Would Tories put research on the chopping block?

Research funding may not be protected from cuts under a Conservative government, judging by comments made by shadow universities secretary David Willetts this week. So far, the government’s cuts to higher education have mainly fallen on capital budgets and the teaching block grant.

Willetts, at the Times Higher Education Pre-election Debate in London on 24 February, said teaching and research funding needed to be rebalanced with a greater focus on the student experience. Higher education minister David Lammy and Liberal Democrat shadow universities secretary Stephen Williams joined him to lay out how each party would maintain the UK’s strengths in teaching and research.

To an audience filled with students all three MPs professed their backing for raising standards in education, increasing information available to students and raising the profile of teaching to be respected on par with research.

Willetts said he wanted incentives for teaching to be comparable to the funding dished out via research assessment, but he did not specify what they might be or how they might work.

Williams and Lammy also put their weight behind teaching with Williams saying he would encourage rewarding good teachers through promotions. Lammy did not lay out any proposals, saying it was “not something where the government would want to direct”, but said if he had just one goal for the next five years it was that he did not want teaching to be seen as “second tier” within universities.

No one was able to say their party wouldn’t cut higher education spending; hard times ahead was the accepted outlook. Lammy defended the measures the government had already taken while Willetts admitted his party was unlikely to reverse cuts. But, he said, the Conservatives would be clear on when and where cuts would fall, and “level with universities on what it actually means”. 

Meanwhile Williams lamented the fact that the Browne review on funding and fees, which would better lay out the challenge ahead, would not come before the election. He called it a “tragedy is that there will now be no open debate before the election” and instead “lots of wait and sees”.

So, how well did each pitch go down? In a Ready Steady Cook style vote at the end Labour narrowly beat the Lib Dems as having the audience’s favourite higher education policy, with blue votes few and far between. This was despite the fact that on the question of who they thought would win the next election, the Tories won by a landslide.

Bob May on people’s fear of science

Science has advanced human knowledge more in the last 50 years than in all our previous history; but that’s why people are scared of it, former government chief scientific adviser Bob May told an audience at the inaugural Howard Dalton memorial lecture in London last night.

Scientific and technological advancements have led to huge leaps in life expectancy and quality of life - making today the “best of times”, said May. But population growth, the loss of biodiversity and onset of climate change may well lead the future to be “the worst of times”, he added.

May wasn’t trying to predict doomsday. He was trying to explain why the public, rightly, has concerns as well as excitement about the advances of science, and why we need to listen to everyone in making policy decisions.

Policymakers have a critical role to play in deciding which of the doors science can open should be flung wide and which should remain firmly shut, May told the audience. As chief scientific adviser when the first government guidelines on using scientific advice in policymaking were drawn up in 1996, May, hopefully, is in a good position to judge.

In May’s view, science should play a role in setting the stage for the debate, laying out scientific facts and uncertainties. But scientists should then step back into the role of mere citizen once the play begins. Dissenting and “interest” opinions need to be heard, and honestly identified, while uncertainties must be openly acknowledged. At the end of the day, where possible, people must be given a choice, he adds.

But May recognises that there are problems with this model too – not least that the pesky media confuse things, their eye for debate often meaning “balance” unjustly tips the scale it set out to right. Moreover people don’t view risk objectively, and that facts are not always relevant to those arguing from the standpoint of an immutable ideological belief.

May showed evidence that increasing science education actually makes people question technological developments more, rather than embrace them more readily. 

So what to do when making decisions on BSE, GM, MMR or any other terrifying acronym? Try to stick to these rules, embed them in government, say when you’ve messed up and keep talking about the rules so people don’t forget, he suggests.

Doesn’t sound like much, but the 74-year old must still be optimistic, judging by his sprightly jump off the stage and back to his seat.

Ask for less, get more

[This is the first of a new, regular column I'm now doing for Research Fortnight]

It is supposed to be painful.

The cuts in university funding in the coming years announced by the government now total £915 million. Most cuts are due to come from the Higher Education Funding Council for England’s non-research spending. Next year, spending on teaching will be down a shade below £300m, on capital projects by £135m.

This is not just an inevitable consequence of the crunch in government spending. Business Secretary Peter Mandelson announced the latest turn of the screw just before Christmas and he has not been followed by other government departments spelling out new cuts.

Universities have been singled out for torture because the Treasury does not want to waste this crisis. Academic squealing is supposed to batter the public psyche, softening up students and parents ahead of the debate on undergraduate fees later this year. We are going to be told there is no alternative to a hefty rise in fees and tougher conditions on student loans.

Sadly it is not just the government’s finances that are being squeezed. As the impact of the billions injected into the economy peters out, citizens are also going to feel poorer. Asking them to pay more to go to university is not going to be a popular message. Fees will rise, but it is unlikely to be by enough to restore university finances. The Daily Mail will make sure of that.

