Memorandum 58
Supplementary submission from the British
Academy
PUTTING SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING AT THE HEART
OF GOVERNMENT POLICY—CALL FOR SUPPLEMENTARY EVIDENCE: STRATEGIC
SCIENCE FUNDING
A RESPONSE TO THE INQUIRY BY THE HOUSE OF
COMMONS INNOVATION, UNIVERSITIES AND SKILLS COMMITTEE
INTRODUCTION
1. The British Academy, the UK's national
academy for the humanities and social sciences, is pleased to
respond to the Committee's call for supplementary evidence on
the question of strategic science funding, and in particular we
address Lord Drayson's question "whether the time has come
for the UK—as part of a clear economic strategy—to
make choices about the balance of investment in science and innovation
to favour those areas in which the UK has clear competitive advantage"..
SUMMARY
2. The British Academy makes the following
key points:
All disciplines together
To deal with the challenges and to seize the opportunities
posed by the economic downturn, it is essential that the UK is
able to exploit the full range of expertise in its world-class
research base. Scientific and technological advances can be used
effectively only if political, social and cultural understanding
is deployed in ways that ensure that all disciplines are able
to work together.
National and thematic provision only where effective
Within the social as in the natural sciences, there
is sometimes a need for large-scale infrastructural facilities,
which have to be provided on a national basis. For example, those
studying family formation and dissolution need access to good
longitudinal databases. These facilities must be planned and maintained
to support a wider range of research.
Managing research
While it can be useful for Government (in consultation
with the research community) to identify certain broad overarching
themes, it cannot micromanage research effectively.
Impact has to be judged in a broad sense and reasonable
timeframe
Given the wide range of direct and indirect (social,
cultural, economic and policy as well as technological and industrial)
benefits flowing from the research base, it would be unwise to
focus on the short term economic impact of research at the expense
of other important and longer term impacts, including quality
of life.
It is important to support basic as well as applied
research
Applied research relies on the foundations that have
been developed by basic research. Both basic and applied research
have to be funded properly and on the basis of excellence, if
the UK research base is to prosper. The worst of all possible
worlds is to have poor research with high impact.
It is important to mobilise direct government
research spend
Government departments (civil and defence) themselves
control large research and development budgets. In 2005-06, their
budgets, at £4,484 million, made up just under half of the
Government's total spend on science and research, and almost matched
the combined budgets of £4,800 million of the funding and
research councils[191]
The current debate on strategic science funding should be extended
to include government commissioned research as well, so that tax-based
support for research and development can be seen in its entirety.
MORE DETAILED
RESPONSES TO
THE COMMITTEE'S
CALL FOR
COMMENTS
3. The interplay between subjects.
The UK will not be able to exploit its scientific advances without
intelligent legislation, regulation, accounting and audit standards,
and commitment to sustainable business models, which all rely
heavily on the insights of the humanities and social science (HSS)
research base. For example, consider HSS research on:
— effective and ineffective legislation
and policy-making;
— effective and ineffective management
and team working structures and practices in industry and safety
critical services;
— ethical, social, legal conditions
for effective research and innovation;
— revised accountability frameworks;
— more workable regulation of scientific
work;
— behaviour change (which draws on
expertise from economics, the sociology of consumer behaviour
and psychology); and
— shaping public engagement with research
and innovation.
4. Fostering the UK's competitive advantage.
We agree that the UK must improve its exploitation of the full
commercial value from research that has potential for economic
impact, but it also needs to recognise that competitive advantage
is rarely based on technological excellence alone. Factors such
as effective regulation and financial architecture, design, branding
and customer service (all rooted in various parts of research
in the humanities and social sciences) are also essential in delivering
and sustaining a competitive lead. The sources of competitive
advantage, moreover, cannot be reduced to a formula or be readily
predicted in advance.
