MAKING ACADEMIC RESEARCH USEFUL

Scientists’ responses to changing policy demands

Jane Calvert

SPRU - Science and Technology Policy Research

University of Sussex
Brighton, BN1 9RF, UK

First draft - Comments welcome

Email: J.Calvert@sussex.ac.uk

Paper for the NPRNet Conference 2002 ‘Rethinking Science Policy: Analytical Frameworks For Evidence-
Based Policy’ 21-23 March, 2002, SPRU, University Of Sussex, Brighton, UK

Outline

1. Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 1
2. The changing nature of academic research ....................................................................... 2
3. Scientists’ responses.......................................................................................................... 3
3.1 Basic research: historical associations with purity and value ..................................... 3
3.2 The status of basic research......................................................................................... 4
3.3 Justifications for funding basic research ..................................................................... 4
3.3.1 An over-emphasis on economic benefits ............................................................. 5
3.3.2 A broader notion of ‘use’ ..................................................................................... 6
3.4 The erosion of scientific autonomy and threats to basic research............................... 7
3.5 ‘Tailoring’ ................................................................................................................... 9
3.6 Basic research as a protective resource ..................................................................... 12
4. Conclusions: consequences for policy and theory .......................................................... 13

1. Introduction
Governments intend that the academic research they fund will be useful for wider society,
and many policies have been implemented to further this goal. This paper examines the
effects of such policies on the behaviour of scientists, focusing especially on the role of ‘basic
research’ and its importance to scientists. The paper starts by outlining the changing nature
of academic research, and the types of pressures and demands that are facing scientists today.
To understand the reactions of scientists to these pressures it is helpful to examine briefly the
historical roots of basic research and the values attached to this concept. In-depth interview
material is then drawn upon to demonstrate that scientists attach considerable importance to
basic research and that they have a range of justifications available to argue for its funding.
Scientists are clearly worried about the future of basic research, although they can present
their own research as either basic or applied depending on the situation and the funding
requirements. They can also use the concept to protect themselves against external demands
for their research to result in commercial or applicable outcomes. The paper argues that only
by recognising the importance attached to basic research and the complex responses of
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scientists to policy demands can we gain a better understanding of the potential contribution
of academic research to broader social and economic objectives.

2. The changing nature of academic research

Today social and economic goals have an important place in most countries’ research
agendas and policies for science are increasingly placing pressures on academic research to
be more directly and clearly useful. Several historical factors have contributed to this
emphasis. The end of the Cold War saw decreased funds for many fields of academic
research, leading to requirements for the research that was funded to be more closely
scrutinised. Increased pressures for global competitiveness during the 1980s led to the onset
of the ‘competitiveness agenda’ (Slaughter and Rhoades 1996), where economic growth
became a major motivation behind the funding of research. Most countries had entered a
‘steady state’ of research funding by the 1990s (Ziman 1994), where funding was not keeping
up with the rapid pace at which research costs were growing, and R&D funding overall was
declining as a percentage of GDP.1 For all these reasons, the primary justification for
funding research is no longer the pursuit of knowledge ‘for its own sake’ but the pursuit of
knowledge which promises to further some social or economic objective. Ziman summarises
this situation by complaining that “The only arguments that now seem to carry any weight for
the expansion of science are those that emphasise its promise of future wealth or other
tangible benefits” (Ziman 1994:85). We are also seeing increased pressures for
accountability and relevance, which are apparent on a Europe-wide scale (Senker 1999), with
much greater demands for scientists to show that they are spending the public’s money wisely
(Ziman 1994).

Although an emphasis on wealth creation is an important constituent of the current funding

climate, we find pressures for research to be useful coming from other quarters as well. Even
advocacy groups who may be opposed to research conducted to increase competitiveness
(e.g. those who want less military research or more environmental research), champion
science which does something. They “want more applied science and technology or at least
fairly goal-directed research, accountability and pragmatism” (Slaughter and Rhoades
1996:333-334). We are simultaneously seeing the rise of the importance of the public in
decision-making about science, with the emergence of an ‘extended peer community’
(Funtowicz and Ravetz 1993), and this development also leads to the incorporation of
‘external’, non-scientific goals into research agendas.

