Advanced Research and Invention Agency Bill (Second sitting)

Virginia Crosbie Excerpts

Wednesday 14th April 2021 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Virginia Crosbie. I am afraid this will have to be the last, very quick question.

[Virginia Crosbie (Ynys Môn) (Con)]

Q Thank you, Chair. It is a pleasure to serve on this Committee. I, too, thank the panel. Tabitha, it is lovely to see you again. You are an inspiration to so many, especially women. My question relates to both your expertise and experience in encouraging the next generation of visionary innovators. What do you see as ARIA’s role in future-proofing the next generation? In Anne’s words, they are the future generation of irreverent researchers. How can we ensure that that is spread equally across the four nations of the UK?

Tabitha Goldstaub: Anne made it so clear that it has to be about engaging with citizens—directly with citizen scientists, but also with citizens who do not care about this yet; we have a real opportunity to excite them. A lot of people say it is really hard, but my answer to that is that it cannot be harder than protein folding. Ultimately, the big challenge for ARIA is to engage with those citizens.

Professor Glover: Briefly, of course I agree with that, but the biggest challenge might be—this will help in engaging with citizens—being up front right at the very beginning that we expect failure, and that failure is part of the measure of success for an agency like ARIA, because if you were not taking any risks, you would not get any failure. The challenge is that, culturally in the UK, and quite differently, I think, from North America, we see failure through an emotional lens, not a scientific lens, whereas I think the opposite is the case in North America. We need to think about that. In a way, just talking about it and saying that that is the case makes it easier for people to understand that we need to fail in order to get the big rewards.

Tabitha Goldstaub: I have heard Anne say in the past—

[The Chair]

Order. I am really sorry, but I am afraid that that brings us to the end of the time allocated for the Committee to ask questions of this panel. I thank the witnesses on behalf of the Committee for their evidence.

Tabitha Goldstaub: Thank you. Good luck.

Examination of Witnesses

Adrian Smith, Felicity Burch and Professor Sir Jim McDonald gave evidence.