Bella Duncan
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antarcticabella.bsky.social
Bella Duncan
@antarcticabella.bsky.social
1.3K followers 600 following 120 posts
Climate scientist in Aotearoa NZ. Ancient Antarctica, paleoclimate, biomarkers, geology and the implications of it all for climate change!
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Reposted by Bella Duncan
mehr.nz
I'm not 100% sure but I think Newsroom may have omitted a 'f*cking' from my phrase "Do these people read the news?"
The Marsden Grant, New Zealand’s flagship discovery science fund, was recently restructured to focus on research with economic potential, and its total was set to decrease by $15m over three years. The Strategic Science Investment Fund decreased by $24m in Budget 2025, the Health Research Fund by $17m and the Catalyst Fund, for international collaboration, by $12m. Money was reallocated towards the new Invest New Zealand agency, aimed at attracting overseas innovation and investment. Since then, the 2025 Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to a team of researchers who investigated the link between increased technology funding and sustained societal growth, which Mehr said underscored his point. “Do these people read the news? Like, a Nobel Prize was just awarded to people who proved that investing in science is a better mechanism for economic growth – which Luxon ostensibly cares about – than these other kinds of short-term investments,” Mehr said. “We’ve got $55 million, roughly, per year to spend on basic science. And if you open up the news, what you hear about is Chris Luxon spending 320 times that on a single road. It’s just kind of pathetic. “You could change the colour of the signs on that road, and you would spend more than this entire country spends on basic science. That is batshit. It’s just completely insane.” (The road in question was the Northland Corridor, the low end estimate of which was recently revised to $18.2b.)
October 28, 2025 at 7:33 PM
Reposted by Bella Duncan
mehr.nz
i think this is the thing I find so frustrating / depressing about how our govt works. there's a complete dissociation between what they say "we love science its great" and what they spend on basic science
In 2023, Mehr was awarded the Prime Minister’s MacDiarmid Emerging Scientist Prize – a top honour for New Zealand researchers – for his work on how humans perceive and create music. Mehr told Newsroom his interaction with Luxon at the awards ceremony was brief, but engaging. “I remember he was so excited to talk to scientists about what we were up to. He told me that he had been looking forward to this event for several weeks. He said it was one of the most fun things he gets to do.” But this enthusiasm did not square with the budget for research set under Luxon’s Government – or the governments that preceded it. “So either he’s totally insincere, and he was bullshitting me, or he’s incompetent and doesn’t realise that he, himself – and his own Government, the people he’s put in power – have signed off on pennies on the dollar for scientific funding in this country, rather than serious investment in research that can change the world. “I don’t think they’re lying about being excited about science; I think they’re just being totally disingenuous about the connection between their own decisions about the Budget and the scientific outcomes that the country can produce.”
October 28, 2025 at 7:11 PM
Reposted by Bella Duncan
dreddieclark.bsky.social
My sincere belief - & baked into Q & A style teaching I do - is that uni education is best when we learn together. I sincerely do learn things from my students, & students learn from the comments & questions of others as well as from me. Plus it's just much less lonely to have a shared endeavour.
October 9, 2025 at 6:12 PM