1
In the UK, for example, non-defence R&D expenditure as a percentage of GDP declined from 1.84 in 1990 to
1.78 in 1995 (OECD 1997).

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Literature in science policy has picked up on these trends and elaborated them into theoretical
schemes. Gibbons et al. (1994) describe ‘Mode 2’ where knowledge takes place ‘in the
context of application’, often involving players from different institutions and scientific
disciplines. The ‘Triple Helix’ model also analyses the changing nature of the relationships
between university, industry and government (Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff 2000). Nowotny et
al. (2001) examine wider social transformations which attend the changes we are seeing in
the production of knowledge, often involving a diverse group of actors in the scientific
process.

3. Scientists’ responses
The question being asked here is what effects do changing policy demands have on academic
research? Scientists’ responses and reactions to changing funding priorities will be explored
here, focusing on biologists and physicists. The majority of material for this paper is drawn
from nearly fifty in-depth qualitative interviews with scientists and policy makers in the US
and the UK (see Calvert 2001 for further details). But to help interpret this interview material
we must first go further back into history to examine the historical attachments that ‘basic’
research - research which is not directed towards a useful outcome - carries with it.2

3.1 Basic research: historical associations with purity and value

It may seem rather extreme to trace the ideas behind basic research back to the ancient
Greeks, but this is where we first see value attached to the pursuit of knowledge ‘for its own
sake’, with no other motives involved (Stokes 1997). Importantly, at this time we also first
see an association between the pursuit of knowledge and social class, because practical work
was given to lower class people to do, and those of high status were able to spend time on
more cerebral pursuits. These deep-seated ideas can be traced through the history of basic
research. Before the professionalisation of science, scientists were traditionally priests or
aristocrats with no ‘sordid’ material motives because they did not need external sources of
money (Shapin 1999). They had to finance themselves, whereas technology itself led to
economic returns. In this way the social status of basic scientific researchers contributed to
attachments to virtue and purity. Even after the professionalisation of science in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the pursuit of knowledge was still seen as a
‘vocation’ rather than simply a job. Weber (1947) famously talks about science as a

2
This is a rather simplistic definition of basic research. Calvert (2001) demonstrates that there are many
different definitions of basic research in circulation, and what is interesting about this concept is that it is
flexible, and can be used for different purposes in different situations. In this way basic research is used for
‘boundary work’ (see Gieryn 1983, 1995 and 1999).

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vocation, describing the attitude that scientists approach their work; “For nothing is worthy of
man as man unless he can pursue it with passionate devotion” (p.135). These ideals attached
to basic research can even be found in recent literature. A Nature article explains the drive
behind undirected research as “a motivation, if not a compulsion, quite distinct from the
determination to invent, to create wealth or to enhance the quality of life” (Nature 1996:1).
We can see that basic research carries historical baggage with it that must be taken into
account in an analysis of the responses of scientists to today’s policy demands.

3.2 The status of basic research

Interview material affirms that basic research is a highly valued cultural activity that is
important in the self-image of many scientists. For example, status often came up in
discussions about the relation between basic and applied research. The crude position,
described by a UK physicist, is that “people who do the fundamental stuff are the high brows
and people who do the less fundamental stuff are the lower brows”. A US biologist also
noted that

“the elitism of basic science still hangs around. There’s still a lot of people, mainly
older people, who still look on industrial collaborations as being slightly tainted and
dirty, and it’s prostitution to do applied research”.

A UK biologist used the same metaphor, saying that he was glad when industrialists took the
initiative and contacted him for help with their research projects because he did not have to
“prostitute himself” by approaching them himself.

A UK biologist who was previously a physicist describes how there is a similar difference in
status between basic and applied in both physics and molecular biology:

“There was a tendency for people who saw themselves as pure physicists and not
applied perhaps as somehow better, an ivory tower mentality...and there’s probably a
bit of that in molecular biology, there’s some people who just don’t want necessarily
to be forced into any particular application of their research”.

These associations of basic research with status indicate that there are still deep cultural
values embedded in the notion of basic research that should not be overlooked.

