Scotland as a Science Nation

Part of the debate – in the Scottish Parliament at on 26 November 2019.

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Photo of George Adam George Adam Scottish National Party

So far, this has been a very good debate. Earlier you said that there might be an extra minute of speaking time, Presiding Officer. I was interested to see Brian Whittle celebrate that. After years of running round a track in the least amount of time that he could manage, he is now celebrating how long he can debate topics. How the mighty have fallen.

There are a number of personal and probably selfish reasons why I am so keen to take part in this debate. First, I, too, emphasise that Scotland punches well and truly above its weight in science and research activity. That has always been the case. For a start, Scotland has four universities in the world top 200 of the Times Higher Education world university rankings. That was recognised in the report that the Scottish Science Advisory Council published this year, which compares how Scotland’s science research sector performed over the past decade against other similar-sized countries. The SSAC found that

“Scottish research is high quality: in terms of citations per researcher, Scotland is number one compared to the other UK nations and the ten other countries in the report” and that

“Scottish researchers are ‘very productive’: around 10% of the UK’s researchers are based in Scotland”.

Having listened to Shona Robison talking about Dundee, I could not carry on without mentioning the research and educational facilities that the great town of Paisley has brought to us.