Instead, less support may be what we are going to get, as a consequence of an announcement this week by Science, Innovation and Technology Minister Judith Collins.
Ms Collins has slashed the social sciences and humanities categories from our prestigious Marsden Fund, shocking and horrifying many thousands of researchers across the country.
She believes core, pure, science is the only way ahead in our frenetic scramble to, in her words, "rebuild our economy" and "create a better country for us all".
This move reflects narrow-minded thinking, isolating those in the social sciences and humanities whose work informs how best to apply scientific discovery for the broadest benefit of our society, and helps determine which research areas we should be focusing on.
For decades, New Zealand has toiled to keep up on the science and innovation front — especially in terms of levels of investment — with the similarly sized countries we like to compare ourselves with in Europe and elsewhere.
We enjoy a well-earned reputation for scientific discovery and prowess, catalysed by our practical problem-solving abilities. But, like a fly caught in a pot of treacle, efforts to extricate ourselves from the mire of nations spending somewhere in the 1%-range of national GDP on research and development have been in vain.
So, it seemed, if not actually exciting then a little rousing, that this government had hinted it would be more science-motivated. That, as Ms Collins reiterated in her announcement this week, it would concentrate on a science sector "that drives high-tech, high-productivity, high-value businesses and jobs".
Unfortunately, we get fiddlings with the Marsden Fund which are straight out of the "cutting your nose off to spite your face" playbook.
Ms Collins and her ministerial colleagues are thinking shallowly when they suggest that, in her words again, "real impact on our economy will come from areas such as physics, chemistry, maths, engineering and biomedical sciences".
We seem to recall this government pledged to make decisions which were people-focused and evidence-based (let’s forget the principled and accountable promises for now).
Instead, you could sum up the government’s approach so far as: We don’t like what your evidence-based advice is telling us and we’re not going to take any notice. Actually, we’re going to make it even more difficult for you to tell us by minimising the social sciences and humanities.
Ideologues generally aren’t interested in real evidence which is often inconvenient and stands in their way.
As crucial as core science discoveries are, it is the social scientists who can advise how their benefits might be adopted, or accepted or understood, and their potential implications.
Perhaps awkwardly for them, they are also good at ascertaining the motivation behind political manoeuvrings and whether they are for the good of the public or the good of the politician.
The Royal Society of New Zealand-Te Apārangi administers the Marsden Fund, which has championed blue-skies research for 30 years. The society’s website says Marsden research "is not subject to government’s socioeconomic priorities".
Unfortunately, 50% of it now will be, another change announced by Ms Collins. At least that leaves some of the original spirit of the fund intact, apart from the removal of social sciences and humanities.
Fresh from the totally pointless Treaty Principle Bill controversy and the new Dunedin hospital debacle, the government appears more than happy to move on and upset another large, politically significant sector which has a huge role to play in lifting us out of that treacle pot, if only they’d listen.
It is difficult to know how much this decision was influenced by the Science System Advisory Group work being led by Sir Peter Gluckman. We still have this to come, possibly not until the new year now.