3.3 Justifications for funding basic research

Interviews with scientists and policy makers show that they hold basic research in high
esteem, and this is also clearly apparent when they discuss the reasons why governments

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need to fund basic research. They put forward a barrage of reasons, many of which are
cultural justifications, but with a strong emphasis on economic justifications, showing that
the changing funding conditions outlined in section 2 above are influencing the arguments
that are made by scientists and policy makers.

Justifications for the funding of basic research on cultural grounds were most often found
among physicists. For example, I was told that basic research was something that a
developed country should do “as a civilised society” along the same lines that countries
should finance the arts, because it “captivates the human spirit and elevates it to a higher
level” (US physicist). This reminds us of the values associated with basic research.

The majority of justifications were phrased in terms of the economic benefits of the research.
The argument most interviewees used to provide a rationale for the government funding of
basic research was the ‘market failure’ argument which identifies basic research as a public
good. The linear model often played an important role; one UK biologist stated that we
“cannot have applied research without basic and that is a fact”.

There was one US policy maker who worried about the validity of these models, models that
have been criticised by theoretical literature (e.g. Mowery and Rosenberg 1989, Freeman
1974). Her worry was that a criticism of the linear model is also a criticism of the standard
market failure justification. She pointed out that if basic research does not feed directly into
applied research, then we lose one of our arguments for funding it. However, this was the
only criticism of the linear model that was raised in the interviews.

3.3.1 An over-emphasis on economic benefits

Ironically, one of the implications of the justifications based on economic benefits, which
emphasise the connection between academic science and wealth-creation, is that these
arguments can be self-defeating, because they result in demands for basic research to be more
and more tightly linked to industrial success and innovation. A problem here is that the
economic benefits of science and technology can hardly be concealed, since it is because
scientific research has been so successful in producing new and exciting technologies that
more is constantly demanded of it. As Elzinga says, “the sciences by their own success de-
pedestalize their own autonomy” (Elzinga 1997:420). Because science has been the motor of
economic growth in the past it is increasingly pushed to demonstrate that it still is such a
motor in the present (Nowotny 1997).

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Some interviewees recognised this point by mentioning that it could actually be

disadvantageous in the long term to stress the economic benefits of basic research. They said
that if scientists emphasise potential economic benefits then they are continually required to
show that these benefits do actually arise from their research, and pressures towards
demonstrating the applicability of their results are increased. In this way basic research is a
“victim of its own success” (US biologist). A US policy maker was acutely aware of the
problem of over-emphasising the economic benefits of research:

“If you start making that case, you find yourself being pushed into a shorter and
shorter time line. If you’re going to make the case that this is going to have an
economic payoff, they want you to show them how”.

3.3.2 A broader notion of ‘use’

In this paper so far ‘use’ has been equated with relevance to broader social or economic
goals, but it is interesting that in discussions of the funding of basic research this assumption
was not made by all interviewees. I found an interesting re-interpretation of the idea that
basic research should be justified in terms of its potential use among several interviewees
who echoed Weinberg (1963) by noting is that it is possible to adopt a broader definition of
external ‘use’ than economic or social use. Weinberg argues that one of the criteria which
can be used to decide which science to fund is ‘scientific merit’. He explains; “that field has
the most scientific merit which contributes most heavily to and illuminates most brightly its
neighbouring scientific disciplines” (p.166 emphasis in original). Interviewees similarly
argued that research could be useful if it could be used in another area of science, which
could itself be basic. As a UK policy maker reflected, “‘useful’ is quite an interesting word”
because “you can define interesting as useful”. A US biologist defined ‘useful’ as
“information” that could feed into other basic research.

Alongside this wider definition of ‘useful’ came a wider definition of ‘applied’. A UK

biochemist described himself as doing applied science because he was literally applying
chemistry to try to understand and manipulate biological systems. A UK physicist also said
“there’s no doubt that I work on things that are applied, but my applications tend to be to
other academic areas”, such as basic astronomy.

