Examination of Witness (Questions 20-27)
RT HON
LORD DRAYSON
26 JANUARY 2009
Q20 Chairman: But yet the number
of first grants which are being awarded are just going down significantly.
We looked at EPSRC, and you actually look at, yes, larger grants,
first time grants, but again, far smaller. If you have got a one
in five chance, you are very, very fortunate, and more often than
not, it is a one in 10 chance. This is driving out the very sorts
of people that you say are going to be the people who are going
to drive this sort of research excellence in the future.
Lord Drayson: Yes, I think this
is a fair point, Chairman. I think that we need to be aware of
the way in which the function of the funding available, the demand
for that funding, has an effect in terms of success rates, what
effect that therefore has on people and the psychology of this,
and we need to ask ourselves whether we have got the balance right.
This is not a very satisfactory answer, it is an answer which
says this is difficult, I think that we need to do more in terms
of articulating the balance between the two. It is interesting
to me, I was at a university on Friday where there was a real
sense that there had been more funding actually into applied research
rather than pure research and that this was a general trend that
people perceived.
Q21 Chairman: That is the perception,
yes.
Lord Drayson: So that is something
which I really need to take on board very seriously and follow
up.
Q22 Dr Gibson: I just wondered if
you thought that the days of Cold Spring Harbor, the molecular
biology lab at Cambridge, where there was a concentration of people
working together, great success, Nobel Prizes were a measure of
that, do you think that has gone forever now, where people are
concentrated into certain centres? Because it seems to me that
most of the Nobel Prize winning stuff, which does lead to human
genome stuff and all that, is done in centres where people are
not burdened by having to teach undergraduates, which is kind
of shameful in a way, because we were always brought up, you had
to teach, administer and do research at the same time. Do you
think that has gone forever now, in terms of the kind of person
you are trying to produce?
Lord Drayson: I do not think I
can generalise on that. I think that there is a real need for
these centres where you have a locus of expertise, sometimes interdisciplinary
expertise around molecular science, for example, and I think that
the challenge of both having a fertile teaching environment as
well as research environment is something which is difficult to
do, but I do not get a sense that there is a move away from that
entirely.
Q23 Dr Gibson: You do not think there
is a move away to get post-docs to do the teaching unpaid?
Lord Drayson: That is not something
which I have detected. Maybe I will have to look into that a bit,
and reflect on what you have said.
Q24 Dr Harris: Can I ask you about
your attitude to peer review? Notwithstanding what you have said
about changes and possibly taking a more high risk approach, maybe
you can look into that, it is said that the peer review technique
in funding research leads to less high risk research being funded
almost by definition than business would tend to do in its decisions.
Do you think there is a need to change the way we do peer review
in some of the public funding decisions that are currently done,
and if so, do you have any plans as to how that might be done?
Lord Drayson: I think that peer
review is the best system we have come up with so far. It is a
bit like other things, it is not perfect, but no one has come
up with anything better and I think that it has shown over time
that it has been effective. I think that the ability of the scientific
community amongst itself to make these judgments is the best one,
and that is something which I totally support.
Dr Harris: But there are criticisms that
it is innately conservative, it is cliquey, and it penalises high
risk applications.
Chairman: Allegedly.
Q25 Dr Harris: It is said, and we
have had evidence, or submissions.
Lord Drayson: I do not have a
better system, I am afraid, Chairman. If anyone has developed
a better system than peer review which is accepted within the
global scientific community, I do not know of it.
Dr Gibson: You just stick it on a computer,
you have open access, because science is always tested, nothing
lasts forever anyway in science, people will find out and check
it out, if there are claims, so you just open the whole process
up. That is a way of doing it.
Q26 Dr Harris: Are you proposing
to use peer review in choosing your strategic areas for increased
investment?
Lord Drayson: Yes, I think that
would be a smart thing to do.
Q27 Ian Stewart: A very short question,
Minister: how should the pattern of research funding change in
light of the current economic downturn? Should it change?
Lord Drayson: I believe that it
is very important that research funding is maintained in this
downturn, I think it is vital to our future success as a country
that we maintain our investments in science research. That is
the policy of government, the Prime Minister has reiterated himself
the importance of science as being central to our strategy. My
colleague, Lord Mandelson, has himself said that science is the
ladder by which we will get out of this economic downturn.
Chairman: I think that is a positive
note, with the words of Lord Mandelson ringing in our ears, so
it must be right, as we bring this session to an end. Lord Drayson,
you have been incredibly generous with your time this afternoon,
and have been very, very straight in terms of the questions we
have put to you and the answers you have given. We are very grateful
to you for that.
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