Radio New Zealand (Checkpoint) ran stories last week about New Zealanders aged over 65 stranded in Australia who are at risk of having their pensions (‘New Zealand Superannuation’)stopped, and then having to repay the funds they received while in Australia.

There is a simple solution to the problem – to just keep paying stranded pensioners their pensions, and to withdraw any threats to require repayment when they eventually return to Aotearoa. The problem is compounded by the rigidity – and general unavailability – of Carmel Sepuloni, the Minister of Social Development who oversees the ‘benefit system’. While it is true that she appears to be perhaps the least competent of government ministers (few say it, but many think it), it also is apparent that she and certain other ministers – most notably Immigration Minister Kris Faafoi and Senior Citizens Minister Ayesha Verrall – are being closely micromanaged by their seniors. On Friday’s (17 Sep) Covid19 press conference, I waited for Minister of Finance – one of the senior ministerial minders of Sepuloni, Verrall, and Faafoi – to put the matter straight, and assure stranded pensioners that common sense would prevail. But he said nothing.

The key RNZ stories are these:

• 15 Sep: Pensioners stuck in Australia ask for ‘Jacinda’s kindness’
• 16 Sep: Assoc Health Minister on Covid-19 cases, pensioners in AUS (interview with Ayesha Verrall)
• 16 Sep: ‘Devastated’ woman who could not return from Australia faces pension cut

Before discussing the general issue, and how the government can easily stop this issue – and others – from festering, I should note the phenomenon of the Radio New Zealand trolls. Some RNZ programmes invite – or attract – more listener feedback than others. Checkpoint is one of the more prominent programmes in this regard. Some of the feedback, which is mentioned throughout the programme along with a brief slot just before the 6pm news, can only be called ‘trolling’; this term derives from the social media practice of posting or sending cruel messages. The RNZ trolls tends to argue along the lines of: ‘you knew the rules, you took the risk’, with maybe the addition of ‘I could have gone to Australia when you did, but chose to stay on my [trolling] couch instead’. Like younger social media trolls, these mainly older trolls are conspicuously unsympathetic to others (in a sadly self-centred way), they lack any real sense of empathy for the myriad sets of circumstances that other people face, and tend to take pleasure from the misfortune of others. Sadly, again, I believe that the present government sees such trolls as an important part of its voter base; the optics of this government – as shown through the media appearances of ministers such as Sepuloni, Faafoi, and Verrall – are that the government itself lacks sympathy and empathy.

(A big lacuna in economic theory is in its inability to address the reality that some people’s utility – pleasure – arises specifically from the disutility – pain – caused to others. Not only do we seen this generally in the phenomena of trolling and most pornography, we also see it in the way that too many people see ‘houses’ as financial levers that make themselves richer while necessarily making others poorer. Land hoarders should also be understood as trolls.)

The Rules in this Case

The specific New Zealand Superannuation problem arises in part because most superannuitants see their payments, broadly, as a ‘return on investment’, whereas the government sees New Zealand Superannuation as a social welfare benefit. Both perceptions are somewhat muddled.

Senior citizens only ‘worked for their pension’ in a collective sense; thus New Zealand Superannuation can be seen as a reward for forms of contribution other than through businesses and through paid employment. One important contribution is that of ‘failure’, in the important sense that the success of some – in businesses or otherwise – can only have meaning when contextualised against the non-success of others. A gold medallist at the Olympic Games can only succeed, as a gold medallist, because of the participation of the other competitors who ‘failed’ to win. Thus, New Zealand Superannuation works as a reward ‘without judgement’ of what a person’s contribution may or may not have been.

The government sees New Zealand Superannuation as a cash benefit that – as they also see other benefits – must be wrapped around with a set of rules. Generally, governments would like to see even more (or tighter) rules attached to New Zealand Superannuation, but are afraid to act in a way that ensures the optics of New Zealand Superannuation will make it look even more like a welfare benefit and even less like a return on investment. (This is why it is the ‘oldies’ are the group most impassioned to keep New Zealand Superannuation as it is, even though most proposed tightenings of the rules would only adversely affect ‘youngies’. The ‘oldies’ are a substantial block of voters, who, for the most part, cling tightly to the view that superannuation is quite distinctly different from other benefits.)