A broader understanding of ‘useful’ is also found in the social shaping of technology

literature (e.g. Pinch and Bijker 1984). We might think that technologies develop in the way
they do because they are useful and serve certain needs, but Pinch and Bijker in their
historical analysis of the development of the bicycle demonstrate that there were many

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different forms of bicycle which could have developed, different forms being more ‘useful’
for various interested social groups in different ways. The reason why a particular form of
bicycle came to predominate was because of contingent social interactions and interests. So
here it seems that ‘use’ is something which cannot be identified a priori and in isolation from
certain social groups. Mulkay (1979) argues that this is also the case with science. We can
see that what it is to make academic research useful is open to various interpretations. There
are underlying normative judgements involved, and these will vary depending on the context.

Having examined the justifications that scientists give for funding basic research, which
demonstrate the importance they attach to this type of research, I will now turn to how
interviewees see current funding demands affecting their research and their autonomy.

3.4 The erosion of scientific autonomy and threats to basic research

Autonomy is highly valued by scientists and often closely associated with basic research. A
policy maker described the motivation behind basic research, saying that it is usually a
driving curiosity on the part of the scientist, combined with a freedom to “just follow their
nose” (UK policy maker).

Scientists and some policy makers were worried that the changes discussed above, in section
2 are eroding scientific autonomy, with detrimental consequences for the quality of the
research and ultimately for its utility to industry. For example, a US policy maker talked
about “basic research creep”, saying that everything has to have more of a “tinge of
applicability” nowadays. A UK biologist recognised the same trend and complained, “I think
is rather an unfortunate trend, but it is politically driven. They’re desperate to engender an
atmosphere of entrepreneurialism”.

There are worries that this push towards applicability has changed the ambience of university
research. A UK policy maker argued that doing research which has to include an awareness
of its potential uses will change the mindset of the researcher, and that this will not result in
the best (i.e. the most unconstrained and unpredictable) science. There were also worries
about delayed publication and suppression of publication, and fears that the very nature of
free inquiry might be bent out of shape subtly and unintentionally (US policy maker).

Interviewees were concerned that science is becoming less risky, and more short-term (UK
physicist). A UK policy maker for a research council voiced the concern that research was

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becoming ‘safer’. He said that “over the past few years we think we have less adventurous
speculative research in our portfolio”. This was also noted by a US policy maker;

“there is a tendency for people to propose less adventuresome things. To take some of
the risk out of the process - your proposal is more likely to get funded if it is
perceived to be less risky”.

Several commentators also worry that the riskiness of the research itself is decreasing. Senker
(1999) says that an emphasis on industrial innovation will tend to favour short-term research
over longer-term work. Geuna (2001) argues that there is a lack of incentives for path-
breaking and risky research. Risk in science is usually associated with some type of novel
research, where, because it has not been done before, the outcome is not known and the results
cannot be predicted, making it unsuitable for a short-term project. Geuna says that a reduction
in novel research leads to a reduction of the knowledge base from which new technological
innovations can draw. Part of the reason why risky research avenues might be becoming less
attractive is because risky research is, by necessity, difficult to measure. It is very difficult to
evaluate the outcomes of a research project without knowing what outcomes to expect.

The current emphasis on the outcomes of research was noted by many interviewees. One US
biologist complains that

“the emphasis now is on ‘OK, well, you’ve done this research, how does this
help?...How does it help a certain illness? How does it help a certain environmental
problem? What’s the direct accountability? What’s the direct result, what’s the
direct benefit of this research now?’ and so there’s sort of an immediacy that’s
demanded”.

He worries that this short-term perspective and desire for immediate gratification “will in the
long run be detrimental to science”. A UK biologist notes how it is necessary to show that
one can apply and ‘exploit’ (“that is the word they use”) your work. A UK physicist
complains that “everything must be clearly useful and identifiable as useful now”.

There are extreme worries amongst scientists about the health of basic research. A UK
physicist comments, “because of the pressures from the government to highlight relevance of
the work to industry and to the end users, I think there has been a general under-funding of
what I term truly basic research”. Another UK physicist warns:

“I think basic research in the UK is not being nurtured and may well not survive. I
think to an extent the UK is living on the fat and momentum built up in periods when
that sort of research was more valued”.

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However, although scientists may say they are worried about these changes, in practice they
are fulfilling the requirements of the funding applications and stressing the links to
application in their own research, as will be shown below (section 3.5).

