PURSUING ACADEMIC EXCELLENCE

By Assoc Prof Razip Samian

The recent announcement of Roger Kornberg, (the son of Arthur Kornberg who himself was made a Nobel laureate in 1959), as the Nobel prize winner in Chemistry for 2006 attracted my attention in more ways than one. Not the least was the fact that the winner was a chemist by training, but was working as a biologist investigating a biology problem. If you find that befuddling, you are excused, except when you are a chemist. For the befuddled chemist, it’s time to store the sextant and get use to GPS signals as you navigate the chemical world. The chemical landscape has changed.

Sometime ago, the previous PM called for a Malaysian Nobel prize winner by the year 2020. If Roger Kornberg is to be taken as a case study, we note that he worked on his “Nobel prize” project for 20 over years. Therefore, if a Malaysian is to win a Nobel prize in science by 2020, he or she should be currently working on a project worthy of a nomination in 20 years time. The nomination politics and lobbying aside, the discovery must be so profound and significant that it wins the respect of peers, deep enough to make them nominate our candidate.

Cast around our eyes today to see if we have a candidate. The most likely candidate would be a post-doctoral research scientist working in a top-notch laboratory overseas, working with an equipment like none ever manufactured and which is most likely self-fabricated to pursue an impossible task, or solve a problem which apparently has no solution.

It is like the Olympics and unlike the Olympics at the same time. It is like the Olympics because it requires just as much sacrifice and dedication. It is unlike the Olympics because research is a leap into the unknowns and only your intuition and mental agility could pull you out of the darkness of the unexplored realm, because you had found a way to manipulate an “unsolvable” problem into a form that can be solved. Now, that you have found the nugget of knowledge that had eluded the best of human brains throughout the history of mankind, you have to wait in the wings along with hundreds others, waiting for the phone call at 2.30 AM to attend the party in Sweden to honour your discovery.

Let’s suppose we want to select candidates today to be trained and groomed to be Nobel prize winners of the future. We ought to define some criteria to choose suitable candidates. Strange it may seem to say, but our current obsession for academic meritocracy does not help to screen for suitable candidates. From my experience in teaching, many students who entered the university with flying colours struggled to follow lectures, having difficulty grasping concepts and synthesising them into ideas and working out logical frameworks from seemingly disparate facts.

In other words, through sheer grit, students of today, memorise by rote and having been coached with exam techniques, they have reduce national exams into a game that can be mastered provided you are prepared to sit and memorise and have money for private tuition. In other words, you can no longer easily pick out the talented ones by just looking at their academic transcripts. Thus, it is not a surprise when a neighbouring country who had prided itself by grooming high achieving meritocrats to run the nation, came to a stark realisation that the meritocrats were actually blunting the competitiveness of the nation over the long-term by becoming averse to risk-taking and entrepreneurial creativity. The lesson here is that 1) exams alone do not tell the true potential of an individual, and 2) measuring “intelligence” based on exams is a foolish exercise. In other words, current meritocracy index based on exams is not able to differentiate the talented ones from those who through sheer grit, memorise and regurgitate when called for. It’s not that exams are useless, rather we should understand what the tool really measures and recognise its limitations.

The second factor that needs working is the standard of research in the local universities. There has been a cacophonic brouhaha recently about the slide in university ranking of our “premier” university. Whereas it had been a media yardage feast for a handful of politicians and pundits alike, unfortunately, in terms of university development it was all but a red herring.

One of the true mark of a good university is in her prowess to publish new knowledge which can only come from basic or fundamental research. These are research which extend the boundaries of human knowledge with little care of its commercial potentials. The ability to solve a question that has stumped everybody – that’s how respect is earned from your peers. That is how nominations for awards by peers is obtained. To make this possible the scientific infrastructure has to be in place. Beware though, as in sports, money and equipment does not ensure medals. Above all, a healthy scientific and academic culture has also to be in place to nurture the fertile minds to bear fruition. When the scientific fundamentals are strong, it is almost certain that some of the basic scientific discoveries can be commercially exploited.

The stress on academic culture cannot be emphasise more. Scientific prowess is a product of a healthy academic culture, of which academic freedom is an essential component. Kill the Mother Goose, and you will not get the golden egg. It will be a wild goose chase if we think we can flourish a strong scientific culture from a pool of docile and compliant students in a sterile environment. The human mind sees linear relationships. In nature, relationships are like spider-webs. You cannot untangle a unit without affecting the integrity of the whole structure.

The recent introduction of four research universities that focus on post-graduate training is a step in the right direction. With good scientific stewardship and continuity of support, we can ensure that our most fertile minds are allowed to flourish, not only to gain scientific recognition worldwide, but also become the spring that feeds novel entrepreneurships based on knowledge.

There has to be a more coherent picture for the development of science if we were to ride the Knowledge Economy. As is, we have MOSTI, who handles the lion’s share of funds for science, but the majority of scientists (principal investigators and post-graduate students) are under the stewardship of MOHE. Like a ship with 2 bows and a captain on each end, there needs to be a clear designation of duties for us to make the best use of our meagre resources.

In our national craving for international recognition, many are unaware that we shoot ourselves in the foot by forbidding scientists to travel overseas more than once in 2 years. So, it has not been enforced, you may argue. Like being caught driving at 111 km/h on the expressway, you cannot make a case that others drove even faster than you do and got away. Technically, you broke the law and therefore, you pay the penalty. Scientific relationships, like any other facets human relationships, cannot be built on A4 papers and emails alone, devoid of intangible factors. Without that personal touch and relationship, it is impossible to build a scientific network that will be necessary for a variety of reasons like gaining access to resources beyond our means and to the extreme case of lobbying for our own Nobel candidate. This is but an indication of the archaic cobwebs that weigh down science. So, where do we start? Pursue your career with professionalism and integrity, and be active in PKA for a start ;-)