business manager, the response was that if the customer wants it then let the customer have it. An example of this is deer velvet, which AgResearch sells through its subsidiary company, BioProducts. Scientists find this disturbing as they say there is no evidence that deer velvet has any of the pharmaceutical

properties its adherents claim. BioProducts counters this by saying it guarantees the purity of its product but it makes no claims for the product’s properties and the uses its customers may put it to. It is in the area of nutraceuticals that AgResearch wishes to do research because compared with the pharmaceutical market, nutracueticals do not have to undergo rigorous research to justify their efficacy. The AgResearch science groups wanted their products to be as effective as they could make them, for the purpose they had in mind. The Endophyte Group was particularly cautious in this respect because it released one endophyte inoculated cultivar, Pacific ryegrass, in the early 1990s which was put into the market too early and had to be withdrawn. Fiona (technical worker) talked of a time when one of the batches of the MCG’s product Invade was non-pathogenic and somehow had been missed in the quality testing. The Group had to search out all the farmers to whom the product had been sold and

withdraw it. The need for a product to sell can conflict with scientist’s need to be sure that the product will work satisfactorily.