Some policy makers were worried about the future of basic research, as can be seen from the
quotations above, but it is necessary to point out that several policy makers did not share this
concern. They argued that although there is a shift towards “making people think just a little
bit more about how what they’re doing could be used in the future” (UK policy maker), they
thought that this did not pose any real threat to basic research. They said that the research
had not really changed in character, “but the people have just become more savvy about its
potential for applications” (US policy maker). Although it is admitted that, “the emphasis is
on getting ideas from the lab to the stock exchange” (UK policy maker), it was argued that
this did not affect what was going on in the lab. Moves towards increasing the awareness of
scientists about the applicability of their work were looked on by these interviewees as “a
good thing” (UK policy maker). Many UK policy makers praised the US for leading the way
towards ‘innovative entrepreneurialism’. The US was seen to have a culture of producing
‘spinouts’, which was “a model which is much admired” (UK policy maker).

One UK policy maker described how he thought these values had already become absorbed
into the values of the academic community:

“I’ve heard it said that now, in the corridors, the really successful scientists are saying
to one another not only ‘Have you got some good research council grants? Have you
got your FRS? Have you got your spin-off company?’ And now, one of the things that
has changed is that it’s certainly not infra dig to be commercially active”.

Etzkowitz et al. (2000) also support this point by noting that they have observed many
academics engage in these types of entrepreneurial activities, alongside “the failure to define
this new role as deviant” (p.315). This integration of a new set of values is probably not
occurring across the board, because, as shown above, many scientists appear to be resentful
and worried about the current funding arrangements. The next section will demonstrate,
however, that scientists are actually quite good at integrating new demands into their existing
work - albeit in ways which were not necessarily intended by the policies themselves.

3.5 ‘Tailoring’
It is important to note that policies aimed to increase the utility of academic research do not
necessarily have predictable effects on scientific behaviour. Interviews demonstrated that

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scientists responded to pressures to make their research more clearly relevant to commercial
objectives by ‘tailoring’ the way they presented their research, while maintaining that this did
not affect the character of the research itself.

I was given many examples of situations where scientists changed the way they presented
their research to make their work appear more applied to gain resources. I originally labelled
this activity ‘manipulation’ but this carries negative connotations of deceitfulness, so I
decided to adopt the ‘tailoring’ label introduced by several of my interviewees. What was
interesting about these tailoring activities was the frankness with which scientists would
admit to them - they would often even complain about having to do them.

Some scientists mentioned how they had to talk about the potential applications of their work
in grant proposals, saying “it actually is a waste of paper as far as I’m concerned, but you
know, it’s a hoop you have to go through” (UK physicist). The process of ‘jumping through
the hoop’ was said to involve “changing our priorities to match where the next pot of money
is coming from...and everybody does that” (US physicist). A US biologist said it is often
necessary to ‘bend’ the original research idea: “you take your basic research idea, and then
you squeeze it into the programs that are available, because it’s not always a good fit”.

An example of tailoring which scientists described in surprisingly frank terms was how
research can be described as either basic or applied depending on the circumstances. A US
condensed matter physicist who specialises in foams explains:

“You emphasise the importance of foams to industry and then you propose doing
something. Whereas if it’s for NSF you emphasise the analogies with metals and
biological tissues...You can play it any way you like, it’s the same research. For me
it’s very beautiful fundamental physics but it’s so close to a lot of industrial processes
that it’s very easy to write a grant that looks strictly applied”.

A US biologist similarly describes his response when the funding agency’s focus changes:

“We change the way we talk about what we are doing, we change the words we use
to describe what we’re doing. We’re still doing the same thing, we just, we just now
say instead of bioremidiation we’re looking at biocatalysis. Same difference”.

Presenting their scientific work in a particular way to fit with constraining circumstances is
something which is very familiar to scientists. A UK biologist described how his Hungarian
colleges during the communist regime maintained their basic research activities through
“creative lying”. This example is interesting because it draws attention to the fact that

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scientists were ‘protecting’ their research by portraying it in a way that was politically
acceptable.

A UK physicist says he found it necessary to generate his own label for the widely practised
activity of dressing up research to make it appear more potentially fundable. He calls this
“applied hypocrisy”, which is,

“where you put some nice words at the beginning of everything you do which links it
to something which sounds applied, but really you don’t do anything whatsoever
which is really applied and has any effects”.

