The effects of cutting QR in England by 15 per cent

Cuts of 15 per cent in the research funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England could redraw the map of research in England, with dozens of universities, hundreds of departments and tens of thousands of researchers potentially losing all their funding.

UPDATE. You can view the full institution-by-institution spreadsheet of losers cited by the Times yesterday and Guardian today here.

Research Benchmarks has looked at three scenarios for implementing cuts of 15 per cent in HEFCE’s £1.6 billion QR budget. The powerful impact on many different kinds of institutions in all three shows there is no easy option for cuts as ministers finalise their plans.

The three scenarios have been inspired by the different emphasis placed on cuts by Vince Cable, David Willetts and Universities UK.

Welcome to spin city

The bonfire of the quangos is a backward step for freedom of information.

Glancing down the list of quangos on the at-risk register I remembered the outcry in the US a few years back when John Bolton, newly appointed US ambassador to the UN said: "The Secretariat building in New York has 38 stories. If it lost ten stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference." In Francis Maude’s 12-page list of 180+ public bodies there are so many ‘unknown unknowns’ you have to wonder whether society will trundle on just as well without them.

Or that’s what I thought until around page-seven. Here were names of bodies I have worked with: like the Human Genetics Commission, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, The Food Standards Agency (which will survive but with bits like nutrition chopped off), the Health Protection Agency, the Human Tissue Authority.

Let me first say that my concerns about losing these bodies is perhaps different from those expressed by their champions. Claims that the HFEA  and HTA have won over scientists and clinicians do not match my experience. Most researchers I meet believe they are heavily over- regulated and most IVF clinicians argue they should be trusted to make decisions with their patients on a case-by-case basis.

It could be Game Over for UK science within days

A week ago, we had the FT story saying the government was planning cuts of £960 million in research. Then Martin Rees said at the press conference on Friday that the gap between a good and bad outcome for the spending review was about £1 billion. These are cuts of around 20 per cent, the level at which the Royal Society has warned the government it would be "Game Over" for Britain's position as a leading scientific nation.

And I’m now told that the decision on the BIS budget could be taken as early as this week. It’s time to face it. Irrational it may be, but in the coming days we really are staring into the barrel of the deepest cuts in science spending ever contemplated by any British government - cuts that for an entire generation of scientists, for Britain's hopes for a hi-tech economic future really do mean Game Over.

Nesta chief to quit as quango's fate hangs in the balance

The chief executive of the National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts announced he is quitting the post just days before a leaked government document revealed the organisation is not yet safe from abolition.


In a letter to leaders of science organisations dated 21 September, Jonathan Kestenbaum revealed that he is leaving NESTA to take over the helm of Five Arrows Ltd from owner Jacob Rothschild.


On 24 September, a document leaked to the BBC revealed that NESTA’s future is “still to be decided” as part of a government cull of arms length bodies.


There are 180 bodies on the leaked list that are to be abolished and a further 124 that will be merged, the BBC reports.

Although NESTA’s future is still up in the air its leader is departing at a crucial time.


“It will be a great wrench to leave NESTA but I have discussed it with the board and they understand that working with Lord Rothschild to expand and develop the investment company is an extraordinary privilege,” Kestenbaum wrote.


Bodies on the list to be abolished include the Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property.


The Department of Health’s advisory bodies on HIV, AIDS, dangerous pathogens and its Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition will all be abolished and brought into the department. The same fate awaits its Alcohol Education and Research Council.


As previously announced, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority and Human Tissue Authority will also go.


The Higher Education Funding Council for England, the seven research councils and the Technology Strategy Board are on the list to be retained.


Meanwhile, the Royal Society of Chemistry is “ready and willing” to fill the gap left behind by the abolished quangos.


“The RSC’s specialist member groups offer much science and education expertise offered by bodies reportedly facing the axe, such as the Air Quality Expert Group, Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition and numerous others,” said chief executive Richard Pike in a statement. “Should these bodies be abolished or combined, the collective expertise of the 46,000 members of the RSC stands ready and willing to assist the government in making sound, evidence-based policy decisions.”