There are a number of completely unnecessary rules around New Zealand Superannuation that relate to overseas travel. These rules make sense from a government perspective – because governments like beneficiaries to be fettered by rules (in part because they believe that many of their electors are beneficiary-unsympathetic trolls), and because governments see superannuation as a benefit. But they make no sense from a ‘return on investment’ viewpoint.

Further, receipt of the universal pension (ie New Zealand Superannuation) enables seniors to continue with – even to extend – their contributions to New Zealand. Many do this by staying in paid work or self-employment or continuing to run businesses; they understand that they will not be penalised by having their pensions withdrawn or abated. Other seniors contribute through invaluable contributions to the voluntary sector. Many make their ongoing contributions as grandparents, which in many cases is a surrogate parent role. Further, with the globalised world that we became accustomed to in the 1990s and the 2000s (and to a lesser extent in the post-GFC 2010s), grandparents may be required just about anywhere in the world; it’s pretty much a matter of chance whether a given senior person residing ‘permanently’ in Hamilton has grandchildren in Invercargill, Rockhampton, or Saskatoon.

So, the rule that constrains pensioners from international travel is a rule that need not be there. Such a rule serves no useful purpose.

Nevertheless, given that the rule is there, what should the New Zealand government do for people caught out by the rule? The obvious answer is to suspend the rule for people caught out by pandemic restrictions, health emergencies, flight cancellations etc. There would be much political kudos arising from such application of common sense, and almost no political downside; the issue would simply drop-off the news cycle.

But no, the government knows better. Instead, they have promised to arrange a relief flight from Sydney; and they offer stranded pensioners the chance of a place in the MIQ (Managed Isolation and Quarantine) lottery. Not only is all this very uncertain and unnecessarily stressful – indeed it may not be easy to arrange interstate travel from, say, Launceston, and pre-flight covid testing requirements are not always easy to fulfil – it misses the point that the best solution for stranded grandparents may not be to bring them home at all. If they are helping their grandchildren and adult children in places like Oamaru or Bateman’s Bay or Niagara Falls, it may be better that they are supported to stay there and continue making those contributions. And if such seniors do a few scenic trips in Australia or elsewhere, it should neither be the concern of the government nor the trolls. After all, many New Zealanders made many sacrifices in their lives so that they could retire and then go on a ‘trip of a lifetime’. Many of our ‘baby boomers’ have now had that prospect snatched away from them. Yes, they may be able to do scenic trips within New Zealand in 2022; but it’s not for the government or the trolls to control where superannuitants go to on their retirement travels. It makes no sense to say they can stay in Caroline Bay, but not the Sunshine Coast.

Was the present hiatus foreseeable?

The present rule has an out-clause. Superannuation payments may be continued if affected persons apply on the grounds that their new situation was ‘unforeseeable’ (refer to the Ayesha Verrall interview above). Now the trolls and the government say that, despite opening up green flights across the Tasman Sea with the express purpose of facilitating tourism (the main discussion point then was the economic need to host Australian tourists here), it was fully foreseeable that trans-Tasman tourists might be stranded on the wrong side of the ditch for many months or even for years.

I would argue that this was not foreseeable, given both the promotion of ‘the bubble’ and the seeming resolution of the covid crisis. There had been no ‘Level 4 lockdowns’ since April 2020. My view that the present strandings were indeed unforeseeable is confirmed by Prime Minister Ardern’s repeated claims that “Delta changed everything”, and that the much stricter level of restrictions from August 2021 was only deemed necessary as a result of a ‘Delta strike’ that she herself (and her officials) had not foreseen. (Indeed I myself am booked to visit my daughter and grandchildren in Australia this December; in early June I could not have foreseen the present crisis on both sides of the Tasman Sea to the extent of choosing not to arrange this trip. I now know my chance of being able to travel is close to nil, and I know that – even if my flights are not cancelled – I could not contemplate going in December.)

