OPINION - DICK AHLSTROM:WHAT DO poker, advertising and scientific research all have in common? You have to be able to hold your nerve and keep putting in the cash even when things look grim. You have to keep to the programme no matter what, and tough it out to the end.

Poker provides the most obvious example of this capacity. You might get dealt poor hand after poor hand, but at some stage you are going to have to make a stand and bluff for all you are worth. You may know it is a poor hand, but act like you are holding four aces and start wagering.

If your bluff works, the others will decide they just can't win and so fold, leaving the pot and the field of battle to you.

I am assured the very same holds true for investment in advertising during times of recession when markets shrink, consumers stop emptying the piggy banks and governments get nervous.

You don't decrease advertising spend in line with market conditions - you increase investment to keep your product before the buyer's eye.

The rationale for this counter-intuitive argument seems to be that the economy may slow, but won't stop completely. The public will continue to spend, even if at a slower rate, and the product coming off the shelf will be your company's product, after a fortune spent encouraging brand recognition.

The real trick, the challenge, seems to be in sticking to the programme and staying with the investment no matter what. The sales may not come at first, but if your corn flakes are better marketed than the next guy's then your corn flakes will end up in the shopper's trolley.

Governments can be like the public they serve in their response to market conditions. They get spooked too, and can start to get edgy as recession looms. They look at all those careless election promises that will cost lots of extra money even as receipts from taxes and excise duties slump.

The inclination is to keep the hammer away from the piggy bank and start cutting wherever possible. Shave a few million from the roads budget, defer planned investment in new schools, assign eight consultant's posts instead of 12.

And it is at times like these, with a likely world recession knocking at the door of our alarmingly open economy, that planned spending in scientific research may appear like a risk-free, lose-no-votes option for a budget cut. The public won't mind, it doesn't affect them directly, so trim away amidst promises to invest the money next year.

It will be interesting to see if the Government takes the poker shark's and the advertising executive's approach and keeps spending on research, despite the threat of recession. It would be the wise option because investment in the creation of a knowledge economy will pay handsome dividends in the future: dividends that will not be available if spending is cut.

Research is always a risky business, an investment with no guarantee of returns, but you can't have a knowledge economy without it. If you want to "manufacture" knowledge and valuable intellectual property for export, you have to invest more, not less, in this uncertain activity.

You also have to keep the investment flowing in order to attract the best people. Good quality research can only be done by investing in good quality people, and the international competition for their skills is fierce.

Any proposal to defer or trim planned spending on scientific research as mapped out in the National Development Plan 2007-2013 and the Strategy for Science, Technology and Innovation would serve to create uncertainty in the research community, not just in Ireland but also abroad.

We have to become world players in research, and we have started down that road already thanks to the the superb investments being made by Government in the past few years. Foreign researchers can bid directly for contracts being offered here and, if selected, can take them up, so long as they conduct their research in Ireland.

The object is to attract world-class researchers who then conduct world-class research here, to the benefit of the country and the colleagues who will work with the scientist.

There will be less interest in this, however, if questions start to arise about continuity of funding. This holds true not just for people, but for the essential equipment needed to make credible research happen. Good research doesn't happen on the cheap, and the NDP spending includes capital funding that can be applied for equipment.

The Government should ring fence planned investment in our knowledge economy to ensure our reputation for science remains intact, no matter which way the economy goes. To do any less would be foolhardy in the extreme.