5. If we are to grasp how deeply innovation
matters for the UK's long-term economic well-being, it must be
defined broadly, in line with last year's Government White Paper,
Innovation Nation. Innovation Nation acknowledged that
innovation is based not just on scientific and technological advances
and took a holistic view of innovation. It highlighted ways in
which the UK excelled at "hidden innovation", especially
in its leading services sectors and creative industries (which
draw heavily on HSS expertise). The UK cultural sector is considered
by the OECD to be relatively more important (at just under 6%
of GDP) than its equivalent sectors in the US, Canada, France
and Australia. UNESCO estimates indicate that the UK is the world's
biggest exporter of "cultural goods", surpassing even
the US, and Lord Carter, the Government's Communications Minister,
recently predicted that: "In five years' time, the creative
industries [in the UK] could be as powerful as the financial services
industry has been for the last 10 or 15 years".
6. HSS knowledge contributes to the creative
industries in a number of ways, including:
— Content. Examples here include: the
success of the UK computer games industry, driven as much by skills
and knowledge from the arts and humanities as from computer science;
the contribution of HSS research to academic publishing with a
global market; and the way in which the UK's tourist industry—which
employs just under 8% of the total work force and is the sixth
largest industry in Britain—draws upon expertise in HSS.
— The intellectual property framework
that is of fundamental importance not only to the creative industries
but also facilitates (if the framework is designed appropriately)
the effective exploitation of technological innovations.
— Planning, marketing and dissemination.
7. The UK will have to compete by developing
new products and services, discovering new ways of doing business,
and encouraging innovation in its public sector and public services.
To succeed the UK will need to draw more effectively on the full
range of research from the natural sciences, engineering, and
the humanities and social sciences.
8. Picking "winners". Research
seeks to challenge current thinking and practices and develop
new approaches. Its outcomes cannot be predicted in advance, and
it may be many years before the full impact of research can be
properly realised. As an earlier Academy report said: "how
can we decide what is useful knowledge and what is not. We fear
that those who try to second guess what is `useful', and what
is less useful, knowledge may make the wrong decisions. Predicting
which areas will prove to be the most important and most valued
in the future is in its nature difficult, perhaps impossible".
In the Academy's opinion, it is unwise to support a few subject
areas at the expense of others, since this will narrow the options
available to the UK, making it harder for the UK to respond to
unexpected problems and developments in the future. As the outcomes
of original research can never be anticipated in advance, any
efforts to plan research will fail and risk distorting research
priorities. We therefore welcome the Prime Minister's emphasis
in his recent Romanes Lecture on the need for a broad base in
science and research.
9. The Government is in a position to set
(in consultation with the research community) very broad, overarching
strategic themes for research. But it cannot and should not seek
to micromanage the research endeavour.
10. If the Government wants to prioritise
the science spend, it can already do so in terms of the funding
that Government Departments control directly. The research and
development budgets of Government Departments are considerable.
The debate should therefore be broadened in scope to consider
these budgets as well, so that the Government can consider research
policy as a whole.
11. There must also be an appropriate balance
between short and long term impacts, to enable the UK to respond
both to current challenges as well as ones that it will face in
the future. It would be unwise to focus on short term economic
impacts of research at the expense of other important and longer
term impacts. A policy on these lines will ultimately be ineffective
and will run counter to the Government's objective that the UK
should position itself so that it can fully exploit current and
future opportunities.
12. The importance of basic research.
A number of studies have shown that "blue skies" research
can have far-reaching, and unexpected impacts, including unexpected
business applications. Applied research has to build on the foundations
that have been laid by basic research. Hence both have to be funded
properly, if the UK research base is to prosper.
13. The balance between strategic and
responsive research funding. It is essential that there should
be an appropriate balance between strategic and responsive research
funding. Some of the most innovative and creative research is
funded through response mode.
14. Attracting and retaining the best
people. The UK must also ensure that it can develop, support
and retain the talent that is needed to take forward research
innovations. The market for good researchers is global and highly
competitive, so the UK needs to make sure that it can attract
and retain the best people from the start of their research careers,
as well as recruit some of the most talented mid-career researchers
and groups. Once research expertise is lost, it is very hard to
rebuild.
April 2009
191 "Including the UK contribution of £365
million to the EU R&D budget, the grand total of all Government
expenditure on SET in 2005-06 was £9,649 million. The Science
and Engineering Base (Research Councils and Higher Education Institutions)
accounted for 50% of total SET expenditure, with 20% by civil
departments, 26% by defence, and 4% by the UK's contribution to
EU R&D". Extract from SET Statistics: Net Government
Expenditure on departments in cash terms. Back
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