February 11, 2006

The Constitution Avenue in Islamabad — the eight-lane arterial road that winds its way through what can be described as the heart of Pakistan’s political establishment — is lined with impressive buildings bearing the names of renowned scientific institutions. These include the Pakistan Academy of Sciences, the Pakistan Science Foundation, the Islamic Academy of Sciences, the Pakistan Council for Science and Technology, the Committee on Science and Technology of Organization of Islamic Countries (Comstech), and the Commission on Science and Technology for Sustainable Development in the South (Comsats). At a short distance from the block is the head office of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, the largest single science-based institution in the country. Other institutions are spread out across the capital. Their large numbers, astronomically high value of their real estate, and obvious wealth, show that Pakistan’s ruling establishment wants to be seen as taking science seriously. The question is: does it do so, and how far down the road has Pakistani science actually come since 1947?

The answer depends considerably upon how one chooses to define scientific accomplishment. In defence technology, which is applied science, Pakistan has done relatively well. We manufacture nuclear weapons and intermediate range missiles that, once upon a time, were considered as cutting-edge technology. There is now also a burgeoning and increasingly export-oriented Pakistani arms industry that produces a large range of weapons — from grenades to tanks, night vision devices to laser-guided weapons, and small submarines to training aircraft.

Dozens of industrial-sized units in and around Wah, along with many subsidiaries, are producing armaments worth hundreds of millions of dollars and generating export earnings of roughly $100 million yearly. Much of the production is under licence from foreign countries, some from CKD kits, and most equipment for the arms factories are imported from China or the West. Chinese assistance in every nuclear area has been crucial.

Nonetheless, even though Pakistan’s defence production is mostly a triumph of reverse engineering, rather than original research and development, its leaders have demonstrated the capability to exercise technical judgement and sufficient understanding of scientific and technological principles at some level.

There is, however, less evidence of success in the civilian technology sector. High technology exports, as a percentage of total exports, amounted to only 1 per cent in 2004. Much of this came from software exports unofficially estimated to be about $150 million (the official figure is only about $40 million). This figure should be compared with India’s $12.5 billion for 2004.

This difference of 80 times or more is out of proportion with the difference in the two countries’ populations, which stands at about 6.5 to 1. Although its economy is growing well, Pakistan is deeply dependent upon remittances from overseas workers, mostly constituting unskilled labour in the Middle Eastern countries.

Low-tech textile exports are the mainstay of Pakistan’s industrial production. According to the Pakistan Council for Science and Technology (PCST), in 43 years Pakistani scientists and technologists have managed to get just eight patents registered internationally.

Separating the sciences

Pakistan is at its weakest in the area of original scientific research, and the causes appear to be poorly understood here. The lack of understanding has led to fundamentally flawed policies and delusions of achieving a quick turnaround.

Engaging in a sensible discourse on this important matter requires that, at the outset, we separate pure science from applied science. Pure science seeks to uncover new principles and fathom the inner workings of nature. Its discoveries, such as in cosmology or elementary particle physics, often have little or no relation to any kind of technology or economic need.

The famous English pure mathematician and number theorist, G.H. Hardy, took much pride in the lack of application of his discoveries to anything in the real world. Nonetheless, without such foundational work in pure science and mathematics there would be no applied science, and no technology. Maxwell’s equations led to wireless and television, abstract quantum mechanics to the transistor and integrated circuit, and Einstein’s relativity to nuclear power and the bomb.

Pure science and applied science are judged by two different sets of criteria. Good pure science must be current, should introduce or employ new concepts or uncover hidden relationships, be intellectually interesting to practitioners of the field, and stimulate further research into the nature of physical reality. Good applied science, on the other hand, is that which uses known scientific facts in non-obvious ways with the goal of creating technology in the form of processes, devices, pharmaceutical drugs, machines, computing systems, etc.

These elementary distinctions are important to understand now that tens of billions of rupees are suddenly being poured into funding scientific research in Pakistan and enormous incentives are being given to Pakistani scientists to buy research equipment and publish research papers. This so-called “renaissance” of science in Pakistan is principally the brainchild of Dr Atta-ur-Rahman, chairman of the Higher Education Commission and a well-known chemist.

