Canadian Science at the Public/Private Divide: The NCE Experiment

Abstract

This essay understands the relation between politics and science in terms of the public/private and basic/applied distinctions. When policy makers speak of capturing the benefits of public research today, they tend to be talking about market returns rather than social returns. In essence, the social contract between science and society has become an economic contract, and public science has been discursively repositioned as a partner in the national system of innovation and the knowledge-based economy. When the state becomes a partner with academy and industry in the privatization of research, does it make sense to maintain distinctions between public and private, basic and applied? Are they differences that make no difference? If the distinctions collapse or are abandoned, what is Lost? What do the concepts mean today in terms of science policy and scientific practice? In this essay, the author addresses these questions through her research into Canadian science policy and Canada’s Networks of Centres of Excellence (NCE) program.