So universities face years of under-funding, an era of unrelenting grim. What is to be done? The response of vice-chancellors so far, complaining about the damage that cuts will do, is a failure. It does not just bounce off the politicians, it actually assists them in dumping higher fees on the public.

A better idea would be for vice-chancellors to tell the parties they want less money from HEFCE, not more. HEFCE’s teaching budget next year is £4.7 billion and the universities should be seeking commitments from the party leaders before the election to scrap a full £4bn of it. In return, universities should ask for a commitment to provide additional means-tested financial support for all students, and for a sympathetic hearing later in the year when they plead for the cap on fees to be removed.

John Browne’s review of fees later this year can sort out the detail of this trade. But there are 1,267,000 full-time students in England, so a straight swap would add an average of around £3,000 a year to student support. We would probably end up with fees between around £8,000 and £15,000 a year. The substantial government contribution could be used to ensure a generous regime for poorer students so that entry really was needs-blind.

Risky? Undoubtedly. But no government is actually going to want to bankrupt the universities. And consider the radiant beauty of the prize—the return of university independence.

We have grown used to universities being constantly told what to do. But it wasn’t this way in the past and doesn’t have to be this way in future. For the fleeting decades when the welfare state paid everything for students, we needed HEFCE to keep the universities honest. Now, as students themselves pay more and become increasingly demanding in their choice of degree and university, the market can do the job better.

HEFCE’s vestigial £700m a year for teaching, its capital budget and the billions in government research funding would be plenty to ensure universities paid attention to whatever national needs ministers can articulate. Students would get more of what they think is good for them rather than what ministers think is good for them. Competition between universities would boost their competitiveness in the global market for HE.

Just as the Treasury has done, universities should seize the opportunity. Faint heart never won fair maiden.

Defence companies eye research council money

Defence and aerospace companies have started to look to the research councils for funding as the Ministry of Defence’s R&D budget has shrunk over the past few years.

The MoD has cut early-stage research funding by 23 per cent over the last three years, according to the defence industry lobby group ADS, and the defence Green Paper, published earlier this month, was strangely silent on R&D issues.

“The defence industry needs to be clear about possible routes to get research funded and brought through to market. We’re looking at spending right across the funding agencies, seeing what is relevant,” says Derek Marshall, director of policy at ADS. “The research councils have been given more direction to look at national security in their funding.”

Marshall says defence companies are increasingly working with universities to find areas of “mutual interest” in which they can make joint funding bids to the research councils and to the EU’s Framework Programme. Research centres such as Imperial College London’s Institute for Security Science and Technology, run by former MoD chief scientific adviser Keith O’Nions, are of particular interest.

Stuart Parkinson, executive director of the pressure group Scientists for Global Responsibility, says this migration of defence companies into university labs has been going on for some time. “The 2006 Defence Technology Strategy stimulated this,” he says. “It really focused on increasing R&D and collaborating with universities.”

But, he adds, the desire for partnerships is not restricted to industry. Looming cuts to the higher education budget are pushing universities to look for more industry collaborations, and defence companies are an appealing option.

Defence companies are concerned that R&D has “clearly been a low priority” for the government for the past few years, as early stage research has been cut in favour of support for current operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, says Marshall. And the industry was “disappointed” that research was given short shrift in the Green Paper.

Science minister Paul Drayson, who is also the minister for strategic defence acquisition reform, told Research Fortnight that he understands the importance of investing in science and technology now in order to ensure the military has the right equipment in 20 years time. “The point of the Green Paper is to ask questions to set the context for the Strategic Defence Review, which will be followed by an update of the Defence Technology Plan,” he says.

Drayson has also promised that there will be no further reduction in the MoD’s R&D budget of roughly £400 million this year, and the department’s budget is being reorganised to bring science and technology budget policy under the direct control of the MoD chief scientific adviser, Mark Welland.

**A longer version of this story appears on the cover of the 17 February issue of Research Fortnight.

Flagship Welsh institute to cut 70 jobs

The Institute of Biological, Environmental and Rural Sciences at Aberystwyth University is to axe 70 jobs as it attempts to survive a £2.4 million funding deficit.

The institute is to restructure after it found that a 15 per cent reduction in public funding would leave it with the multi-million pound hole in its finances by the end of the 2011-12 financial year.

It has said that compulsory redundancies cannot be ruled out when the 70 positions are cut but that it will seek to achieve as many as possible through redeployment within the university, voluntary redundancies and early retirement.

The institute is a relatively new venture for Aberystwyth, having been launched in 2008 through a merger with the Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research in Gogerddan, funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council. This came with a five-year funding pledge worth £50m.

