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In the unceasing quest for knowledge Australian scientists each year carry out more than 12,000 individual research projects, well over half of them funded by the public.

However in the combined public announcements of the universities and science agencies only about 1200 outcomes are reported. Rather like the elusive ‘dark matter’ that makes up most of the universe, the dark matter of Australian science accounts for around 90 per cent of the research performed here.

Or, put another way, we invest roughly $12 billion a year on discovering new knowledge – and perhaps $250m on promulgating it. We value knowledge in a scientific journal article highly but accord little value to its transmission to the wider society or to users.

Worse still, if you look at the section on communication of results in most grant applications, you will find that many Australian scientists are happy to run and tell their latest findings to their peers in America or Europe – but are loath to inform the Australians who actually paid for it and who might in fact benefit from it. Quite why we should be in such a rush to give away our best knowledge before having a chance to use it ourselves is not clear – but it probably has something to do with the academic career path.

Almost none of the major science funding agencies insist on effective communication to Australians as a condition of their grants. A creditable exception is the Grains R&D Corporation, which invests about 15 per cent of its annual budget in science transfer. Among the agencies only CSIRO and tiny handful of CRCs and other centres make a serious endeavour to share their findings with the ‘shareholders’.

As a result Australia has a science flood – but a knowledge drought. Large parts of our science moulder in the yellowing leaves of journals, never to be delivered, never to be used.

A smart society is not just one which has excellent science.  It is one which can best distribute and adopt excellent science. Unfortunately Australia has, over several decades, fallen into the trap of assuming research quality alone is sufficient and neglecting the issue of delivery. Dissemination of scientific findings is one of the lowest priorities on the agenda – as is perfectly evident in the budgets of the Commonwealth or practically any of its agencies and universities.

Two great Australians who have recently died were outstanding advocates for better communication of scientific findings.  The late Peter Cullen was the leading exponent of engaging the community in informed debate about water, knowing this was the only sure way to influence government. And the late Richard Newton, Dean of Engineering at UC Berkley, advocated the free dissemination of scientific knowledge, arguing that societal impact was much more important than a few dollars of institutional income.

Science Minister Kim Carr has touched on the issue of the obstructed knowledge flow a couple of times since his ascendancy – but has yet to seize hold of. It is the chief reason why Australia is good at science but poor at commercialisation and adoption. If he’s serious about commitment to innovation, it needs to be front and center in the new policy.

Carr is presently shaping a charter for scientists in public institutions which permits – indeed encourages – them to speak more freely and openly about their work to public audiences, following a decade in which many researchers discovered that to do so meant political persecution and in some cases, career death.

However in the same decade also arose a strangling thicket of regulation, managerial oppression, legal and commercial impediments, selfishness and peer discouragement.  Even with the Minister’s active support, it is doubtful if a Charter alone will be sufficient to back-burn the forest of weeds that now blocks the path of Australian knowledge to Australian society. Much of our science today is set up not to communicate.

As the government inquires into the universities, the CRCs and eventually all the other arms of the knowledge-machine in its quest to make them better, the adequacy of their knowledge transmission systems needs to come under a glaring scrutiny. Nowhere in science – with the possible exception of a handful of rural industries – could it be called sufficient. Skills are low, resources pathetic and barriers to knowledge transfer high.

NHMRC CEO Professor Warwick Anderson, in a recent speech looking at the challenge of keeping the huge healthcare workforce up with the rapidly advancing frontiers of medical research, highlighted the need for change. If we want a world class health sector, he suggested, we need not only excellent science - but also excellent delivery and dissemination of the best science.

Better dissemination of research findings will also have another important effect: it will reverse the decline in university science enrolments. The failure of science to spruik its successes is, at least in part, responsible for the commonly-held view in high schools that the field is dull, unrewarding and lacking in glamour.

The real challenge for Carr and for the nation’s research leadership is to throw light on the missing ‘dark matter’ of Australian science.  And guess what?  Doing it won’t take rocket science.

Julian Cribb is an adjunct professor of science communication at the University of Technology, Sydney and editor of Science Alert.