Writing in the prestigious journal Nature, Dr Atta-ur-Rahman bemoans the state of scientific research in Islamic countries and offers his recipe for improving it by focusing upon increasing the number of scientific publications. He then proceeds to declare Pakistan as a success story. In his words:

“During the period 2001 to 2003, the sharpest increase has come from Pakistan, with a 40 per cent increase from 636 to 890. This is a result of a system introduced in 2002 that provides researchers with an opportunity to more than quadruple their earnings if they increase the numbers of their papers published in peer-reviewed journals.”

Other claimed successes include a huge increase in the number of PhD students enrolled with Pakistani universities and a doubling of the number of universities in the public sector over a period of about five years.

A disputed criterion

One might ask: is it a good thing to use the number of published papers as a means to “quadruple” the earnings of scientists and to go for a wholesale production of PhDs? On the face of it, this policy seems sensible. But two of Iran’s most distinguished chemists — Dr Mohamed Yalpani and Dr Akbar Heydari of the Tarbiat Modarres University — say this criterion is deeply flawed.

Yalpani and Heydari, in their 2005 paper published in the journal Scientometrics, show that such an approach has failed in their own country. Intrigued by the fact that publications by Iranian scientists had exploded from a total of 1,040 in 1998 to 3,277 in 2003 — with over 30 per cent of these being in chemistry — the two scientists set about uncovering a number of facts that many had suspected but none had adequately documented.

Working systematically and paper-by-paper, Yalpani and Heydari discovered that:

— Many scientific papers by Iranian chemists that were claimed as “original” by their authors, and which had been published in international peer-reviewed journals, had actually been published twice, and sometimes thrice, by the same authors with identical or nearly identical content. Trivial changes had been made in the titles, with the content, graphs, and references being 90 per cent or more similar. These were clear cut-and-paste papers. Others were plagiarized ones that could have easily been detected by any reasonably careful referee.

— Many Iranian researchers have apparently been preoccupied with some chemical reactions, repeating them over and over again even though they are of dubious practical and scientific value.

— Interestingly, in some of the papers, the exchange of N with O had been described as acid catalysed and in some as oxidation. Clearly, the international referees were sleeping.

— Many important details which ought to be provided by authors, such as sample preparation procedures and curing temperatures, were missing. This leads to a suspicion that the experiments were carried out under circumstances which make the results unreliable.

— While certain international journals are careful and demanding, others are fairly sloppy. Prospective authors, whose work is shoddy, obviously prefer journals which do not require a high degree of proof. Under pressure to publish, or attracted by the incentives offered by the Iranian system, they often chose to follow the path of least resistance paved for them by the increasingly commercialized policies of many scientific journals. Prospective authors know well that editors are under pressure to produce a journal of a certain thickness every month.

Referring to the incentives proposed by Dr Atta-ur-Rahman in his Nature article, Yalpani and Heydari show their strong disapproval and note that “significantly, there is no mention of quality in his entire article.” They censure his policy of rewarding the “cut-and-paste” method which his incentives encourage.

In their opinion this approach damages the scientific enterprise because it makes the Third World scientist focus primarily on momentary personal material gain. When reporting a finding in a Western scientific journal, the essence is lost because individuals often attempt at only a minimal mimic of the formalism that lies behind true science.

The two scientists highlighted the general decline of the quality of papers published by Iranian chemists although chemical concepts, reagents, instrumentation, and other tools had progressively become more sophisticated. Simply put: there is an explosion of junk scientific papers, perhaps cleverly packaged and capable of getting past referees, but of little value.

No comparable scientometric research, to my knowledge, has ever been undertaken for Pakistani scientists. But the two Iranian chemists, who obviously are not writing for a Pakistani audience, have nevertheless put their fingers on a sensitive spot. They have given enough evidence for everyone to be worried, particularly those concerned with science in Pakistan.

Alternative criteria

How then is one to judge the state of science, and the individual merit of scientists if not by the number of published papers? To say that published scientific work carries no value is foolish. There’s absolutely no doubt that the genuine scientific publication is extremely important to science, both theoretical and experimental. But it has value only if it is strictly preserved as a medium that succinctly and accurately conveys the essence of true scientific discoveries.

If this medium is corrupted, either totally or partially, one must search for better indicators. A better, though still imperfect, estimation of the quality of scientific output is to see how many times a scientist’s work is cited by others working in the same field. Citations — excluding self-citations or those made by members of the same group — are a relatively better criterion for assessing achievement in pure sciences.

For assessing research in applied sciences, the task is much simpler. The value to industry of such research must be clear and apparent. This suggests that one must judge the plethora of scientific institutions in Pakistan — which are predominantly applied science institutions — principally by the technology, products, and processes that their work has given birth to.

