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?

David Miliband on quantum mechanics

David Miliband is a brave man.

Some media commentators believe that the UK foreign secretary is a coward -- he refused to wield the knife in the (latest) failed coup against PM Gordon Brown. But anyone who thinks Miliband is lacking in courage should have seen him in action before a gathering of the world's top scientists at the Royal Society in London last night.

Miliband gave a short lecture drawing parallels between foreign policy quantum mechanics, while at the same time admitting that he only managed a grade-D in A-level physics. Now that takes guts.

Miliband’s thesis is that foreign policy is like quantum mechanics. How so? He said that international relations today are more complex and less predictable than in previous periods – analogous to the revolution in physics at the beginning of the 20th century.

Like Newtonian mechanics, relations between states “have tended towards equilibrium and self-correction, as states sought to balance each other’s economic and military strength”.

But now it is uncertainty that is a defining feature of today’s world, mirroring quantum mechanics. “Think of the asymmetric tactics of terrorist organizations, leading not to a stable balance of opposing force, but chronic instability.”

Interdependence is another defining feature of modern international relations, Miliband said. “Again, this resembles the shift from Newtonian science modeled on discrete, independent systems, to quantum mechanics that accepts that everything is inter-connected.”

In summary: “The world is more unpredictable and more uncertain. Every action does not have an equal and opposite reaction.”

Miliband also spoke of his belief that science has a critical role to play in foreign affairs – for example in helping policymakers come to agreement where there is political conflict over issues such as arms control, counter-terrorism, climate change and cementing trust between Western and Islamic-majority nations. Quoting the 18th century writer Thomas Paine he said: “An army of principles can penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot.”

He also recognized that science and foreign policy are not the same. "The essence of scientific progress is not just transformational, but disruptive. The essence of diplomacy, however, is to maintain order. And while science is in the business of establishing the truth, it has long been perceived that diplomats are there to obscure it." 

The speech went down well. Though at least one of Britain’s top physicists remarked that he wasn’t so sure about Miliband’s grip on the finer points of theoretical physics.

Miliband revealed that no fewer than 17 previous UK foreign secretaries were also Fellows of the Royal Society.

Last night’s performance was impressive in its display of rhetoric and analogy. But was it enough for the coveted FRS title?.

The utter pointlessness of Nick Clegg

The latest developments in the ongoing saga of the National Institute of Medical Research:

PART 1 Like all other important decisions on science in the UK, the future of the National Institute for Medical Research now lies with the Treasury. It’s weighing up whether to allow the MRC and chums to buy the three acre site behind the British Library near St Pancras station so that they can construct the world’s biggest biomedical lab around a relocated NIMR. No one can move until the men in charge of Northern Rock give the nod. But of course, our economic overlords won’t be taking responsibility for the decision or answering any questions about it. So the unaccountability of the UK
government grows.

PART 2 The land is actually owned by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, which bizarrely—but totally consistently in the case of the celebrated anti-science department that still has no chief scientist—has tried to put the land on the open market. It’s the Two Cultures in action—it’s like something straight out of CP Snow’s The Corridors of Power.

PART 3 The site is in the Holborn and St Pancras constituency of Labour’s Frank Dobson. He’d prefer a local use but says the backing of Cancer Research UK and the Wellcome Trust will make the development very difficult to stop. So rather than lead Somerstown on a hopeless charge, he’s pushing for planning gain on the previous, smaller Temperance Hospital site bought by the consortium nearby on Hampstead Road.

PART 4 The site is also within the London Borough of Camden, now controlled by the Lib Dems with the aid of the Conservatives. Its borough plan has the site zoned as a mixture of local housing and other local-friendly amenities. Both Ming Campbell and Nick Clegg have been along to tell locals that the site must be saved for local use.

PART 5 Now that he wants to be Prime Minister, we called Clegg to find out what he thought should happen to the NIMR and why it was right in this case to put local concerns ahead of the future of a large chunk of Britain’s medical research. We phoned and phoned. We emailed. We left messages. Nada. Oops, could that be the embarrassed silence of a tinker toy politician we hear, one who thought it would be nice to play to the local gallery and wasn’t interested in the bigger questions?

Medical research is of course only one of a multitude of issues any leader has to deal with. But that’s why this story is telling. It’s not a case of vision and spin. It’s a matter of making a decision. The most damaging accusation levelled at Lib Dems has always been that they’re irrelevant. But Clegg is in a different league. The man who wants the keys to Number 10 is making an art out of evasive pointlessness.