Wayne Powell, director of IBERS, announced the cuts when he met with staff on 5 February. He said that the institute is going ahead with a multi-million pound capital development programme to bring new teaching and research facilities to IBERS’ two sites and that 13 “strategically important” posts would also be created.

He has opened a 30-day consultation on the plan and will present it to the university’s council on 12 February.

A Facebook group opposing the plan has already attracted over 1,000 members.

Climate panel's future hangs in the balance

Former IPCC chair concedes sceptics are winning the media war

[Cover story from 3 February 2010 issue of Research Fortnight]

Influential scientists are pushing for major changes to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change following a string of embarrassing mistakes in its predictions of global climate impacts. Significant sections of the UK media are also calling for IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri to resign.

In an interview with Research Fortnight, former IPCC chairman Robert Watson said that continued revelations of peer-review lapses show that the IPCC’s peer-review system needs attention. He also said that the panel should start producing shorter, more policy-focused reports and consult a wider range of opinion.

The panel’s problems mounted over the weekend when Sunday newspapers, combing through its reports, spotted a student dissertation and an article in a mountaineering magazine as data sources. Pachauri has already had to apologise when a New Scientist article emerged as the source for an estimate of Himalayan glacier melting. Last week, the Information Commissioner chastised IPCC members at the University of East Anglia for withholding data requested under Freedom of Information legislation.

Commentators and mass-market newspapers are now using the controversy to question whether scientists can be trusted on the fundamental issue of whether human activities are changing global temperatures.

Watson, chief scientist at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, said: “The ammunition this is giving to the anti-global-warming camp is causing concern. The IPCC has slipped up and the sceptics have seized the day in the communications battle.”

So far, few mainstream scientists have stepped up to take on their critics in public events or in the media. Though this is about to change. Groups such as the Science Media Centre in London, for example, are preparing to mobilise their networks into action. Their aim will be to reinforce the large body of scientific opinion on climate change that is not contested.

Watson, nonetheless, acknowledges that the IPCC needs to open up more to minority voices in science. He revealed that he, too, was once a sceptic in the field of atmospheric chemistry and understands the value of scepticism to scientific progress. “I published papers that were critical of scientists who had won Nobel prizes, and my own PhD supervisor. But the basis of my scepticism was evidence and not ideology.”

Watson’s view is echoed by John Houghton, a former head of the Met Office and a senior IPCC member until 2002. Houghton says the IPCC should not be frightened of getting into debate with its critics. He explains that the organisation in the past was open to scientists who were critical about a human influence in climate change. But he warns the sceptics that the broader public interest is not served by being loose with facts. “It’s no good saying that climate models are no good. Lets have a debate on precise details.”

In recent weeks, the sceptical campaign has been boosted by a new high-powered think tank based in London called the Global Warming Policy Foundation, established and chaired by Nigel Lawson, Margaret Thatcher’s chancellor. Its board of trustees and academic advisers constitute a Who’s Who of UK politicians, academics, journalists and the business community.

According to its director Benny Peiser, the foundation does not deny a human influence in global warming, but believes that the IPCC behaves as an activist organisation—for example when Pachauri criticises governments for not doing enough on climate change. “The IPCC should adhere to its original mandate and become policy-neutral,” says Peiser. He also agrees that the organisation needs a broader spread of opinion in its membership. “Including critics will make the review process more water tight.”

The IPCC was set up in 1988 to advise governments on the world’s climate. It produces five-yearly assessments and its scientists need to be nominated by member states of the UN. Governments have begun to invite applications for the fifth assessment, which will report in 2014.

Video of Ehsan Masood discussing this issue on Channel 4 News

EPO election shambles

The European Patent Organisation has for the third time failed to elect a replacement for outgoing president, Alison Brimelow.

Despite the repeated failures, and the looming date of Brimelow’s departure, the EPO’s administrative council insists the next vote, to be held on 1 March, will use the same procedures and with the same pool of candidates.

Three candidates are still vying for the role: Susanne As Sivborg, director general of the Swedish Patent Office, Benoît Battistelli, director general of the French National Institute of Industrial Property and Roland Grossenbacher, director of the Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property.

Sivborg won a majority in the first vote in October, but not the 75 per cent of votes needed to win. The tables then turned in December when Battistelli had the majority of the 36 national patent offices behind him, but again not enough to win outright. News from the administrative council today is that round three of the election was once again a stalemate.

Jesper Kongstad, director general of the Danish Patent and Trademark Office, had been a fourth candidate but dropped out of the race after the second vote in December. Without new candidates, further drop-outs or some serious swings of allegiance, it’s getting harder to see how the administrative council will be able to come to an agreement.

The process to find a president began way back in July last year after Brimelow announced she would leave the institution on 30 June 2010, not completing her five-year term.