The fact that Jacinda Ardern makes such stock of her government’s inability to foresee ‘Delta’ surely means that other less-briefed people could also not be expected to foresee the predicament now faced by stranded superannuitants. The government’s inability to foresee the present situation would surely constitute legal grounds for such stranded people to claim the continuance of their pensions on the basis that – within the present rules –the circumstances they now face were ‘unforeseeable’.

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Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

Dynamic living processes get into feedback loops. The most common is a negative feedback loop, whereby processes self-regulate; when something happens then something else happens, in response, to offset the initial event. If it gets cold, we put on another layer of clothing. If a consumer good becomes scarce, its price will go up, and we buy less of it. As ‘loops’, these are incremental ‘trial and error’ processes. We may still need to adjust our clothing further. And the price of something falls in stages, following a consumer feedback response as noted.

Sometimes however we get into destabilising ‘positive feedback loops’; these may involve ‘arms races’, ‘races to the bottom’, or ‘tipping points’. We understand that economic ‘negative externalities’ generate adverse environmental consequences which may in turn lead to unsustainable economic behaviours arising from desperation; anthropomorphic climate change may be reaching an irreversible tipping point.

The Great Depression was ‘great’ because policy responses – for a number of years – became a part of the problem rather than part of the solution; most particularly, retrenchment of government spending and financial supports. Eventually new insights brought about new responses, and the global Depression stabilised to some extent. While negative (stabilising) feedback eventually prevailed, that was not soon enough to prevent World War Two (WW2); and indeed WW2 may itself be classed as feedback.

Covid19 Immunity Feedbacks

We know that evolution involves ‘arms races’ between species and their predators. While the main relation between species and their resident microbes is one of equilibrium – negative feedback – novel microbes can become dangerous micropredators. Indeed viruses, as we mostly understand them, are viral micropredators. Coronaviruses are micropredators (aka ‘pathogens’). People (as a host species) may be infected by coronaviruses new to humans, and then find ways to fight them off. The viruses – which, by their nature, can evolve rapidly – fight back, and people in turn fight back (for example with vaccines). We know that these particular arms races generally do not go on forever, because we coexist with a number of community coronaviruses for which we have an ‘endemic’ equilibrium relationship; viruses which were new, once.

For people – and other species subject to viral predation – there are three endgames. First is a return to normality achieved through a long-term elimination of the virus. (We can say that the 2003 coronavirus SARS-COV1 has been eliminated, though not eradicated. If it returns, it will be, in effect, a new virus; that’s because it was eliminated quickly; and because it has been eliminated for a long time, at least by the standards that apply to coronaviruses.) Second, and most extreme, is the elimination of a host species; the virus may itself avoid co-elimination by switching to one or more other host species.

Third is the development of an equilibrium between host and virus; the virus ceases to be novel, and the host species gains ‘herd immunity’ to that virus. There is a problem though, for host species, because immunity tends to wane; for different types of pathogen the rate of deimmunisation varies. Coronaviruses, as a class, would appear to be one microbe type for which deimmunisation is relatively rapid. (For a number of microbes associated with severe disease immunity is not only acquired, it may also be inherited. The means through which inherited immunity takes place is little known, but almost certainly through non-predatory microbes within the microbiome. The most important historical example is the very uneven ‘Columbian exchange’ through which Native Americans suffered a mass die-off from diseases from which Europeans, Asians and Africans had attained inherited immunity.)

Biohistory can be understood as an arms race that takes the form of a sequence of individual ‘games’ (where our struggle with Covid19 is such a game). For species such as humans to survive (or at least to survive in sophisticated urban civilisations), this is an arms race into perpetuity. As new micropredators evolve, humans need to acquire – in historical time – more immunity to more pathogen species. By and large, humanity has done this in the past without massive public health interventions; although there is a long and honourable history of intervention to diseases, with the development of vaccinations – starting with cowpox to beat smallpox – playing a particularly important role. (The word ‘vaccine’ derives from a Latin word ‘vacca’ for ‘cow’; vache in French.)

So that’s the background. Vaccines as a public health response may lead to elimination or to equilibrium. Some vaccines require boosters – reimmunisations to maintain an uneasy equilibrium – the most familiar of these being the relatively recent influenza vaccine, for which vulnerable people need annual revaccinations.