For agricultural research — which is relatively a simple science, but of immense economic importance — there are some good results to show, in the shape of successful cotton, wheat and tea varieties that have been produced in the country. However, in non-agricultural fields there is much confusion.

It is time to demand clarity. Surely the PCSIR, with an annual budget of over Rs80 million is obliged to tell the nation what that money has produced, beyond a process for producing mineral water. Similarly, one must judge the “miracle” of the HEJ Institute — said to be Pakistan’s premier research institution — by criteria different from the present ones.

Papers published on applied chemistry, the large number of PhDs produced, or the impressive international conferences it has organized are indeed positive achievements. But the real criteria should be: what has it produced in the way of pharmaceutical products, patents, and services to industry.

Unfortunately its otherwise elaborate website does not, at least for the time being, provide information on this aspect. It is the responsibility of HEJ to provide proof of its success because it consumes the lion’s share of research funding. Dr Abdullah Riaz, an opposition parliamentarian, recently pointed out that the HEC had made grants amounting to a massive Rs1.36 billion to the HEJ over a period of five years, and that both institutions are headed by the same individual.

As in India, all our publicly funded national research institutions of the non-defence sector, as well as our universities, should be required by law to put their achievements on the internet so that some level of monitoring is possible. Without transparency, unlimited amounts of money can easily disappear without adding much to scientific productivity.

Future prospects

The future of science in Pakistan will depend much more on the kind and quality of education that students receive in their schools and colleges, rather than on the purchase of fancy equipment for scientific research or increased access to the internet and various glitzy technologies. Unfortunately, our school education generally continues to be based upon rote learning and as such it actively seeks to destroy the questioning mind from early childhood by rewarding obedience and punishing originality.

One does not see many positive trends. A moribund examination system that rewards rote learning continues to resist all attempts to usher in reforms. The recent decision by the ministry of education to downgrade the importance of science practicals at the matriculation level, by reducing the percentage of marks set aside for them from 25 per cent to only 15 per cent, is a case in point.

So far, in the absence of a real understanding of the problem, the only prescription for boosting science remains the present one — throw unlimited amounts of money at the problem in the hope that things will turn around some day. The science budget for universities and institutes has shot up 12 to 15 times over the last three to four years.

But money and resources are fake issues. The most powerful engines of science, meaning mathematics and theoretical physics, are exceedingly parsimonious and undemanding of resources. A mathematician or theoretical physicist needs no equipment.

With modest exceptions, high talent has nearly disappeared from Pakistan. Today one cannot count even 10 Pakistani physicists and mathematicians, living in Pakistan, who are good enough to get a job in a reasonable US university. But 30 to 35 years ago we probably had more than three times that number. India has several hundred in this category, if not a thousand or two.

The dismal situation is unlikely to change much until there is an understanding that science brings with it a worldview — a weltenschaung within which creativity, freedom, intellectual rigour and scientific honesty are given the kind of value they receive in the West. The leaders of Pakistan’s scientific establishment, who head a plethora of institutes and academies, never cease to demand more resources. But they never speak of the need for scientific methodology, critical thinking, scepticism, or viewing the world rationally.

They stood by as if struck deaf and dumb after the Oct 8 earthquake. Comfortably situated in plush offices and driven around in fancy cars, not a single one of them sprang into action to challenge the counter-scientific beliefs, freely propagated over the mass media, which held that the quake was God’s punishment for our “sinful behaviour”.

Let us face the fact squarely: pre-modern societies, or those which dispute the very basis of science, simply cannot produce meaningful science. Scientific progress requires social progress and a battle against superstition and fatalism. The struggle to usher in science will therefore have to go side-by-side with a much wider campaign to bring in modern thought, the arts, philosophy, democracy, and pluralism.

Science cannot prosper under authoritarianism. And authoritarianism runs deep everywhere — within the family structure that demands absolute obedience, a tyrannical educational system where the teacher crushes independent thought, and a political system where the military throttles democracy and people’s participation. Without intellectual and personal freedoms, Pakistan shall continue to suffocate.

Today’s mindless money dumping — one which has dazzled the world — will fizzle out whenever the country’s rulers change. Suddenly the party will be over. By that time, our distance from India, and the developed world, will have increased many times.

The author is professor of nuclear and high energy physics at the Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad

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