The lack of a president looks likely to affect the debate surrounding the EU Patent. The European Parliament will need the currently leaderless EPO’s input and impetus to drive the ambitious project forward.

Welsh scientific adviser finally announced

The Welsh Assembly Government has finally announced the name of the man who will take on the role of chief scientific adviser, and he’s Welsh!

After much head scratching, the Assembly has appointed John Harries, a professor of Earth observation at Imperial College’s Blackett Laboratory, and a member of its Grantham Institute for Climate Research. He will start the job on 1 May.

The appointment follows months of speculation and a dark period last year during which the assembly was thought to be considering scrapping the position entirely due to a lack of funds.

Former first minister Rhodri Morgan commissioned a report as long ago as 2007 to look at whether or not the Assembly needed its own CSA. However, it took until June 2009 for the Assembly to confirm that the position would be created and until now to decide who it should be.

The Assembly is eager to point out that, despite his esteemed career in institutions based in England, Harries is first and foremost, a Welshman, originally from Aberavon. He will take responsibility for promoting science in the assembly’s policy making and will be expected to challenge ministers on their decisions. He will also “provide access on level terms” with John Beddington, the UK government’s CSA.

Harries has held a number of other high profile positions in his time, including associate director of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory’s Space Science Department at director of projects and technology at the British National Space Centre. He has also been president of Royal Meteorological Society.

HEFCE's steeper funding formula a small step towards more concentration

Oxford and Cambridge are set to benefit from the steeper funding ‘slope’ introduced by the Higher Education Funding Council for England for quality related research funding (QR) in 2010-11, according to our preliminary analysis, but the overall changes will be small.

On 1 February the funding council announced a new formula for distributing QR in a letter to universities in England and Northern Ireland. In response to the government’s desire for a greater concentration of research funding, the funding council has increased the weightings for 2*, 3* and 4* work, as judged by the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise, from 1:3:7 to 1:3:9.

The shift will benefit institutions that have a higher proportion of work in the 4* category in the 2008 RAE. First estimates from the Research Fortnight Benchmarking application show Oxford and Cambridge gaining about £4m a year between them, a rise of about 3 per cent, with the losers scattered among the English members of the various university groupings. The rest of the Russell Group shows a marginal gain with the 1994 Group showing a marginal loss, while both the University Alliance and the million+ groups lose about £2m. The University of Newcastle, which got just 14 per cent of its staff into the 4* category, is likely to be among the hardest hit, and could lose around half a million a year.

Despite the small amounts of money involved, some universities are still concerned about the direction this is going. They point to the fact that HEFCE calls this an "initial step towards increased concentration" and worry that there are other plans afoot to concentrate it further in years to come.

HEFCE also decided to tweak the QR allocations for geography and psychology, which were left outside of the ring fence for science disciplines last year.  HEFCE says it recognises that “around half the research activity in these disciplines…could reasonably be regarded as more akin to work in STEM disciplines than to that in the other social sciences”, geography and psychology will receive 50 per cent of the additional funding that they would have received had there been no STEM ring fence. Got that?

Could the Extremely Large Telescope be built on European soil?

Jerzy Buzek, the president of the European Parliament, is backing plans to construct the European Extremely Large Telescope in the Canary Islands, Research Europe has learned.

Buzek will announce his support for the project on 3 February, paving the way for debates on whether the location for the 1 billion euro telescope should be chosen according scientific or socio-economic factors.

A European Southern Observatory team is currently considering a number of sites for the project, including the Canary Islands, home to the European Northern Observatory, and Chile, where ESO's Southern Observatory is based. The group is due to report back to the ESO council during its meeting in March, although some believe it is unlikely that a final decision will be made on the spot. Meanwhile, a delegation from the European Parliament is to visit the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory on 19 February to learn more about the location.

Those backing the Canary Islands are likely to argue that the location provides tax benefits and presents an opportunity to develop the region. They may also suggest that the site is already fairly well prepared to host the 42 meter diameter segmented mirror project, whereas the Chile site might absorb more cash during the construction phase. The islands are already home to a number of astronomy projects, led by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias.

However, the Chilean side may equally argue that Europe has already spent a considerable amount of money in developing Chile as a base for its astronomy work and that the E-ELT would provide the perfect complement to existing instruments in the region.

Rows over the importance of socio-economic factors when choosing locations for European projects have arisen before, including that over the site for the European Spallation Source. This ultimately went to Lund in Sweden, despite competition from less developed regions, such as Debrecen in Hungary.

Some newer member states have lobbied for research infrastructures to be used as a means to develop their regions rather than locating them in areas that already host research facilities, even if they might offer a better scientific environment. Those backing La Palma will argue that the Canary Islands fits the bill in both respects.