The question posed here, however, is whether – and under what circumstances – public health policy responses may lead to adverse positive feedback, such as a ‘race to the bottom’. (We have noted that vaccines contribute to the antiviral arms race, which, while a necessary and beneficial form of positive feedback in large domesticated populations, requires micropredators to themselves become fitter in an evolutionary sense. We may also note that our use of antibiotics has been central to an antibacterial arms race; a race that may be reaching its tipping point.)

The race that I am particularly concerned about is that between immunisation and deimmunisation. Immunisation takes place both naturally – the traditional way – and artificially (through vaccinations). The availability of vaccination technology does not mean that natural immunisation becomes unimportant. (It would appear that high levels of immunity to Covid19 at present in the European Union is due to a mix of both natural and artificial immunisation.)

To assess the likely outcome of this race, in relation to the present pandemic, we need much better knowledge of both natural immunisation (including co-immunisation) and deimmunisation. While these processes may be unaddressed (as ‘unknown unknowns’) by public health policymakers, the mere fact that I (and others before me) are raising these issues graduates them to ‘known unknowns’. Any question that is posed, but unanswered, is a known unknown. (Further, ‘knowns’ are provisional truths – undisproven; that’s the inherent nature of scientific knowledge.)

The potential for adverse positive feedback loops arising from Public Health Policy measures.

Public health measures, introduced in 2020 on an unprecedented global scale, unleashed many known and unknown unknowns. These measures included ‘stay-at-home’ lockdowns, widespread temporary business closures, and a decimation of international travel.

The unknowns which I am concerned about here relate to deimmunisation with respect to Covid19 in particular, and towards respiratory viruses in general. (In an earlier article, the dangers of Delta versus the dangers of reduced community immunity, I developed the concept of CRVI – community respiratory viral immunity – as a general measure of communities’ immunity towards respiratory viruses. The concept is one of ‘co-immunity’, whereby immunity to one virus may confer some immunity to others. Cities like London and New York, to survive and prosper, require the highest levels of CRVI. In the biohistory arms race, CRVI must keep increasing if civilisations are to survive.)

We can consider the issue by thinking about ‘rings’ of immunity. The inner ring represents immunity to a specific pathogen, in our case SARS-COV2 including its evolved variants such as ‘Gamma’, which devastated South America, and ‘Delta’, which is devastating Tahiti among other places. Immunity at this ‘inner ring’ level is boosted by infection and/or vaccination. The former (infection) is more costly to affected individuals than the latter (vaccination) because it is much more likely to lead to serious illness or death. The extent of immunity arising from either process – infection or vaccination – is known to depend on the attributes of immunised individuals (especially age and comorbidity). The key unknown is the extent that immunity to SARS-COV2 diminishes through time.

The next ring of immunity relates to the class of viruses known as ‘coronaviruses’. The question here – the known unknown – is the extent to which a general level of exposure to endemic coronaviruses (ie viruses other than SARS-COV2) may confer a degree of immunity to any coronavirus. And the corollary of that question is the extent that reduced exposure to endemic coronaviruses leads to reduced immunity to the Covid19 virus SARS-COV2. The implications of this question are profound: exposure to other circulating coronaviruses could confer a small or medium-size degree of protection against Covid19. And a loss of such exposure could reduce immunity towards both Covid19 and these other ‘common cold’ coronaviruses; that is, those coronaviruses which we have hitherto taken for granted could become more dangerous. On the bright side, vaccination against Covid19 may well provide a degree of protection against coronaviruses other than SARS-COV2.

Thinking about public health policy in this regard, we need to divide our lived time in a pandemic into emergency periods (when a novel virus is in active circulation), and into non-emergency periods (when the virus of concern is temporarily ‘eliminated’, or when all eligible people have had the opportunity to be vaccinated). In the emergency periods, policies need to break the chains of infection; eg through lockdowns, distancing, and protective clothing including facemasks. In the non-emergency periods, the policy emphasis needs to be on restoring any immunity that has been lost during the emergency phases; ie people would need to be encouraged to behave in diametrically opposite ways, compared to during the emergencies.