How to read Vince Cable's speech to the Lib Dem conference in Liverpool

Vince Cable gave a wideranging speech at the Lib Dem conference yesterday. What follows below is an annotated version of the speech, with my comments in red.

The main talking points are capitalism - is Vince a red? - and student fees.

***

I have come to account to you, conference, for the work I have been carrying out in the coalition government.

I have managed to infuriate the bank bosses; acquire a fatwa from the revolutionary guards of the trades union movement; frighten the Daily Telegraph with a progressive graduate payment; and upset very rich people who are trying to dodge British taxes. I must be doing something right.

This is pure essence of Cable - don’t try and pigeonhole me. But that “graduate payment” clangs like a dropped saucepan from the man who spun us “graduate tax” a few weeks back.

What Nick Clegg just told us about student fees

In questions at the Lib Dem conference yesterday, Nick Clegg sounded extremely sure about where the debate is going on fees for undergraduate tuition. He said that abolishing fees would cost about £12.5 billion over the course of a parliament and that the only issue was over affordability.

"The only question is over when we can afford to scrap tuition fees," he said.

He was very deliberate, very precise. It wasn't a matter of if or how but merely of when. He sounded to me like a man who is confident that the coalition's eventual policy will allow him to hold true to this line. This suggests he has at least an understanding with David Cameron over the shape of the policy approach to come, even if numbers and timings are currently missing. But I confess I'm baffled as to what Clegg's words yesterday really signify.

Clegg's language is more or less the same as he was using before the election. An important difference is that then he was outlining ways in which fees could be gradually removed over six years. That timescale was missing yesterday, which Clegg highlighted.

The thing that baflles me is how Clegg is going to deliver on this promise in a way that doesn't ring achingly hollow. Why would the Conservatives hand a huge hoard of precious cash over to the Lib Dems for a victory that would be indelibly remembered as a Clegg victory rather than a Cameron victory?

And Clegg didn't use the word "progressive" that Vince Cable always does when talking about this. Evan Harris earlier this week wrote about the "progressive wing" of the Lib Dems for what seems to have been the first time, suggesting both that political differences within the party are crystallising and that it is the non-progressives (ie Clegg and co) who are in charge.

Ideas anyone on what policy could make sense of what Clegg is saying?

Why is Vince Cable relying on an out of touch David Sainsbury?

You can't really blame him. It's not his job any more. But looking to David Sainsbury for any kind of insight into the new government's policies on science seems a pointless exercise given his performance at the British Science Festival last week.

First, Sainsbury effectively avoided policy issues in his speech and didn't mention the word "cuts". Was that diplomacy or a sensible man who knows he no longer has a proper grip on the issues?

Second, Sainsbury seemed unaware that David Willetts exists, let alone that he had said anything about research policy. In the Q&A that followed the speech, he said all we have to go on is Vince Cable's recent speech (which is in any case his third touching on this topic by my reckoning).

Third, although aware that Cable had upset some scientists, Sainsbury kept talking about a television interview rather than the radio interview that actually offended.

Fourth, when pressed in the Q&A, Sainsbury said Cable had said lots of good things but then added, "My view is you have to actually wait and see in terms of what comes out of the spending review."

There's really no reason we should expect anything more from Sainsbury. He's done his stint. But that does make the fact that Cable seems to be citing him as a supporter of the government's policy (if true) seem a bit desperate. As we've seen, it's not the policy approach being advocated by Cable and Willetts that's in question; it's the political will to see that policy through to it's logical conclusion, as in France, Germany and the US. That's a question for the spending review and George Osborne. And it's on precisely this point, the nub of it all, that Sainsbury is witholding support.

PS In contrast to earlier reports that BIS on the verge of settling in the CSR, Michael Crick is now reporting that it's all up in the air until after the Browne review reports, which seems much more sensible.

PPS Thanks to Alice Bell for nudge on this.

