The hard business of funding ‘soft science’

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/the-hard-business-of-funding-soft-science-1.1389261


Sciences are conventionally divided between the hard and soft, the harder ones more reliable, even more true. Mathematical modelling, big data and experimental methods are hard, whereas interpretation of meaning, sense and social behaviour less dependable. The very word science gets restricted to the natural world, to which other disciplines aspire. Within the social sciences, economics leads the field because it seems most quantifiable.

Inevitably this approach prioritises the natural over the social sciences and the humanities in allocating research funds. It facilitates a technocratic and instrumental approach to innovation, assuming a simple linear path between scientific discoveries and market application. Thus biotechnology, nanotechnology and energy research usually top the lists and collar the funds. In the US for example the proportion of government investment in the natural against other sciences jumped from five to 200 times between 1979 and 2011.

All the more reason to welcome the remarks made by the European commissioner for research, innovation and science Máire Geoghegan-Quinn this week at a conference at the Royal Irish Academy on the contribution of the humanities and social sciences to the Horizon 2020 research programme of the European Union. Over this period its funds will reach €70 or €80 billion, one of the few to increase in an overall reduced budget.

She assured her audience the amount going to the humanities and social sciences in the EU over the last seven years – €623 million – would not change. That represented some 1.8 per cent of overall funding with a 3.6 per cent success rate for applications — compared to 46 per cent for nanotechnology, so the priorities are clear. Irish researchers drew down 1.5 per cent of the overall funds available, but less than 1 per cent in the humanities and social sciences.