The third ring of immunity relates to other classes of infectious respiratory viruses; for example, influenzas and rhinoviruses. The same question arises here. Could there be a degree of cross-immunity between one class of respiratory virus and another? We do not know; it’s another known unknown. And if there is such co-immunity, then, once again, emergency measures (other than vaccination) would be contributing to loss of immunity to the coronavirus of concern, and also to the whole class of coronaviruses. So, ideally, emergency measures should be confined to emergency periods, such as the present Auckland emergency.

The fourth ring of immunity relates to all other immunity-suppression factors caused by public health restrictions. These are known to include socio-economic factors such as inequality, food insecurity and malnutrition. They also include mental illnesses, most likely including stress and ephemeral conditions such as teenage ennui. Indeed, loss of personal autonomy resulting from extended and extensive policy restrictions – and subsequent cultural changes in the direction of infantilisation and agoraphobia – almost certainly facilitates mental health decline.

Can the overuse – especially the extended overuse – of public health policy restrictions induce losses of immunity that outstrip the emergency benefits of these restrictions? If so, a pandemic becomes worse, not better, than it otherwise would be; worse in both severity and duration. If so, we get into a negative feedback loop of the ‘race to the bottom’ variety; a loop that could accelerate if a civilisation ‘tipping point’ is reached.

Covid19 Economy Feedbacks

We know that inappropriate economic policymaking can create negative feedback loops of the ‘race to the bottom’ type. Indeed, an understanding of competitive processes – through what economists call ‘game theory’ – means that some of these races to the bottom are well understood. I have already cited the example of the Great Depression.

My question here addresses the dichotomy of ‘the virus versus the economy’. In New Zealand, the explicit policy position is that the best economic response is the most extensive public health response. The contrast is what has been called the ‘light’ Swedish approach, which is in effect that the maintenance of a strong economy is also the best public health response. Sweden’s Anders Tegnell has repeatedly called the Covid19 pandemic a “marathon, not a sprint”.

A third possibility is that neither strategy is correct at their extremes, but that there is an optimal middle ground, in which a strong restrictive public health response should prevail under acute emergency conditions, and that an overtly unrestrictive policy should prevail when a society is not in an acute emergency state. This is indeed the policy approach already suggested, above. (The issue of what constitutes economic success cannot be addressed here; I may note however that the prevailing – and I believe incorrect – financial definition of economic success is essentially the same in the echelons of power in both Wellington and Stockholm.)

The issue is critical in Australia in 2021; it is becoming widely accepted in Australia that an emergency, by definition, cannot be not a semi-permanent state of affairs. To build (and to restore) sufficient immunity to a pathogen, or class of pathogens, a society cannot always be in an emergency state.

Economic decline – however defined, though ‘impoverishment’ comes close to a good definition – can be an important cause of reduced levels of immunity to diseases. Economic failure may contribute significantly to a loss of ‘host fitness’ towards micropredators. If a sub-optimal public health policy contributes to economic decline – that could be an unnuanced pandemic response that is either too weak (Sweden) or too strong (New Zealand?) – and impoverishment contributes to population deimmunisation, then a somewhat nasty race to the bottom can take place. Not a race between host and virus. The viruses and other pathogens win when this race starts. It’s a race between people and people; between untrusting policymakers and an untrusting precariat.

A healthy economy can facilitate public health. It works both ways.

Finally

Public health measures, introduced in 2020 on an unprecedented global scale, unleashed many unknown unknowns. Such policy measures, necessarily, have unintended consequences. One such consequence may be a form of acculturation that may be described as a form of agoraphobia.

If, on balance, extended public health policy measures (and subsequent acculturated voluntary measures) aggravate rather than ameliorate a pandemic, an unfortunate positive feedback loop can arise, with potentially dire consequences. It is not acceptable for policy-makers to be wilfully blind to these possibilities. The big unknown is the rate of – and process of – immunisation loss. We know next-to-nothing about co-immunity. And we actually know far less than we should about the importance of, the history of – and possible reactivation of – our familiar ‘common cold’ viruses; other branches of public health research, most likely, have been more career enhancing.

