Memorandum submitted by William Gelletly
(FC 60)
DECLARATION OF
INTEREST
I am an emeritus professor of Physics at the
University of Surrey. My main research interests are in Nuclear
and Atomic physics. I am a member of the Board of the Health Protection
Agency and also have a strong interest in Health matters, particularly
the effects of radiation, chemicals and environmental change.
I was a member of the Physics unit of assessment panel at the
last RAE.
The process for deciding where to make cuts in
SET spending
It is hard to comment on how high level decisions
are made since the discussions and process at BIS and Treasury
levels are opaque.
At operational level the normal process of peer
review by independent reviewers and experts is acceptable although
not perfect. The recent process carried out by STFC is completely
unacceptable. Here they pretended to have peer review but the
reality is that the members of PPAN and the Science Board were
all compromised because they had a vested interest in the outcome.
Their personal areas of research interest were all under threat.
Not surprisingly the outcome was that the cuts were inversely
proportional to the number of committee members working in each
general area. Unless peer review is carried out by independent
experts it cannot lead to sound judgements. This particular process
was completely flawed. It was also a process that took no account
of national needs or priorities.
STFC's problems stem from its failure to persuade
Government of the importance of its portfolio in the 2007 CSR.
The idea of an independent advisory group helping the DGSR in
future reviews to minimise unexpected consequences seems a sound
and sensible one. The members should not just be drawn from the
Great and the Good but should include people who are known
for their independence of view.
What evidence there is on the feasibility or effectiveness
of estimating the economic impact of research, both from a historical
perspective and looking to the future
We are perhaps not best placed to answer this
question. However one of us is a member of IOP's Science Board
and we are well aware of the Institute's attempts, with others,
to try to quantify the economic impact of a number of science
discoveries/developments made in the UK. It turns out to be very
difficult to do this in any sensible way.
We accept that the taxpayers who fund public
research in the UK. should be informed of the outcome not just
in terms of the contribution to our understanding of the natural
world but also how it improves the economic health and well-being
of the country. HEFCE proposes to make Impact a major component
of the next RAE exercise with a weighting of 25%. It seems to
us that this will do all of us a disservice. Because of the long
time delays before the real IMPACT of any piece of research can
be observed and assessed the fact that those who did the research
may be long gone at the time of assessment then the exercise will
be both very uncertain and difficult. The assessment will have
little or nothing to do with the research quality of the current
department concerned. If HEFCE intends to embark on this route
then they should scale back on the weighting to 10-15% until they
can establish a methodology which will be trusted by both funders
and academics. The present proposals to demand case studies as
evidence of Impact will also lead to an entire "creative"
industry in Universities for presenting these case studies and
absorb a great deal of effort and resource. In its presently proposed
form it is unlikely to contribute to determining the current research
quality of any department.
The differential effect of cuts on demand led
and research institutions
No comment.
The implications and effects of the announced
STFC budget cuts
The final effects of the STFC budget cuts are
hard to foresee but they are extremely unlikely to be beneficial.
However one can say immediately that they have already greatly
damaged the reputation of UK science in terms of the reliability
of UK research groups and individuals as collaborators. Since
particle physics, astronomy and nuclear physics all have long
timescales and it takes large collaborations to build facilities
and detectors the continuing crisis in STFC funding is very damaging.
Equally harmful are the cuts in studentships and fellowships.
Here the lifeblood of the subject is not cut off completely but
is throttled. A whole cohort of bright and eager young people
will be cut off in one fell swoop. Some will be cut off from funding,
others will emigrate to more enlightened and welcoming climes.
This is true in all of STFC client areas but it is acutely so
in nuclear physics. The subject has been neglected and chronically
underfunded in the U.K. compared with our competitors in Germany,
France, Italy, Japan and the U.S.A for a long time. The cut of
roughly 40% since 2006-07 has exacerbated the difference.
None of this would matter if nuclear physics
was not an important area of science with numerous applications
in areas such as energy, healthcare, national security and defence.
