Polarisation helps no one

As yet another genetically modified food dispute emerges, Tom Wakeford calls for the two sides to start talking if they want to avoid damaging public confidence in science and in scientists

Two projects that aim to bring a fresh approach to debates concerning the future of food and farming are gathering pace this month.  One is Democratising Agricultural Research, based at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED). The other, Our Food, is run from the University of Edinburgh.

Etched into the mind of anyone working in the food or farming sectors in the late 1990s was the controversy over GM. It came in the wake of the last Conservative government’s well documented failure to communicate the risks of new food processing methods exposing humans to mad cow disease, BSE.

UCL's second campus sends a chill down the spine

The announcement by UCL that it is to open a second campus, in east London, will send a chill down the spine of other elite universities in the UK.

Malcolm Grant told the FT today that the plan is for a big increase in research activity. Undergraduate numbers would increase only "at the margins". But the provoist's soothing words won't help the leaders of other Russell Group universities sleep any easier.

A huge new campus in Newham could, once it is built, turn out to mean capacity for many thousands more undergraduates at UCL. And thanks to the AAB+ market initiated by the government, UCL will be able to fill all those places with students paying the full £9,000 a year. The losers will be those universities, mainly in the Russell Group, that are slightly further down the list of applicant preference and aren't in London. Look out Nottingham, Leeds, Liverpool, Glasgow and co.

If this is what happens, then UCL will be following precisely the policy I advocated for Oxford and Cambridge in the wake of the AAB+ policy initiative (see Oxford 2, Cambridge 2 - One way England's universities might use their AAB options. The guaranteed income from all those AAB+ students makes dramatic expansion a much less risky proposition for the top, top universities. And just as I said Oxford could open a second campus in Birmingham to spread the benefits of excellence around, UCL is opening its second campus in the deprived (and HE-deprived) East End.

Places like Imperial, LSE and Manchester could follow suit. And even Oxford and Cambridge might find their hands forced. The prospect of losing top billing to UCL's horde of new researchers and postgraduates will concentrate minds.

But, as I pointed out back in July, there is a downside to all this expansion by Golden Triangle types. It means more government spending on research and teaching in the south east - and less in the other regions and nations - at a time when public spending outside the south east is being hammered from every direction. This is the reverse of the regional rebalancing that the Coalition keeps promising.

The market in undergraduates has not yet been let rip. The AAB+ corner that is open to competition is relatively small. But already I believe we are starting to see the dramatic consequences of a market there.

Hold onto your hats. The revolution in higher education is only just beginning.

[After prodding by the UCL press office, I updated this article on 25 November to clarify the distinction between what UCL says is the purpose of the expansion and my view of the announcement.]

Cuts in Culture conference live blog - 2 of 3

Welcome to Research Fortnight's Cuts in Culture live blog from Bafta. Our second session today is Funding Innovation.

Our speakers are the chairman of the Arts and Humanities Research Council and UCL professor, Alan Wilson, chief executive of Arts and Business, Colin Tweedy, and director of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, UK branch, Andrew Barnett. Their chairman is chief executive and secretary of the British Academy, Robin Jackson.

News, instant analysis and comment on  what was said. Read from the bottom up.

London universities set to join St Pancras super lab

The UK Centre for Medical Research and Innovation has sealed its bid to become London’s scientific powerhouse by adding Imperial College London and King’s College London to its list of partners.

Let's hear it for scepticism: its suppression is one of the principal threats to science

Government Chief Scientific Adviser John Beddington should be forgiven for going over the top in attacking scepticism about climate change or genetically modified organisms, says Andy Stirling.

Researchers: Don't fight the data-management battle alone

What to do with data? Most academics have been trying to avoid the questions but they keep coming. Special issues in Nature and now Science highlight the excitement of new research paradigms in data mining, correlation and visualisation.

The bad news is that there are now very few who don’t worry about information overload and how to manage it all, from academic journals to micro-blogging, lab books to personal photo collections.

Not for profit: the decent society is about more than impact

Philosophy, history and classics are more than the icing on academia’s cake, says Martha Nussbaum, professor of law and ethics at the University of Chicago. Elizabeth Gibney finds out why she believes we ignore them at our peril.

Europe: A soupçon of Joint Programming in the Coordination Soup

It is somewhat paradoxical that, just as the European Commission is striving to simplify access to European research programmes, Europe's research landscape is growing ever more complicated. This is a central question both for the Commission’s green paper on Research and Innovation and the next European Association of Research Managers and Administrators event in Brussels on March 2. Why has this complexity arisen, and what can be done about it?

New twist in Copenhagen misconduct case

The case of Milena Penkowa, the Danish neuroscientist accused of unauthorized use of funding, took another turn on 3 February.

The University of Copenhagen issued a statement that Penkowa had been reported to the police on suspicion of falsifying documents relating to her research.

Pfizer closure shows UK's weakening commitment to research

To lose 6,000 skilled jobs in science R&D may be regarded as a misfortune for the coalition; to lose another 2,400 and a world-class research facility looks like carelessness.