In New Zealand, while we necessarily lose natural immunity to coronaviruses during the emergency ‘elimination phases’ of our fight against ‘the virus’, we can build some general community immunity from non-emergency exposure to other viruses; some partial immunity that can support vaccination-induced immunity. (Some other countries, which have conspicuously failed in their emergency responses, have actually enhanced their immunity levels, through a mix of natural and artificial immunisation.)

Positive feedback can lead to very negative outcomes. We need to be alert to these possibilities. New Zealand authorities should ensure that they do not overcook public health policies through ‘an abundance of caution’, and do not acculturate the New Zealand population into a fortress mindset. New Zealand is currently besieged by Covid19. Extended sieges do not end well.

Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

Academics are increasingly expected to share their research widely beyond academia. However, our recent study of academics in Australia and Japan suggests Australian universities are still very much focused on supporting the production of scholarly outputs.

They offer relatively limited support for researchers’ efforts to engage with the many non-academics who can benefit from our research.

One reason engagement is expected is that government, industry and philanthropic sources fund research.

And when academics share their research with the public, industry and policymakers, this engagement is good for the university’s reputation. It can also lead to other benefits such as research funding.

But the work involved in sharing our ideas beyond academia can be diverse and substantial. For example, when we write for The Conversation, it takes time to find credible sources, adopt an appropriate tone, communicate often complex ideas simply and clearly, and respond to editor feedback.

We also need to be able to speak to the media about our findings, and respond to public comments when the piece comes out.

Unis don’t allow for the time it takes
However, as one respondent said in explaining why they were not sharing research with end users beyond academia:

It’s not recognised by uni. So, when it is not recognised, it means that I don’t have any workload for that, and obviously I’m work-loaded for other stuff, and that means that I don’t actually have enough time to do this.

Sharing our findings beyond academia isn’t typically seen as part of our academic workload. This is problematic for academics who are already struggling to find time to do all the things their complex workload requires of them.

In our research, time and workload constraints were the most often-cited barriers to sharing research beyond academia. One respondent said they saw lots of opportunities to build partnerships with practitioners in their field, but added:

[I] just cannot do that, because I’m doing other things that, in my work, are a priority.

When we spend our time sharing our research with academic readers through journal articles, conference papers and academic books, our employers clearly value and expect these scholarly publications.

These works, and how the scholarly community receives them, have more weight in evaluation of our performance. Last year an Australian academic nearly lost her job for failing to meet a target for scholarly publications.

Our research found Japan-based academics feel a greater weight of expectations than their Australian counterparts to engage with diverse audiences beyond academia.

Universities clearly expect this engagement. Yet they often don’t back it up with support such as workload recognition, resourcing and training.

Universities need to offer better support if they wish to increase academics’ engagement with diverse audiences. They should also consider both the benefits and risks of this engagement.

Academics see the benefits of sharing research
The academics we spoke with valued the benefits of engaging with diverse audiences. They were pleased to see others putting their research to use. Sharing research often helped to secure funding.

They also saw engagement as an opportunity to learn from end users. This helped ensure their research was responding to real-world needs.

Even very early in their careers, many researchers look to engage with audiences beyond academia. In previous research, we found doctoral candidates may opt for a thesis by publication rather than a traditional thesis approach due to their desire to share findings.

What other problems do researchers face?
The early-career researchers we interviewed noted other barriers and risks in sharing their work with diverse audiences. Universities often did not help with these issues.

They described communication skill gaps when seeking to tailor research content for diverse audiences. For example, the way research is communicated to industry experts needs to be different to how it is shared with governments or the general public.

Researchers may need to learn to communicate their ideas in many different forms. They may have to be skilled in producing industry reports, doing television or radio interviews or presenting their findings in professional forums.

Some encountered frustrations when sharing research via the bureaucratic processes of government. For example, a respondent explained:

There’s still that much back and forth because there’s three or four different government departments that are involved in the process and it goes to different people. Some people don’t want it to be changed because they’re vested in the old way of doing things, and then they’ve got to bring ministers up to speed, and then all of a sudden you’re got a new state government that comes in, so that all changes.

Many felt unprepared to deal with the media.

One respondent described being cautious about overstating the impact of their research. In their field, they saw messages claiming: “This is the be all and end all. This will cure cancer.” They were “wary of accidentally going down that path and making a claim bigger than is true”.