In the cuts made by STFC there seems to have been little or no
consideration of the balance between important research and equally
important considerations related to the training of skilled manpower
and strategically important research. In particular in the case
of nuclear physics it was noted in the recent EPSRC/STFC report
on nuclear physics and engineering that support for nuclear physics
research is markedly lower than in competitor countries, and that
"—further funding cuts could be terminal". It
is perhaps never wise to take the most gloomy view of any situation
but certainly STFC's recent exercise means that they intend to
spend only £12 million pounds out of £2,400 million
on nuclear physics over the next five years. This will hardly
provide an incentive to Vice-Chancellors to hire nuclear physicists
or attract young people to the subject. The result will be a considerable
erosion in our ability to help train the skilled people needed
at M.Sc. and Ph.D. level that the UK needs. STFC appears to think
that as long as there are some physicists of any kind such teaching
will not suffer. However there is ample evidence that having non-specialists
teach subjects in school leads to a decline in the popularity
of the subject and the quality of the teaching. If we intend to
build new nuclear power stations and be intelligent customers
for the foreign suppliers this seems a very short-sighted decision.
STFC may well say that energy lies in the EPSRC domain. This is
a prime example of passing the buck. If STFC wish to show that
the research is relevant they should be working hard to help EPSRC
sponsor the training and applications of nuclear physics. As outsiders
we feel often that protecting their baronies is more important
than collaboration for the benefit of UK plc. RCUK should be looking
hard at how to make all such boundaries transparent and invisible
to researchers.
Although nuclear physics has had a very small
footprint in the UK in recent times it has certainly been highly
regarded in all recent reviews of UK physics. It will be hard
to sustain that excellence. It is always easy to destroy a community
and hard to restore it to health. STFC stewardship does not seem
to stretch to such considerations.
The scope of the STFC review announced on 16 December
and currently underway
Yet again vital decisions are to be made without
any of us really knowing anything other than is in the press announcements
that he wishes to do something about the negative effects of tensioning
between facilities and research grants.
International subscriptions should be fully
compensated by the Treasury. It is a nonsense to have fluctuations
in exchange rate, which are completely out of the control of RCUK,
to fall on the research councils.
Research grants to exploit facilities should
lie with the council that pays the subscriptions. Thus particle
physics grants should lie within whatever is left of STFC after
Lord Drayson's exercise and ISIS should lie within EPSRC. For
nuclear physics the priority would be to join FAIR, which will
be a Mecca for nuclear physicist over the next 20-25 years.
The operation and definition of the science budget
ring fence, and consideration of whether there should be a similar
ring fence for the HEFCE research budget and departmental research
budgets
It has been stated that there is a ring fence
around the science budget within BIS but it has already been breached
when in the former DTI. The science community will have little
confidence in such statements unless they are somehow given greater
emphasis. This is again vitally important for subjects with long
timescales which need commitment and continuity over long timescales.
If the government is serious about science being important for
our future economic health then a similar ring fence should certainly
apply within HEFCE. Without such a strategic decision the great
efforts to stop the decline in student numbers in physical sciences
will have been wasted. Vice-Chancellors are in general hard-nosed
about their finances. If the money lies in sports science or some
other area and not in physics or engineering then they will promote
the former and not worry about the decline in the latter unless
they are getting a strong steer that these subjects are important
and a strong steer means resource and a commitment over the long
term.
Whether the extra student support delivered students
in STEM courses
Very few universities took it up because it
was only partly funded.
The effect of HEFCE cuts on the unit of funding
for STEM students
It is too early to say but the finances of physics
departments are fragile so any cut in the unit of funding is likely
to induce universities to cut staff in STEM areas, especially
when STFC makes large cuts in research funding as well. This may
lead to closure of some small departments and shrinkage of others
with the result that they will be less efficient. Since teaching
must be carried out by a reduced number of people it is likely
to lead to a loss of overall research potential in critical subjects
and may also affect the quality of the teaching.
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