However, it is difficult to tell if many of my scientists were guilty of this ‘applied hypocrisy’
or whether their work actually did have both basic and applied elements to it, and that it is
easy to make their research appear either basic or applied, or both, depending on the
circumstances. A US biologist suggests that the latter is the case; he describes how a
proposal he wrote:

“had good applied aspects to it because it deals with a real problem, the problems of
declining salmon in streams and rivers, but it was good basic ecology and so we
submitted it to the agency and they very much liked the idea because they perceived it
as being solid basic research but having a good applied element to it as well”.

Several scientists play down the extent to which they have to alter the way they portray their
research. For example a US biologist says, “usually it’s a very mild side-step you have to
make. I’ve never had a problem with it”. Another describes how he only has to “re-package”
his work. A US physicist stresses that his priorities really do overlap with those of the
funding agency:

“so on the one hand the research is being tailored to suit the agency, on the other
hand the agencies are facilitating the kind of research I want to do so it isn’t all a
negative thing”.

It is interesting that this scientist is using the ‘tailoring’ terminology, in the context of
emphasising that the changes he actually has to make to his research are not dramatic. I
heard lots of language similar to this, including thinking about “whether you want to put any
political spin on it” (UK physicist), having to “dress yourself according to what the agency
desires” (UK physicist), “hand waving” (US biologist) and “bending” the research (US
biologist). What is important about all these terms is that they do not imply that the nature of
the research is being changed substantially. As a UK biologist says; “I don’t think it changes

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the research being done at all!”. The ‘tailoring’ terms, by their very superficiality, appear to
be protecting the activity of basic research itself from the changes scientists are making in
order to emphasise certain features of their research to get funding.

Rip (1997) argues that pressures on scientists to demonstrate the relevance of their work will
necessarily be more than merely ‘tailoring’. He says that if scientists claim some kind of
potential relevance for their work this will place requirements on them to demonstrate it, and
that completely spurious claims of relevance cannot be made. He thinks that because “the
positioning of research at the beginning of innovation chains influences the research agenda
of the field”, there will be an “internalisation of relevance” (p.631), where the values of
relevance will actually become part of the scientific research itself.

3.6 Basic research as a protective resource

We have seen that scientists can change the way they portray basic research to make it appear
more applied. Another interesting feature of the way the term ‘basic research’ is used, is that
scientists can describe their research as basic in certain situations to protect themselves and to
delimit what should be expected from their research. This was often found in situations
where there was an interaction between scientists and an external group. A US biologist
explained how he would use term to isolate himself from those who he thought might be
trying to find applicability in his work:

“If I’m talking to someone who’s from a commercial concern I will very quickly in
the conversation use the term ‘basic’, just because I just want to make it clear to them
that I don’t foresee I’m going to have something patentable or anything else during
some reasonable time span of my grant”.

If he describes his research as ‘basic’ it will immediately be understood that he will not have
anything commercially profitable to offer. Describing research in this way can act as a shield
against applicability, and against the unwanted involvement of an external group.

This phenomenon was even apparent at the broader programme level. One US policy maker
gave the example of the US Department of Energy whose “fusion program used to be applied
and now it’s all basic”. When I asked why this was, I was told “they think that there’s not
going to be any fusion power - there will not be an application for it in 40 years”. It was
because the Department realised that the practical outcomes were not forthcoming that it
seemed easier to classify their research as basic research. Furthermore

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“if a program is evaluated as applied research it’s going to get evaluated on the basis
of how soon they achieve the goal of making things practical, so by making it ‘basic’
they can perhaps defer the evaluation somewhat”.

In these situations the term ‘basic research’ seems to be used as a protective resource by
scientists, which becomes useful in circumstances when they might otherwise be pushed to
demonstrate the applicability of their research.