The Faustian Pact: Hawking's Greedy Reductionism

“… in their eagerness for a bargain, in their zeal to explain too much too fast, scientists[...]underestimate the complexities, trying to skip whole layers or levels of theory in their rush to fasten everything securely and neatly to the foundation.” [The American cognitive scientist, Daniel Dennett, on ‘greedy reductionism’]

In his new book, The Grand Design, published on September 9, and part-extracted by The Times, Stephen Hawking claims to have killed off not only ‘God’, but also philosophy, and to “have found the grand design”, for both after, and before, time zero. For such a brilliant mind, I find this ToE-curlingly naïve. The very idea of a ‘Theory of Everything’ is itself a philosophical trope by which ‘all knowledge’ is to be unified and reduced to one theory in physics. The arrogance is worthy of a jealous God, and it is a classic example of what Daniel Dennett has termed ‘greedy reductionism’. It is also paradoxical that, while Hawking embraces eleven dimensions and multiverses, he can grasp neither the concept of a dimensionless ‘God’ nor the existence of multiphilosophies.

Hawking is not the first physicist to fall for the Faustian Pact of seeking ‘all knowledge’ - “Daß ich erkenne, was die Welt/ Im Innersten zusammenhält” (Goethe’s Faust, lines 382-3). Most famously, perhaps, there was Paul Dirac at the 5th Solvay International Conference in 1927. After much discussion on religion and science, the Austrian physicist, Wolfgang Pauli, who had been brought up as a Catholic, wryly commented to much laughter: “Es gibt keinen Gott und Dirac ist sein Prophet” (“There is no God and Dirac is his Prophet”). Mephistopheles was already in mocking flight.

Climate targets will not be met without research strategy

The UK lacks a research strategy for meeting the targets set out in the 2008 Climate Change Act, according to a new report from Research Fortnight. 

The Act requires an 80 per cent cut in CO2 emissions from 1990 levels to be made before 2050. But the report, which looked at research programmes across government, found there is no coordinated strategy on how to gain the knowledge needed to meet the requirements.

The lack of a strategy leaves the government open to duplication of research and missing out on the studies needed to meet targets, the report suggests.

Financing Climate Research: A guide for UK researchers and policymakers, published on 15 September, was compiled by a team of writers and researchers led by the publication’s comment and analysis editor John Dwyer.

The report finds there is no agreed figure for how much the UK's is spending on climate change research or where. Priorities of the government’s 10-year, £1 billion flagship climate research programme, Living With Environmental Change, do not align with the Climate Act, it adds.

The report also highlights particular fields, such as questions around climate ‘tipping points’ and forecasting, where further study should be commissioned. Capacity for social and behavioural research, as well as a general capacity to commission and process research, is lacking from the Department for Energy and Climate Change, it adds.

The report is designed for UK-based individuals and organisations applying for climate change research funds, and also for those who provide funding and includes information on UK funding sources compared to the EU.

It finds that the Seventh Framework Programme of the European Commission is the single largest source of funding for climate change research and includes advice and case studies on making successful applications.

Report available here.

Book launch debacle a blow to Ireland's scientific reputation

***From our Ireland correspondent, Dick Ahlstrom***

Ireland’s science minister Conor Lenihan has been in the wars over the past few days, all over a simple book launch planned for Wednesday 15 September. But while the launch was straightforward enough the book wasn’t, a tome declaring that evolution is nothing more than a fantasy and a hoax.

The Origin of Specious Nonsense by John J May is a rambling, pointless book that purports to smash the “theory” of evolution. It readily disregards the abundance of scientific research across many disciplines that shows quite clearly that evolution is not a theory but accepted mainstream science. Even the Catholic Church readily agrees, but not Mr May. Enough said.

Lenihan started a firestorm of tweets, emails and news copy after he accepted an invitation to attend and speak at the book launch, hardly an event warranting the involvement of the government’s science minister. Lenihan declared he was attending not as minister but as a friend of the author and the local member of the Irish parliament.

Just as things started to heat up May withdrew his invitation, claiming the abuse levelled at Lenihan was unfair. The junior minister readily accepted the dis-invitation and will now retreat, left to consider whether the loss of an evening out in his constituency was worth a possible threat to his continuance as a minister.

If for no other reason he should have been scared off by the evening’s description as a “Gorillas and Girls” event with Charles Darwin and King Kong on hand to lend their support. One can only wonder what lasting effect this stunt might have on Ireland’s reputation abroad as a good place to do science.