IS AUSTRALIAN SCIENCE ENTRENCHED IN 'THE CULTURE OF NO'?

摘要

As the AIP Science policy coordinator I've been asked to provide some statistics and other supporting evidence for some of the policies that the Institute is developing. While statistics are useful, those available tend to relate to funding, publications, employment statistics and other tangible items. But there's more to science than these, there's also the culture in which science is nurtured and achieved. I noticed at the AIP council this year that there were only three non-university representatives present out of about 20 people present. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it's sometimes worth reminding ourselves that the AIP has a university based perspective and that perhaps we should be looking and consulting a wider Physics community to see how things are going out there, and to see what changes our members may want to happen. So this is your chance. In this issue of the Physicist I've asked for a survey to be included to try and grasp hold of people's experiences in Physics and to try and capture the essence of where we are at the moment. In particular I've framed the survey around science culture so that we can determine whether the 'no culture' described below is something we need to be concerned about.