4. Conclusions: consequences for policy and theory

In summary, the above empirical findings have revealed that scientists react in complex ways
to demands to demonstrate the potential utility of their research. It has been shown that basic
research is associated with status and value by scientists, who demonstrate their attachment to
this type of research by providing many arguments in favour of its funding. Scientists also
noted that it could be disadvantageous to over-emphasise the potential economic benefits of
basic research because this can lead to a vicious circle where these benefits have to be
demonstrated more quickly. They also made the point that we do not have to think of ‘use’
only in terms of use to some realm that is external to science, but that research can be useful
if it contributes to another area of science. Scientists were very concerned with the changing
emphasis of funding agendas and think that this could have negative consequences for basic
research, leading to less risky and novel research being funded, although some interviewees
also mentioned that commercial objectives could become integrated into scientists’ value-
schemes. It was interesting that despite their worries, scientists do attempt to make their
work appear more applied in certain circumstances by ‘tailoring’ it because they perceive this
will get them more resources. Finally, it was shown how the term ‘basic research’ can be
used as a protective resource, to shield scientists against demands for applicability and
evaluation from external bodies.

This empirical material demonstrates that even in these changing circumstances it is

important for scientists to retain an ideal of ‘basic research’. They share a common image
which defines how they perceive their own work, which builds on a historical tradition of
being a credible and revered activity. By defining themselves as doing basic research,
scientists are making their actions meaningful for themselves (see Geertz 1973). Similar
behaviour was noted by Campbell and Slaughter (1999) who showed that when scientists are
compelled to take on funding which is industrially oriented they change their conception of
the situation in order to perceive themselves as persisting in a familiar basic research activity.
Like my interviewees, they are maintaining their commitment to the values of basic research.
This prevalence of values attached to basic research also explains some of the unexpected

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phenomena I came across in my interviews, for example, the “the elitism of basic science”
and the feeling that “it’s prostitution to do applied research”. These extreme espousals of
scientific values are an indication of the pressures that scientists are feeling in the current
funding situation - they may be overcompensating for the challenges that they feel basic
research is facing. It seems that ‘basic research’ is intricately tied up with notions of what it
is to be a scientist. Since it is so central it is likely to persist, even in the face of changing
demands and funding arrangements.

The persistence of the fundamental scientific ideals attached to basic research has
consequences for the theoretical literature. It can be argued that even in ‘Mode 2’ (Gibbons
et al. 1994), where research is carried out in the ‘context of application’, the ideal of basic
research will persist. In order to improve our understanding of the changing nature of
knowledge production we should be more aware of the complexity of actors’ reactions in
situations where values and interests are involved.

The argument of this paper is that the responses of scientists to policy demands can be
addressed more productively with a greater understanding of the value of the concept of basic
research in the self-image of scientists, the worries scientist have about the future health of
basic research, and the reaction of scientists to funding demands by ‘tailoring’.

Recognising the value of the concept of basic research in the self-image of scientists means
that we will not overlook this important aspect of scientific identity. Being aware of the fears
scientists have concerning the future health of basic research allows these fears to be dealt
with more effectively. It is especially important for scientists to retain the idea that they are
doing basic research when this activity appears to be under threat. With this knowledge,
changes to the policy agenda could be undertaken in a way which was more sensitive to the
particular concerns of scientists. In addition, my work on ‘tailoring’ has shown that external
pressures on scientists (for example to make their work more relevant to externally imposed
goals) do not necessarily have any predictable impact on research practices since scientists
are actors who react to the pressures on the basis of their perceptions, values, and interests
rather than in any predictable and mechanical manner. This is why we see scientists
engaging in elaborate tailoring activities so that they can retain a meaningful conception of
their work, and of their idea of what it is to be a scientist. An awareness of these perceptions,
values and interests could help policies achieve their desired impacts.

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Jane Calvert Making academic research useful

The message of this paper is not a simple recommendation - instead the aim has been to
‘uncover’ aspects of scientific behaviour in response to changing policy demands. I hope to
have shown that this uncovering is a valuable exercise, and can enable us to re-think some
aspects of science policy. Chubin and Restivo (1983) similarly point out that often in science
policy “The sheer multiplicity of actors, views, and interests militates against elegant
synopses and quick-fix policy recommendations” (p.72). In this case, bringing the
complexity of actors’ responses to light does not make the policy maker’s world any simpler.
I have shown the important values attached to basic research, and the complex responses of
scientists to policy demands, and in raising these points I hope to have provided a better
understanding of the issues involved in making academic research useful.

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Jane Calvert Making academic research useful

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