APPENDIX 8
Memorandum submitted by Dr Robert Bradburne,
John Innes Centre, Norwich, following the Evidence Session of
3 July 2002
I would like to add a couple of points to the
evidence which I gave.
Firstly, in addition to the point I made about
senior management's lack of interest in the problem of short-term
contracts, this is exemplified by the evidence presented by senior
management of the John Innes to the committee. In this they claimed
that fewer than one in three people at the John Innes are on short-term
contracts. However, this did not include visiting workers within
the contract workers and (worse) included all support and admin
staff in the "permanent" category. Considering scientists
(excluding students), the proportion of contract workers is between
50 and 70 per cent, making it much more of an issue for the production
of good quality science. I am unsure why management are so keen
not to see this as a problem if it is going to affect the science
in the long run. I can only assume that they are happy with the
status quo and do not want to see major changes which would inevitably
cause them a lot more work to put into place for, as they see,
little benefit to their research.
Secondly, on the point of training. The Gareth
Robert's report suggested that training should be increased and
other witnesses suggested that big improvements needed to be made.
I am concerned about implementing this as I think universities
will find it a very high cost. At present there is about £120
per year per capita for formal training at the John Innes. This
is unlikely to stretch to more than two or three days' worth of
courses, let alone two weeks. If we are supposed to be getting
equipped for life outside academic science, then money is going
to have to be found specifically for this as individual departments
are unlikely to have the resources to spare.
On a similar vein, the question of an extra
1000 Fellowships suggested by the GR report in principle sounds
very good. However, as several post docs have found to their cost
at the John Innes centre, the fellowships do not cover the overheads
of the place of work, and these could be up to £60,000 over
five years at the John Innes Centre. This is one of the reasons
given by management for not allowing post docs here to apply for
fellowships to remain at the John Innes Centre as the Centre could
not afford to keep on all the successful applicants. If so many
more fellowships are created, what university will be able to
foot the extra bill for these scientists, let alone be able to
find space to make them permanent at the end of that period. I
fully support the idea of Fellowships, but I think that serious
thought needs to be given to the funding of them before they become
more of a millstone that a liferaft for budding academics.
The cost of the EU laws however, I personally
feel, will not be as great as is feared. Certainly Project leaders
at the John Innes Centre are very concerned about where the money
is going to come from, but I fear it will not be long before universities
and institutes start using tactics borrowed from industry to avoid
redundancy pay. For example, offering further contracts to a post
doc at the end of their present contract should be a positive
thing, but if you want to get rid of someone you only have to
offer them a project that you know they will hate and then they
will more than likely hand in their notice before long, thus avoiding
redundancy payments. This is going to make the end of contracts
much less polite affairs and could lead to very bad feeling between
scientists. As the redundancy payments go up with age this is
also likely to put a strong selection pressure against hiring
older post docs, who's lot is already hard enough due to the present
funding system.
Lastly I must say I was saddened by some of
Gareth Robert's comments at the end of the session. Firstly, I
do not believe that you can judge which direction someone's professional
careers will take at the time of their PhD. This is simply moving
the "permission to continue in research" step commented
on by Dr Link forwards by a few years so that it is based on even
less evidence and I don't believe such a move will be in any way
helpful to the vast majority of Post Docs. Secondly I could hardly
believe my ears when, after all the suggestions of his report
and all of the conclusions about what had to change, Gareth Robert's
in the end said that he would say to anyone coming up in science
"make sure that you have a good supervisor" "you
have got to position yourselves to be lucky".
British science cannot be based on luck if it
is to stay at the forefront in the world, and scientists I am
sure will not accept a career that hangs on the benevolence of
other people and a good dose of luck. To continue in this way
is surely folly, and I hope that the report of this committee
can do something to make life in science a good career move instead
of a life-long exercise in serendipity.
18 July 2002
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