Respondents also described risks in sharing controversial and sensitive research beyond academia.

What can universities do?
For respondents in both Australia and Japan, demanding and diverse workloads crowded out opportunities to share findings. Universities cannot just expect engagement responsibilities to be absorbed into an already swollen workload.

If universities are serious about supporting the sharing of research beyond academia, they need to recognise these contributions in meaningful ways. For example, Australian academics usually must meet teaching, research and service requirements in their workloads.

If sharing research with audiences beyond academia were counted toward service, academics could have this work properly taken into account in performance management and when seeking promotion.

Universities can do better at supporting academics to share their research with the public, industry and government. Improving access to training and mentoring to communicate research findings both in academia and beyond would be an important step forward.

By Dr Margaret Kristin Merga, senior lecturer in education, Edith Cowan University and Dr Shannon Mason, assistant professor in education, Nagasaki University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

In today’s first chart, of daily new cases in Italy and Scandinavia (Norway, Sweden, Denmark), we see that, at its peak in days 20 and 21 (March 10 and 11), the incidence of known new cases in Scandinavia matched that in Italy. The difference is that new cases stabilised immediately afterwards in Scandinavia, whereas the subsequent stabilisation in Italy is at a rate four times higher (about 80 new daily cases per million people, compared to 20 per million people in Scandinavia). Hopefully yesterday’s higher daily rise in Scandinavia is a statistical ‘blip’, and not the beginning of a resurgence of new cases there.

In today’s second chart, we see that both Italy and Scandinavia have moved to slower exponential growth paths for active cases (ie cases unresolved by recovery or death). Death rate growth continues at or close to the worst levels. We note that, on this type of chart, ‘normal’ exponential growth is represented by a straight upward‑sloping line. Improvement is represented by a curve getting ever‑closer to a horizontal line.

The news for Italy is hopeful, with a clear flattening of the curve most apparent for current (active) cases, but also starting to show a flattening for deaths.

Scandinavian deaths rates are considerably lower than Italian death rates. This reflects a lower incidence of Covid‑19 in Scandinavia. The lower incidence in Scandinavia presumably reflects stronger action taken sooner, relative to the start of the very sudden outbreak in Scandinavia. In Scandinavia, the plot since day 20 is flatter than before day 20. That’s good news. The bad news, however, is that the flatter plot is rising exponentially; we wish to see further reductions in the steepness of this curve.

A traditional view of the tension between research and policy suggests that researchers are poor at communicating their research findings to policy-makers in clear and unambiguous ways.

I am arguing that this is an outdated view of the relationship between research and policy. Science, including social science, and policy come together in many interesting and creative ways.

This does not mean that tensions between the two are dissolved but the conversation between research and policy centre as much on ideological and pragmatic issues as it does upon the strength of the scientific evidence itself.

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Researchers are increasingly “smart” in the ways that they seek to influence public debate while policy-makers genuinely value the insights that research can provide in supporting political and policy agendas that goes beyond simply legitimating pre-existing policy choices.

For example, in climate change debates science cannot be seen simply as an arbiter of “truth” that informs policy and political decision-making. Science also plays an advocacy role in alliance with some social interests against others.

Likewise, policy can draw on science but it can also reject the evidence of science where scientific evidence is weighed against the interests of other powerful voices in the policy-process.

Oceans research and policy provides a good example of this more sophisticated relationship between science and policy and suggests some of the significant disconnects and tensions that challenge the relationship as well as how creative tensions between the two operate in practice. Three areas of disconnect can be identified.

Practical disconnection
The first of these is practical disconnection of regulation with regard to the Oceans. An integrated legal framework for the ocean might be considered critical for progress towards meeting the objectives of SDG 14 (Life under the Sea) but complexity and fragmentation present many challenges which are both sectorial and geographical.

National laws lack coordination across different ocean-related productive sectors, conservation, and areas of human wellbeing. In addition, these laws are disconnected from the regulation of land-based activities that negatively impact upon the ocean – agriculture, industrial production and waste management (including ocean plastic).

