I agree that Australia as a nation undervalues science and scientific research, and worship sports men (and women) as heros and legends.
My father is a research scientist, he has supervised a dozen promising students through their PhD, only to see them dissappear to US, where corporations set up million dollar labs for them (for returned service and results, after all, this is the land of the brave and FREE
).
My close friend's sister is a bio-engineer in the US, her husband doing research into plasma physics there.
We have produced many talents in Australia, but without Govt investment, they are snapped up by other countries. The founding chair of Suntech (which supplies most of our solar panels in Australia) is acutally a graduate from Uni of NSW
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shi_Zhengrong . He was lured away by the Chinese Govt with generous subsidies, instead of fighting for chicken feed in funding from the Aust Govt.
The list goes on.
The celever country we are not.
So closes my rant of the day...
Bo