Dr. Marianne Bautista: Less restrictions abroad when it comes to research

Cultural and systemic problems

Logistical limitations

Funding constraints

Dr. Reynaldo Garcia: Basic research is hardly given attention in the Philippines

Lack of support for basic research

Change slow in coming

Knowing is easy, implementing is not

Back in 1991, just out of college, Dr. Marianne Bautista dived into her scientific career. Her first job was as a research assistant at the National Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology at the University of the Philippines Los Baños, better known as Biotech UPLB.Twelve years into her research career, she got accepted for the Monbukagakusho scholarship offered by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT) for international research students. It brought her to Nagoya University where she would spend the next six years pursuing her MS and Ph.D. degrees.After she had earned her Ph.D., Dr. Bautista returned to the Philippines and to Biotech UPLB where she was bound for eight years as part of her return service agreement.For most of her research career, Dr. Bautista had worked on insecticides. In her undergrad, she worked on botanical insecticides. As a research assistant at Biotech UPLB, she worked on Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) as microbial insecticides.In Japan, her MS and Ph.D. research projects focused on studying the molecular mechanisms of resistance of the diamondback moth (Plutella xylostella) to chemical insecticides.A year after she returned to Biotech UPLB, she was offered a postdoctoral fellowship at the Ohio State University. As it turns out, the US Department of Agriculture had funneled funding into research about the insecticide resistance of diamondback moths, the same pest she had worked on while in Japan.She was being invited for a postdoctoral research fellowship, which she accepted. The next three years were spent in Ohio, working at the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center, the research arm of Ohio State University, under the USDA.After that, she returned to the Philippines and, after fielding a few job offers, settled on a faculty position at the National Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, but this time at the University of the Philippines Diliman. At present, she keeps this faculty position and heads the Functional Genomics Laboratory at the same institute.With almost a decade of experience in research laboratories abroad, she has spotted some critical, often intertwined, differences between scientific research abroad and in the Philippines, which may be slowing progress.In the Philippines, she explains, the process of finishing a research project is a trudge rife with paperwork and restrictions. Researchers are often confined inside a tight framework of constraints which are often financial in nature.For instance, researchers pursuing postgraduate degrees here in the Philippines are asked to come up with a plan of study which they should adhere to. It includes courses (even at the Ph.D. level) and will often require them to pass a comprehensive exam and accomplish a thesis.The thesis in itself is already a feat especially when students do not have the freedom to work on topics that actually interest them. While given the freedom to choose, more often than not, they are still ultimately forced to work on projects that have funding.On the other hand, research in Japan, at least under the Monbukagakusho scholarship, is more straightforward. Students have much more liberty to pursue research projects that they like with only minimal restrictions from their advisers.The only restrictions perhaps, are that the project should be within the thrust of the research lab that the student is in, and that it should be doable in at most six years. Other than that, the research advisers pretty much leave you alone and let you decide independently whether your research proposal is worthy of their investments or not.The capacity of the labs to house sophisticated research is also a factor, she continues. Labs in Japan are well-stocked with equipment and students are free to use them whenever necessary. Even if your particular lab does not have a piece of equipment, borrowing from a neighboring lab is almost no trouble at all.Students are also allowed to use this equipment with minimal supervision. In Japan, Dr. Bautista recalls, there are virtually no research assistants and lab technicians; almost every single person in the lab, even their sensei, minds their own business and works on their own projects.Overall, there are few restrictions in terms of equipment use. In effect, students learn to be really independent.On the other hand, labs in the Philippines can only hope to compare. Based on personal experience (I worked at the NIMBB in UP Diliman for my undergrad thesis), there is a shortage of equipment, with people usually racing with each other to reserve the next available slot. And UP is supposed to be one of the top institutions.The problem, Dr. Bautista muses, can ultimately be traced down to funding. The Japanese MEXT transfers an undisclosed amount of money to the schools which the Monbukagakusho grantees enter. This money is used to support the research endeavors of the grantee.Looking back, Dr. Bautista now understands that this may have been the reason she was given so much freedom with her research.During my time (which wasn’t long ago), we struggled to make a project work within an annual 400,000-peso budget. That’s why, when Dr. Bautista told me that back in the 2000s, Biotech UPLB would have to make do with only P20,000 annually, I was in disbelief.To our credit, the Philippine government funnels much more funding into science now than it did years ago. If anything, the 400,000-peso budget that we ran on is real proof of this. Funding, one of the core problems of the scientific research industry, is now slowly being addressed.Dr. Reynaldo Garcia, also a faculty at the NIMBB at UP Diliman and a Ph.D. who has worked in five different labs across five different countries, agrees. “I am very happy that since I moved back five years ago, through the years a lot of things have changed and that there is now a lot of money. The problem is not the money.”The problem, both agree, is that basic research is hardly given any attention here in the Philippines. On the flipside, there is much more preference towards studies geared towards producing technologies that can be transferred to the intended beneficiaries within three to five years.In fact, in the actual proposal form for funding agencies, one of the criteria is whether or not the technology can be commercialized and if it can expect a return on investment within five years, Dr. Garcia explains.“So even if funding agencies say that they fund both basic and applied research, the fact is that there is still a preference for something that is potentially commercializable. All the projects right now are all the same: drug discovery, diagnostic kits, etc. Very few are in basic research and even if it is basic research, they are pitched in the guise of something that will have potential commercial application.”While it may sound intuitive at first, and though it may be well-intentioned, this is still a very misguided policy. Basic research, the kind that elucidates mechanisms and identifies drug targets, is the foundation on which applied research is built on. Technology is entirely reliant on basic research.As Dr. Bautista puts it: “No technology will survive without basic research.”While things are starting to change, they aren’t changing fast enough, Dr. Garcia laments. “If it continues like this, we’ll never be on the map of countries which are truly innovative and have pushed science forward. We will only be a state that has produced something.”On the more pragmatic side of things, research here in the Philippines is greatly bogged down by the bureaucracy and logistics, especially in procurement. In other countries, when you order something, it takes at most a day to be delivered.Here, for consumables, the expected time of arrival is anywhere from two to three months. For equipment, 10 months is generous. At the core of this problem is the bidding process, Dr. Garcia explains.“The reason for this is that our pieces of legislation had corruption in mind. It’s a good thing that there are actually checks for corruption, but it has permeated science so much.”Labs go through a lot of hoops for the bidding process, and before they realize it, it’s already been a couple of months and their projects are already behind schedule.The solutions to these, they say, lie in knowing which things need changing, and in what way. Knowing, however, is simple. Implementing is infinitely more complicated.Specifically, Dr. Garcia explains, rules and legislations that create such restrictive bureaucratic barriers for academe should be changed. He suggests that some form of exemptions be given to universities and academic research institutions.If not, he muses, all the improvement we’ve seen will be wasted.“There should be some form of exemption for research or it will get worse and worse. It negates all the gains we have had in terms of being able to get the amount of money for research and being more daring to try more difficult projects. The fact is research is still very slow.”To address the dilemma of basic scientific research, Dr. Bautista recommends changes to the funding agencies. According to her, the current scheme is heavily skewed against scientists who have a basic scientific research background.She suggests that putting fresh minds, scientists that have returned through the DOST’s Balik Scientist and Balik PhD programs, for example, in the funding agencies’ reviewing panel would greatly improve this situation especially since most labs abroad are more geared towards basic research.