“These disconnections are compounded by limited understanding of the role of international human rights and economic law, as well as the norms of indigenous peoples, development partners and private companies.” Image: David Robie/PMC

These disconnections are compounded by limited understanding of the role of international human rights and economic law, as well as the norms of indigenous peoples, development partners and private companies.

Disconnected science is itself a problem in this area. Ocean science is still weak in most countries due to limited holistic approaches for understanding cumulative impacts of various threats to ocean health such as climate change, pollution, coastal erosion and overfishing.

Equally, scientific understanding of the effectiveness of conservation and management responses is poor, so that the productivity limits and recovery time of ecosystems cannot be easily predicted.

Even when science is making progress, effective science-policy interfaces are often poorly articulated at all levels. As a result, there are significant barriers to effectively measuring progress in reaching SDG14.

Oceans research policies rare
National oceans research policies to support sustainable development are rare. This is compounded by limited understanding of the role of different knowledge systems, notably the traditional knowledge of indigenous people.

Third, there is a disconnected dialogue. Key stakeholders, most notably the communities most dependent on ocean health, are not sufficiently involved in developing and implementing ocean management; yet, they are most disproportionately affected by their negative consequences.

More positively, there are some good examples of effective science-policy diplomacy collaborations and networks. For example, in the Pacific my own university (University of the South Pacific) has worked very effectively to support Pacific island countries, especially Fiji, Marshall Islands, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, to successfully lead arguments at the International Maritime Organisation for international commitments to reduced carbon emission targets for shipping.

Technical, scientific support has been critical to support the advocacy of Pacific leaders and their ability to mobilise wider political support.

Building the capacity to achieve such outcomes within the regions of the world that confront these problems most sharply is a significant challenge. Aid policy can play an Important role in this respect – for example, by supporting capacity building through investment in local institutions such as universities rather than funnelling aid money back into donor countries through consultancies.

The scientific dominance of the global north is every bit as disempowering and threatening as post-colonial political domination.

For countries in the developing world, capacity building in research is critical to supporting their own countries. Another good example of this is found in the High Ambition Pacific coalition led by the Marshall Islands which secured significant support from European countries and elsewhere, in their campaign for a 1.5 degrees emissions target at the COP21 meeting in Paris in 2015.

Science-policy-advocacy alliance
This coalition was a good example of a science-policy-advocacy alliance which did not come from the global north.

Scientific as well as policy collaborations between the global south and the global north are certainly possible but it also the case that scientific research and intervention in the countries of the south from the outside can very easily reinforce the political domination that politicians and policy-makers from the south so often experience in international forums and through the aid policies bestowed upon them from outside.

The aggressive assertion of the privileges of Western science to do research in developing countries at the expense of building local capacity demonstrates another side of this post-colonial experience. It is impossible to credibly talk of “giving voice to the ‘disadvantaged’ and ‘vulnerable’” where the research practices of outside researchers and their institutions cripple the ability of local researchers to speak.

Yet, researchers in the Pacific are more effectively operating at the cutting-edge of the science-policy interface than many outside the region may understand or recognise.

In our own case at USP, genuine collaboration across the boundaries of south and north have been possible but just as our leaders and our communities have had to fight against patronising notions of “vulnerability” our scientific need is to build our own capacity to effectively engage with the priorities of our own region and its people. We aim to build a scientific and research capacity that is neither dominated by or exploited from outside.

So, in summary, the tensions that have traditionally been used to characterise the science-policy interface greatly oversimplify the reality. They oversimplify it at an abstract level by whether by characterising science as disinterested or by characterising the aim of policy-makers to rational and evidence-based.

They also oversimplify the relationships within and between scientific communities, ignoring the social interests and power structures that serve the continuation, whether intentionally or not, of post-colonial domination, restricting opportunities to build scientific capacity which enables the achievement of locally determined priorities.

Professor Derrick Armstrong is deputy vice-chancellor (research, innovation and international) at the Suva-based University of the South Pacific. This was a presentation made at the concluding “creative tension” panel at the DevNet 2018 “Disruption and Renewal” conference in Christchurch, New Zealand, last week.

Professor Derrick Armstrong speaking with other members of the final “creative tension” panel at the DevNet 2018 development studies conference. Image: David Robie/PMC

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz