UKSA no more?

I was talking with someone a few days ago who suspected (thought?) that one victim of the cuts announced a few days ago would be our new UK Space Agency (UKSA). If you’ve read any of my earlier posts on the UKSA you’ll know that I won’t be too unhappy if it turns out to be true. I have no real issue with the UK trying to coordinate its space activities and trying to grow the space industry, but forming a Space Agency with accompanying rhetoric that makes it sound like it will be comparable to NASA is just ridiculous. While writing this post, however, I happened to come across the following article in the Guardian that seems to contradict the suggestion that UKSA is for the chop. A pity in my view.

What I believe is the case is that the new science minister David Willetts was no great fan of the UKSA and has either changed his mind or been pressurised into supporting the UKSA (or maybe he’s just waiting a little while before wielding the axe). UKSA was the brainchild of the ex-science minister Paul Drayson who, although apparently well meaning, wasn’t really – in my opinion – up to the job of being science minister. It was interesting that the same person who suspected that UKSA may be a victim of the current cuts was very critical of Paul Drayson, something that wasn’t openly said prior to the election when everyone was trying to court Paul Drayson in an attempt to protect the physical sciences from any more budget cuts. I have been fairly critical of Paul Drayson in some earlier posts, but since he is no longer science minister, there’s no real need to spend any more time discussing his merits, or lack thereof. There seems to be a general consensus that David Willetts as science minister is a very positive step. There is a sense that he understands the value of science and, in particular, the value of fundametal science. He also seems very skeptical about the so-called impact agenda, something I’ve been pretty critical of in the past. Although I can’t say that I have high hopes for the future, it doesn’t seem quite as bleak as it could have seemed. Only time will tell.

The UK Space Agency

The new United Kingdom Space Agency (UKSA) was launched to a reasonable amount of fanfare today and according to some, anyone who was anyone was there. Clear proof that I’m not anyone. I’ve written about this before and my opinion hasn’t really changed much. I hate to be a killjoy, but I don’t really understand what the new UKSA is meant to do and quite why we are doing it.

One of the reasons I don’t quite get the logic is that the UK is already part of the European Space Agency (ESA). We spend something like £100 million a year to belong to ESA. What some might not realise is that according to juste retour we get all (or almost all) of this money back, either in the form of industrial contracts or contracts to universities and national research laboratories. Spending some money to try and ensure that these contracts are such that they will benefit the UK economy (i.e., go where we want them to go) is certainly a good thing, but do we really need our own space agency to do this. Also, ESA already carries out a large number of scientific missions and is intending to start manned space flights (one of the future astronauts is British, even though the UK does not – at this stage – contribute to ESA’s manned space flight programme). Is the UK really intending on doing any of these things independently of ESA? I really hope not and I doubt that this is ultimately the intention.

Reading the press release, most of what is mentioned is how important the space industry is to the UK economy. This may well be true, however, my rather cynical view is that it is actually the space industry that has been pushing for the formation of a space agency. Something like 40% of the UK economy is public and the space industry would like a larger chunk of this money. They may well be quite viable without this and have just been chancing their arm, but maybe this industry isn’t quite as self-reliant as we have been lead to believe. Whatever the reason, my opinion is that the real reason for the formation of a UK Space Agency is to try and strengthen the UK space industry, not to do more space science. Make no mistake, this may well be a good thing and making sure that the core of the space industry is secure and allowing them to then grow their business is a perfectly good thing. I just think we should be careful not to confuse a Space Agency that benefits the space industry with one that might benefit space science.

In fairness to what has been reported, there hasn’t actually been much mention of science and what seems to be the goal is growing the space industry from something worth about £6 billion a year to £40 billion a year. Admittedly, they are only investing something like £12 million a year of new money to do so, so if it succeeds it would end up being one of the shrewdest investments ever made. What is worrying is the possibility that the money to fund the new Space Agency will ultimately come out of the current science budget and that the government will actually invest very little – if any – new money. If it is true that the space industry can grow from a £6 billion a year industry to a £40 billion a year industry (and, assuming this is real growth and not just redirected public money, the government can expect to get a large part of this new wealth in the form of taxation.) they should be more than happy to throw new money at this new agency. This makes me wonder if anyone really believes this rhetoric and suggests – to me at least – that the main reason for the formation of this Space Agency is to satisfy Paul Drayson’s ego (and possibly some childish fantasies about space and astronauts).

Since I don’t really like being critical without suggesting alternatives, what do I think they should do. If some investment in the UK space industry will really reap huge rewards in the medium- to long-term then go ahead and do this. As far as space science and manned space flight is concerned (assuming we want to get involved) we should commit to ESA and make sure that our involvement is such that we can influence how the juste retour is reinvested in the UK economy. Of course, some other European countries (Italy and France) have their own Space Agencies, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they started reducing their roles – independently of ESA – sometime in the near future. Maybe they’ll announce something like this in the next few days just to embarrass us.

Scidebate

I listened to most of the Science debate, a couple of days ago, between Adam Afriyie, Evan Harris and Paul Drayson. Couldn’t quite listen to it all because my daughter decided to be diligent and practice her guitar and insisted on me helping. The debate was pretty good, but it hasn’t really done much to change my view of the different parties. I find Adam Afriyie unconvincing and insincere. He also insists on stating things like the UK has the highest deficit and the worst debt, none of which is strictly true (as far as I can tell). I know our economy isn’t in good shape, but when I look at the data it doesn’t look much worse then Germany, for example, and seems better than the US. It appears as though the conservatives are going to continue to insist that the UK economy is in dire straits, that it is all Labour’s fault and that there is therefore no chance of extra investment in anything (or conversely, they are unable to suggest that extra investment might be possible because this would imply that the economy isn’t quite as bad as they want it to appear and therefore Labour hasn’t done as bad a job as they would like us to think).

I’m still not particularly impressed with Paul Drayson. Part of this is clearly because I don’t like a system in which people can become part of government by being made Lords. However, I do think that he is really listening to what he is being told and is trying to reach some kind of consensus. He has recognised problems with the structure of STFC and has come up with what appears to be a reasonable solution (although no reversal of the cuts to the grants line). He did, however, say something a little odd. He made the comment that the £600 million cut to HE funding and science funding is a cut on an as yet undefined budget and therefore doesn’t necessarily mean a reduction in funding. I guess that if the message gets through in time, the HE and science budgets could be set at a level such that a £600 million cut can be included without a reduction in the budget and without anyone losing face. Still seems rather odd to announce a cut but then suggest that this doesn’t necessarily imply a reduction in the budget (although it was Peter Mandelsson who announced the cut, not Paul Drayson).

Paul Drayson also went through his arguments for the inclusion of impact statements in grant applications. One was that evidence is needed to help make the case for doing research. I happen to agree with this. I just don’t see how academics writing statements about how their research “might” have impact qualifies as evidence. There must be a way to get evidence that is more concrete than this . The other argument he made was that it is taxpayers money and therefore there is an obligation to convince the public that it is well spent. Again, I agree with this in principle. However, there is a subtlety to this that I think Paul Drayson doesn’t get (or choses not to get). Many people in the UK are in careers that rely on public funding, but we don’t necessarily expect individuals within these different areas to justify their existence. We – the public – realise the value of, for example, healthcare, education, social services, etc. The fact that he wants us as individual researchers to justify what we do implies – in my view – that in some sense research is viewed as some kind of luxury and that we are in some way privileged. Make no mistake, I do feel very lucky and privileged to get paid to do a job I enjoy and that brings me much satisfication. I just don’t believe that research is a luxury. It is a crucial part of our economy and is a primary reason why we have world class universities and graduates that can subsequently contribute significantly to our economy. Of course at some level we do have to justify how public money is spent and how much should be spent. But, like other publically funded areas, I just feel that it should be done in a much broader way. Holistic rather than reductionist. It is the science minister and the heads of funding councils who should be making the case to treasury, not individual researchers. What we as researchers and academics have to do – in my view – is to do our teaching and research to the best of our abilities, which then makes it easier for these people to make the case for HE and science funding. This is what we (or certainly me) were hired to do.

Evan Harris was, once again, fantastic. He even managed to keep his comedy (which is actually pretty funny) at what seemed like a perfectly reasonable level this time. He seems to really understand the value of universities and of university research and he makes clear and coherent arguments about how we should fund these organisations and the role of science in society. In fairness, maybe it is easier to make these kind of idealistic arguments if you’re never likely to become science minister and never have to deal with more of the realities of the job, but he makes them extremely well nonetheless. He also seems to be the only person making the argument that research funding plays a crucial role in ensuring that we have world class universities that can attract world class academics. He also seems to realise that to attract world class academics into university and research jobs, we are going to have to make sure that the career prospects are attractive. Academics and researchers are a resource but not an infinite one, and the more pressure we place on these people and the more we imply that their role is not of obvious value, the less likely we are to attract people into such careers. He also seems to recognise the issue of gender imbalance in academia and that it is not a simple problem. For some reason, women are less likely to remain in academic or research jobs and we need to do something to reverse this trend.

All in all, I’m very pleased that science is a becoming an important election issue, but concerned that the two main parties are not making a convincing case that they genuinely believe in the value of science and scientific research. I would really like to see Evan Harris playing a bigger role in making science policy, so would be quite comfortable with a hung parliament. Adam Afriyie, on the other hand, seems to think a hung parliament would be a disaster which suggests – to me at least – that what is driving the Tories is a desire to be in power, rather than a desire to play a role in developing policy that would be of benefit to the UK and its people.

Restructuring the STFC

The Department for Business, Innovations and Skills (BIS) has announced the new arrangements for the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) which is the result of Paul Drayson’s review of STFC. This has been reported in a number of places already, including the BBC, the Times Online and has already been covered in various blogs such as the telescoper, Leaves on the Line, and The S word.

I haven’t been particularly complimentary about Paul Drayson in my earlier posts but, to be fair, the result of his review seems quite reasonable. The basic idea seems to be that BIS “expects to continue to provide STFC with a level of protection similar to that which has been provided this year and last in respect of the additional costs of international subscriptions due to exchange rate changes.” The intention is also that there will be better long-term planning of the costs of running and operating large facilities. Basically, they will attempt to protect the grants line from being completely overrun by exchange rate fluctuations and unexpected increases in the cost of running large facilities. All in all, quite sensible and a lot of credit must go to the various blogs (mainly the telescoper, the eAstronomer, and Living in the Real World), who have regularly been highlighting the issues, and to people like Paul Crowther and Brian Cox, who have been very vocal about the various issues with the structure of STFC and the importance of Physics in our society and economy.

I don’t really need to say much more about the details as they have been covered extensively by others. One of the reasons I wanted to write a post was to add my voice to the others who, although supportive of the suggested changes, feel that fixing the structure may not really be enough. A lot of damage has already been done to our ability to carry out world class research in Physics and Astronomy. I believe that a strong Physics research base is crucial to the country’s ability to sustain world class universities and to support an economy that relies more and more heavily on science and technology. Simply protecting grant funding at the current level is not going to ensure that we are able to maintain a world class research base in Physics and Astronomy.

I also think there is a real problem with the current STFC senior management, or at least with certain individuals. There are some exceptions but, by and large, the community seems to no longer have any confidence in the people who are running STFC. I also don’t quite understand why the government still has any confidence in the senior management. Right from the moment STFC was formed, numerous people have been highlighting issues with the structure of STFC. I have followed the STFC crisis pretty much from day one and at no time did any member of the senior STFC management acknowledge that there were any problems. What is more, they didn’t even seem to acknowledge that any real damage was being done to Physics and Astronomy research in the UK. If anything, the message from STFC management was that there were too many Physicists and Astronomers and that cutting back would be a good thing. How can anyone have confidence in a management team that not only doesn’t recognise structural problems with the organisation they are running (despite these problems being pointed out at regularly intervals) but doesn’t even seem to value what they are explicitly meant to be supporting. In fairness, the problem may well lie with one or two individuals rather than with the team as a whole, but some major changes in this team would also seem to be required if we really are to have an organisation that can effectively support world class research in Physics and Astronomy.

Paul Drayson and Scientific Impact!

Paul Drayson recently gave the Nairn Lecture in Oxford and the title of his speech was “Science: where now?”. Apart from mentioning how successful and clever he had been, it seemed to focus primarily on the relationship between scientific research and economic impact. He specifically states “our capacity to create wealth from science needs to improve – to deliver the strong economic growth and jobs”. If any have read my other posts you will know that I am not a fan of the current impact agenda. This is not because I think scientific research shouldn’t deliver impact, it’s because I don’t believe what is being introduced will in any way help scientific research to deliver more impact and will ultimately be a complete waste of time and money.

It’s my view that if the government wants scientific research to deliver more impact, it should be putting more pressure on industry to communicate with researchers and to take more risks. To me, this is illustrated by the following statement taken from Paul Drayson’s speech

“I remind you that it was UK scientists who invented ultrasound. It was UK scientists who sequenced DNA. It was UK scientists who made the breakthrough on plastic electronics. It was UK scientists who got there first on monoclonal antibodies. In each case, commercialisation happened elsewhere.”

What I think he is trying to say here is that researchers in the UK have been very good at doing world class research, but very bad at exploiting it.  This may indeed be true, but what it actually illustrates – in my view – is that UK industry is very poor at exploiting the world class research that takes place in this country.  Is it reasonable to expect scientific researchers to do both the research and the exploitation (at the moment I seem to barely have time for the research).  In my opinion, it is not.  What motivates researchers is solving the puzzle, what motivates entrepreneurs and industrialists is presumably exploiting the results of the research.  Providing a way for entrepreneurs and industrialists to exploit the results of research done in the UK with public money (assuming that an appropriate amount of the resulting wealth remains in the public sector) seems perfectly reasonable.  Doing it by suggesting that the world class researchers should do better does not.

The more I encounter Paul Drayson, the less impressed I am.  We may well have a problem in the way in which we deliver impact from scientific research.  Trying to fix this by putting more pressure on those who are doing their part well, however, seems simplistic and short-sighted.   Part of me is pleased that he probably only has a few months left as science minister. Another part is terrified by what we will get in his place.

The case for fundamental science!

I’ve been trying to get this post going for a while and am not really sure how to start, so apologies if it seems somewhat rambling and incoherent. As most of you know, the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) prioritisation exercise, that was largely finalised on December 16, has resulted in significant cuts to facilities, exploitation grants, and to fellowships and studentships. The one positive outcome is that Paul Drayon (The Minister for Science and Innovation) has now recognised (quite why it took him so long is a mystery) that “there are real tensions in having international science projects, large scientific facilities and UK grant giving roles within a single Research Council” and will find a solution by the end of February. A number of solutions have been presented some of which are summarised in Jon Butterworth’s Life and Physics blog.  Some more detail can be found in these slides from Paul Crowther’s STFC funding crisis webpages.

Given the current situation, all of these suggestions are reasonably sensible and we may well end up going down one of these routes in the near future. One problem I have is that none of these really intend to even try to resolve the real problem :  for the foreseeable future, Astronomy, Particle Physics and Nuclear Physics (PPAN) will be funded at a level that barely makes them viable. The projected level of exploitation funding suggests that only 1 in 4 academic staff will be funded at any one time and that grant success rates will be something like 1 in 12. As pointed out in Mike Cruise’s (outgoing Chairman of the Astronomy Grants Panel) slides, also on Paul Crowther’s STFC page, this means that on average most academics will only hold two STFC funded research grants during their career. What is more likely is that some will be more successful at holding onto grants (especially if they are successful early on in their careers) and many others may never have a successful grant application. Some of these may still have successful research careers, but with the inclusion of Full Economic Costing it is going to become increasing difficult to sustain a research career without funding.

Over time one would expect Physics (and Astronomy) departments to slowly move from PPAN research areas to areas that are more likely to receive funding, potentially reducing the number of PPAN staff by as much as three-quarters (the most extreme scenario admittedly). Some of you may note that this is roughly in line with a recommendation of the Wakeham Review of Physics , namely :

The Panel recommends to the Funding Councils and Research Councils that they work together to consider how they can encourage physics departments to reclaim the intellectual leadership in the broader spectrum of physics supported across the full science base.

Although the Wakeham review was generally well received, I do have one problem with it.  Rather that reviewing Physics in the UK, it reviewed Physics Departments.  One of the conclusions (implied by the above statement from the review) is that there is too much fundamental physics taking place in Physics Departments (or more correctly, Physics Departments are too reliant on STFC funding). In fact, I have heard, that this has resulted in a general view that too large a fraction of UK Physics funding is spent on fundamental physics and not enough on applied physics.  In truth this view may have been held prior to the Wakeham Review, but the Review certainly didn’t help.  The problem with this view is that it ignores all the physics taking place in other departments (Engineering, Medicine, Chemistry, Biology, Geosciences, Mathematics, etc.).

The idea that a lot of fundamental physics research takes place in Physics Departments and that applied physics research moves out into other departments seems perfectly reasonable to me.  This isn’t to say that Physics Departments shouldn’t do applied research, but just that being dominated by fundamental research may not be unreasonable. Certainly changing the makeup of Physics Departments because of some misconception about physics research in the UK seems like the wrong reason for doing it. It seems important to me that we should be making the case that not only is the fraction of physics funding spent on fundamental physics not too high, but that Physics departments being dominated by fundamental research areas is perfectly fine (as long as the applied research is being done effectively and in the appropriate place).

What is more, I think we also need to make a passionate case for the value of fundamental research itself.  Brian Cox in his two articles in the S word (here and here) has done a really good job of making the case for fundamental science, and so have others. It just doesn’t seem to be having any impact with those who are making the decisions.

We need to convince people that the reason we do this is because we are fascinated by the subject and that it is curiosity driven. What is more, society in general is fascinated and we are a much better society as a result of our understanding of the universe and the world around us than we would be if we were ignorant of these things. At this stage some might argue that this places us in the same positions as the arts, who are not funded nearly as well as the sciences. The difference is that we also know that physics itself underpins something like 6% (~ £40 billion a year) of our economy. The ability to attract students into physics degrees to sustain this sector of our economy is crucial and there is good evidence that a fascination with fundamental physics is a prime factor in students deciding to do physics. Spending less than £1 billion per year to underpin a sector of our economy worth about £40 billion a year seems like a really small price to pay.  I am convinced that the damage being done today to research in fundamental physics will have a negative impact on our ability to attract good students into physics degrees.

We then have the additional benefit that some fundamental research produces completely unexpected results that change the way we live and have an economic benefit that completely dwarfs what has been spent funding the research itself. This is particularly unique to fundamental research, since applied research is inherently predictable. Again, I’m not arguing against applied physics, but arguing that we must not undervalue the importance of fundamental research (I should clarify here that my definition of fundamental research is research that is curiosity driven, while my definition of applied research is research with a particular, well defined goal – i.e., the result is essentially known and the research is trying to work out how to get there).

My concern for the near future is that although people are making these type of arguments, the general view is that the Science Minister wants to make a decision by the end of February and that there is no chance of extra money.  What will therefore happen is that – rather than making a passionate defence of fundamental physics and putting pressure on the government to protect a research area that is crucial for our society and economy – we will essentially give the Science Minister what he wants in order to protect the small amount of funding that remains.  In a sense we would rather keep what we have than take the risk of damaging it further by annoying the government and the Science Minister.  To a large extent I believe that, as publicly funded scientists, if we feel that what we do is important and that the current cuts will do immense damage to our society and economy, we have an obligation to fight against it.  We should not sacrifice the future to protect the small amount of funding we have today – it is selfish and cowardly.

The one thing I have not mentioned is, who does the fighting?  There have been plenty of very good articles in newspapers and on blogs making the case for fundamental science, but this doesn’t seem to be enough (although they have clearly had some impact).  Even David Mitchell has been in on the act. One person would be the head of the research council responsible for funding research in fundamental physics. However, since he doesn’t seem to believe in the value of fundamental science (my opinion admittedly, rather than a fact) and seems to think we spend too much money on exploitation grants anyway, this is unlikely to happen. Although I believe strongly that we should continue to fight for fundamental physics because we believe in its intrinsic value, I am not particularly hopeful of much success.

CaSE Science Debate

I watched and listened – last night – to the Science and Engineering Policy Debate between Adam Afriyie (Shadow Science and Innovation Minister), Paul Drayson (the current Minister for Science and Innovation) and Evan Harris (the Liberal Democrat science spokesman).  The debate was organised by the Campaign for Science and Engineering (CaSE) and was chaired by Roger Highfiled, the editor of New Scientist.  I was a bit disappointed as I was rather selfishly hoping that the STFC situation would be discussed in more detail and that there would be more discussion about including the assessment of “impact” in future funding decisions.   Both of these were covered, but only briefly, and the debate was explicitly steered towards more of a discussion about future science policy, rather than a discussion of existing issues, and each candidate was pushed to give their partys’s views on various topics.  This was okay, but it did mean that a broad range of topics were covered and that nothing was really covered in any detail.  The three speakers were all extremely polite and complimentary about each other, so nothing particularly exciting happened.  Adam Afriyie even commented that Paul Drayson was a good Science Minister who was probably in the wrong party. As good as Paul Drayons may or may not be, I’m somewhat disturbed by the fact that the he is unelected, and the fact that one can qualify to be a government minister by being made a Lord seems somewhat archaic and undemocratic.  The same is true for Peter Mandelson and the less said about that the better.

Overall I thought Adam Afriyie was a little benign.  Didn’t say anything that I particularly liked or disliked.  Paul Drayson was disappointing.  I quite like the fact that he’s on Twitter and that he seems to be trying to listen to others and to actually take on board what they are saying, but whenever I listen to him I get the impression that he really doesn’t get the subtleties of scientific research.  He also seems to be spouting more and more of the standard party rhetoric and had to be pushed to use the word “cuts” rather than “efficiency savings”.  He still regurgitates the rather simplistic arguments about why including impact statements is a good thing and that it won’t have a negative impact on fundamental research.  He also stated that the government needs to fund more applied research in order to help the economy as if this was obvious and didn’t really merit much discussion.  I don’t have a problem with applied research at all, but nothing the government does now regarding research funding (apart from possibly using a Keynesian approach and increasing it) is going to fix the current recession, so increasing funding for applied research to help the economy now is almost certainly not going to work.   Another issue I have with increasing the amount of government funding for applied research is that it could further discourage industry (which in my view is where a lot of applied research should take place) from investing in research.  The government should really be putting more pressure on industry to take more risks, not spending taxpayers money on research that will be of short or medium term benefit to industry.  As decent as I think Paul Drayon is trying to be, I personally don’t think he’s a particularly good Science Minister and I’m not particularly confident about the outcome of his review of STFC that is due to be completed by the end of February (although I am at least pleased that he has recognised that there is a problem).

Evan Harris, on the other hand, was fantastic.  He was very well informed and a lot of comments were hard-hitting and direct.  He was also hilarious.  Maybe he shouldn’t try quite as hard to be funny, but he is pretty good at it.  Could almost be a comedian.  I was really impressed by how he performed and by what he presented as the Liberal Democrats’s views about how science should be funded and what kind of role it should play in society.  I particularly liked his argument that politicians who misuse data and statistics should be hammered for doing so.  I’m really hoping that the Liberal Democrats do well in the upcoming elections, but am not particularly hopeful.  The media seems to largely write them off as having no hope and I’m not quite sure why this is.  I’m starting to suspect that the various media outlets are too strongly tied to individual political parties and as a result the different parties are not getting objectively represented (I may be saying something patently obvious here).  I suspect the fact that the Liberal Democrats are unlikely to form the next government gives them the freedom to say what they like and to make promises that they might never have to keep, but I’m not sure we should hold that against them and I’m quite prepared at this stage to take them at face value.  Labour and the Conversatives have proven that when they’re in government they can’t keep their promises, so maybe it’s time to give the Liberal Democrats their chance.  Really can’t be any worse, can it?

Science funding after the next election

While following the #stfc comments on twitter, I noticed that someone made a comment along the lines of “who’ll vote for the Labour party now”. To a certain extent, I agree. I certainly have no desire to see Labour win the next election. They have ultimately managed to do immense damage to some very productive areas of British science, and the UK doesn’t appear to be a better place to live now than it was before Labour came to power in 1997 (as an aside, my father – who left the UK many years ago – commented, when visiting recently, that politicians used to say “continue to serve” but now shamelessly say “remain in power”).

Something that concerns me, however, is the impression I have that many people’s automatic alternative to Labour is the Conservatives. The reasoning seems to be that the only other possible party is the Liberal Democrats, but they’ve never been in power and so the Conservatives are the only viable alternative. This really doesn’t make sense to me. As far as I’m aware the pre-1997 Conservative government was at least as bad as the current Labour government, if not worse. We surely cannot want the next government to contain any of those who were involved in the pre-1997 Conservative government (I’m referring here to ministers rather than backbench MPs). Admittedly I suspect very few – if any – of the current Conservative shadow ministers were in the pre-1997 cabinet, in which case they have as much experience as any of the Liberal Democrat shadow ministers. Therefore why is there a general assumption that the Conservatives are capable of running the next government, while the Liberal Democrats are not. It’s true I guess that there are currently more Conservative MPs than Liberal Democrat MPs, but all (or at least most) of those who would actually be in the next cabinet are probably currently experienced MPs.

As far as current performance is concerned, I think the Liberal Democrats have been quite impressive. Vince Cable seemed to have a good handle on the financial crisis well before either Alistair Darling or George Osborne. Evan Harris, the Liberal Democrat Science Minister, seemed to perform quite well in an event discussing the future of UK science, certainly better than the Conservative Shadow Minister Adam Afriyie (there’ll be another debate in late January). Phil Willis has also, in my view, been a very good Chairman of the Science and Technology Committee (what used to be known as the Select Committee on Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills). In fact, it was their report on STFC that prompted me to write this post. Maybe I’m biased, but the report seemed remarkably honest and straightforward and pretty much confirmed what many people had been saying. In particular, it essentially confirmed that a primary issue is that STFC was not formed with sufficient funding to maintain current programmes, saying

We remain concerned that the former PPARC community has been saddled with a £75 million (at 2006/07 prices) funding deficit derived from CCLRC to meet the additional running costs of Diamond and ISIS TS2, despite assurances from the Government that STFC would be formed without any legacy issues. We conclude that the combined budget of PPARC and CCLRC was never going to be sufficient for STFC to manage Diamond, ISIS TS2, the other large facilities and all the PPARC research programmes. This was noted by the National Audit Office in January 2007, and therefore the Government should have known and should have acted upon it. The fact that it did not has had unfortunate consequences. We believe that the Government should ensure that its original commitment to leave no legacy funding issues from the previous Councils is honoured.

Somewhat surprisingly, for what is essentially a government report and might normally be expected to be somewhat restrained, it was also very critical of the way in which STFC was being run, stating explicitly

Substantial and urgent changes are now needed in the way in which the Council is run in order to restore confidence and to give it the leadership it desperately needs and has so far failed properly to receive. This raises serious questions about the role and performance of the Chief Executive, especially his ability to retain the confidence of the scientific community as well as to carry through the necessary changes outlined here.

Of course, some changes have been made, but I suspect many would argue that these changes weren’t sufficient. The Science Minister – Paul Drayson – has now agreed in a recent press release that there are problems with the structure of STFC and intends to find a solution within a few months. My suspicion is that a solution to the structural problems will be found (even one that we may be happy with), but no real attempt will be made to resolve the legacy funding issues.

I guess this post started with a discussion of which party may end up forming the next government and has ended up back with a discussion of STFC. Let me finish by saying that I’m not arguing that everyone should choose the Liberal Democrats, rather than the Conservatives, as an alternative to Labour, or even that people shouldn’t vote Labour. I don’t belong to the Liberal Democrat Party and, in fact, am not a fan of party politics – I think the Three Line Whip is completely undemocratic. I am, however, worried that we’ll end up with a Conservative government primarily to punish Labour, rather than because everyone who voted for the Conservatives believes in their policies (maybe I’m not giving the general British public enough credit though). I also think that, as far as science funding is concerned, a future Conservative government may result in us harking back to the good old days of Labour. In truth, since party politics is here to stay I would actually rather we had three strong parties, than two parties who seem to be essentially the same as each other, or at least very similar. I might even be happy with a hung parliament. They can spend more time booing and hissing at each other in Westminster and less time messing about with things more to suit their political goals than to really make things work more effectively.

STFC prioritisation

Feeling slightly shell-shocked, partly as a result of yesterday’s STFC announcement, and partly because of the amount of interest shown in my previous post . More people read this post in the hour after Brian Cox tweeted about it (thanks for that), than had read all my other posts combined.

I’m not quite sure what to say about the STFC announcement. It seems like they found (were given) £14 million which allowed them to avoid having to claw back money from existing grants. There were, however, a number of closures (managed withdrawals) including the UK Infrared Telescope (UKIRT), Gemini, NLS, ALICE, Boulby, to name a few. There’s a 25% cut in studentships and in Fellowships and a 10% cut in exploitation grants. A comment by Russell Smith on the telescoper’s blog suggests that there has been effectively a 25% cut in Astronomy funding, 27% for Space, 17% for Particle Physics, and 52% for Nuclear Physics. I assume that this doesn’t include ESA, ESO and CERN contributions though.

The cut in grant funding may seem reasonably small, but there are some who think that this will only be applied after those proposals that rely on withdrawn facilities are removed – although I’m slightly confused about how removing proposals that haven’t yet been funded can affect the cut. My main concern regarding grant funding is what impact this will have on Standard Grants. If there is a desire to roughly keep the number of Rolling Grants constant – and since there is a minimum level of funding for a Rolling Grant – it’s possible that the amount of money left for Standard Grants could be vanishingly small (rumours of a 5% success rate). I have some sympathy with Paul Crowther’s comment on the eAstronomer’s blog suggesting that we should aim to have a level playing field and make sure that we don’t disadvantage some in the community simply because of their circumstances. We probably, however, don’t want to move towards a system in which we’re applying for grants every 3 months. We probably also want to at least have some flexibility (supposedly one of the main reasons for the Rolling Grant system). If we have fixed-term projects and tie too much of our research funding tightly to these projects, then we may have lots of situations in which research staff leave part way through a project and we’re left with too little money to hire someone new, and can’t use the money to help fund an existing researcher on a similar project who may just need a few months to finish off something equally valuable.

All in all I think I’m essentially resigned to the current situation and largely agree with the general view (expressed by some on the other blogs) that although we could argue about the details, the outcome was determined once STFC had been formed without enough money to carry on funding these research areas at previous levels. I’m pleased to see the final statement in Paul Drayson’s press release acknowledging that “there are real tensions in having international science projects, large scientific facilities and UK grant giving roles within a single Research Council”. He hopes to find a better solution by the end of February 2010. Doesn’t really help us now, but maybe there is a glimmer of hope for the future.

STFC: Investing in the future?

The Council of the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) are meeting today to discuss future science prioritisation and will announce the outcome of this meeting tomorrow (16 December) at 2pm. According to their website this is being headlined as STFC: Investing in the future 2010-2015. Sounds wonderful, doesn’t it? The truth is that tomorrow may see the complete destruction of some British Science areas (Astronomy, Particle Physics and Nuclear Physics) that have, to date, been extremely productive and successful. Complete destruction may be a little over-the-top, but not by as much as you might think.

So why is there a problem? It seems that when the STFC was formed from the merger of PPARC and CCLRC a couple of years ago, it wasn’t actually given enough money to carry on doing what the previous two councils had been doing. There is some debate about this and the Science Minister – Paul Drayson – and the head of RCUK – Alan Thorpe – seem to think it was, but many others (MPs included) are convinced that it was not. Whatever the truth is, STFC needed to borrow some money in order to cover its costs two years ago and last year. The total amount borrowed was about £47 million. It now needs to repay this money this coming year and it is still effectively short of something like £20 million if it wants to carry on with current projects. This means it needs to somehow find something like £70 million right now in order to balance its budget.

Today’s meeting is therefore going to be a prioritisation excercise. The reality, however, is that rather than having something like £100 million of uncommitted spending, STFC will have something like £30 million. This is the money that is used to fund research projects that will exploit STFC facilities and will fund people to carry out the research. The expectation is that the decision will be to effectively slash and burn many very good Astronomy, Particle Physics, and Nuclear Physics research projects and that many people (young researchers primarily) are about to lose their jobs and have their careers cut short before they even have a chance to prove their worth. Effectively we might be looking at a 70% cut in funding with no real hope that it is going to get better in the future.

Maybe STFC has to pretend to the outside world that everything is hunky-dory, but the reality is that the meeting today is not about “Investing in the future”, it’s about finding a way to balance the budget probably by cutting the only things that can be cut : funding for research grants. They are being forced to have this meeting due to current circumstances (I would like to say beyond their control, but I’m not sure that’s correct) and not because there is some strong – non-budgetary – strategic reason why they need to consider priorities. I don’t really understand why the organisation that has effectively been responsible for funding Astronomy, Particle Physics and Nuclear Physics is unable to stand up and say that they are being forced – due to budget constraints – to consider major cuts to research funding that could see the end of a golden age in these areas. Hundreds of people may well, tomorrow, discover that they are about to lose their jobs and either have to leave the country or change careers. It seems incredibly disingenuous to pretend that this is about “Investing in the future”. What message does that send to people who’s careers may well be over and to those – like myself – who may still have a job, but will find it difficult to get any funding to do research.

Maybe I should wait till tomorrow before commenting, but part of the reason for writing this blog is just to get things off my chest. I also have a vague hope that if enough is said about this before it is too late to fix it, something positive may happen. It does, however, appear that there isn’t much desire within government or even with STFC to try and find a solution that doesn’t involve massive cuts to research grants. What I find amazing is that the management of STFC, which includes a couple of people who have been active researchers in Astronomy and Particle Physics, are not kicking up more of a fuss. If anything, they are giving the impression that everything is fine, and that the direction STFC is going in is the right direction (i.e., less researchers more facilities). I find it difficult to understand how people can comfortably oversee the destruction of their own research areas without resigning in protest. Maybe this shows great objectivitity, but I still find it hard to understand. I’m also not sure how anyone can retain faith in a senior management that either didn’t make a strong enough case for sufficient funds in the first place, or have mismanaged the budget so badly that they might be (it hasn’t happened yet) forced to do immense damage to what have been – and currently are – some extremely successful research areas.