Examination of Witnesses (Questions 242-259)
Dr Alf Game, Mr Steven Visscher and Professor Alan
Thorpe
6 MAY 2008
Q242 Chairman: May I say welcome
very warmly. We much appreciate your giving us time and thank
you for the written evidence; again that is very, very helpful
to the Committee. You may well find that at the end of the session
there are things that you may wish to amplify further and, in
that situation, we would be very happy to receive further written
evidence from you through the secretariat. The Committee members
all have labels attached to them, equally we can see your names,
but unfortunately the recording machine cannot, so I wonder if
you will identify yourselves for the auditory record and then
we will move on to the session.
Professor Thorpe: I am Alan Thorpe and I am
Chief Executive of the Natural Environment Research Council.
Mr Visscher: I am Steve Visscher, the Interim
Chief Executive of the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research
Council.
Dr Game: I am Alf Game, Deputy Director of Science
at the BBSRC.
Q243 Chairman: Thank you very much.
Did any of you come with a short opening statement that you wanted
to make? There is no requirement but if you wanted to amplify
any points in previous evidence, there is the opportunity now.
In that case, can we move to the first question. The evidence
that we get about the number of salaried taxonomists working in
the UK is that it is difficult to know because we know also there
is a very large number of volunteers and there is very good work
done by those who perhaps mistakenly are called "amateurs"
and who are often very professional, and that is a very important
part of the scene, but knowing how many are salaried and being
paid is difficult. RCUK nonetheless has observed that the number
of high-quality taxonomists is generally regarded as insufficient,
and I wondered if the two research councils represented wanted
to comment and amplify their view that the discipline is in a
good and healthy state in light of that?
Professor Thorpe: I would like to make a comment
about the health of disciplines and how we look into that because
I think this is rather pertinent to this evidence. Research Councils
UK produce an annual report on the Health of Disciplines. It is
essentially based on evidence that has been accumulated by various
sources across the community during that year, but because it
covers all the research councils it is by its nature quite broad.
I doubt—I would need to check—that it has referred
particularly to taxonomy in recent years as being an issue, but
nonetheless that report is produced every year. I think one of
the difficulties for NERC in addressing the questions that this
Committee has been asking about taxonomy is just literally the
range of disciplines that the NERC has to think about in this
term "health of disciplines". I am afraid it just has
to be accepted that it is really bewilderingly large. We start
with the basic disciplines of physics, chemistry, biology and
mathematics, and they feed into environmental science, and then
we have marine, atmospheric, terrestrial, geology, earth observation
and polar at another level, and then we have climate science,
biodiversity, natural hazards, natural resources, pollution, et
cetera, and then we have a whole sequence of sub-disciplines,
and taxonomy and systematics would figure there as well. It is
really difficult to routinely capture information about all of
this whole space of disciplines, so what we try to do is from
time to time, where we feel there is evidence that we need to
look at particular areas, particularly sub-disciplines, we will
instigate a particular investigation. We did one for example in
another area, marine science, a couple of years ago, a big study
with international experts who gave advice about the health of
disciplines in the UK on marine science, so that is the general
point I wanted to make about this. A more specific point is that
at this time we have just published a new strategy for NERC going
five years from now, and we have got a whole sequence of changes
in the way that we are operating, but particularly we have recognised
the need for a skills needs review right across environmental
science. The Environment Research Funders' Forum, which gathers
together all the main funders of environmental science, not just
the research councils, is coming together (although NERC is leading
that) under that banner to look at this whole area of the skills
needs because we recognise that it has been some time since we
have done a really comprehensive analysis, and this review will
be started and it will report in the order of 12 to 18 months'
time. It has highlighted specific areas within environmental sciences
for a particular look and taxonomy, I hope you will be pleased
to hear, is one of those that we have highlighted for special
attention. So I think that is the way that, generally speaking,
we approach looking at the health of the disciplines. We do from
time to time periodically but not every year for sure take quite
a detailed look at areas, and that is one, and we are taking a
more comprehensive view in this overall environmental skills needs
review coming up. I hope that is a helpful answer in terms of
what we are actually going to do in the next few months to a year.
Q244 Chairman: You say it is a skills
needs review; will it also be a review of how far those needs
are being met?
Professor Thorpe: Yes, absolutely.
Q245 Chairman: And despite the difficulties
you have just outlined, you think you will be able to get a handle
on that?
Professor Thorpe: We are looking at both ends,
if you like, the pull end in terms of employers and the need for
those sorts of skills across the science base in the economy,
but also the provision of expertise and availability of that expertise,
so we are trying to look at it from both sides. I repeat, it is
a big space to be looking at and that is why it is going to take
18 months, but it is something of the ilk of a once-in-ten-year
exercise because of the nature of how big that kind of review
is, but I hope it will be helpful for this area in particular.
There are a number of other highlighted areas but this is one
of them.
Q246 Chairman: BBSRC?
Mr Visscher: BBSRC will be working with NERC
on a number of these matters, as you might expect, and the approach
that Professor Thorpe has described to the health of disciplines.
Within BBSRC, if one looks at the system and says does this work,
or can it work in principle if there are issues arising, then
there are examples and they are given in the recent Health of
Disciplines Report from RCUK. Mammalian physiology was one and
veterinary research was another. I would say that overall our
structure does allow things to bubble up where there is a need.
At the RCUK level that might be major areas like veterinary research
for example, I think the work that we did with the Linnean Society
and the Systematics Society on the CoSyst system of encouraging
researchers to work with others, in order to develop a potential
to put in grants, is one example where a small area of activity
is starting to nurture new action. This has only been going a
short period and I think we awarded six grants last year and nine
this year. It is a small pot of money just to facilitate this
and now the first grants are coming in from those taxonomists
in with other parties, and I understand the first one has been
funded by NERC and there is another one being looked at by BBSRC,
so currently it is one out of one.
Q247 Chairman: We were a bit puzzled
that RCUK did not see any obvious noises in the system about whether
there was a sufficient number of people there in order to do the
work and yet when we talked to the various organisations that
represent the practitioners and users and so on, we are getting
a different message. I just wondered if at research council level
you are beginning to overcome what looks like a gap of understanding
between what is happening out there and what is thought at headquarters.
Professor Thorpe: I think I can confidently
assure you that we hear a lot of noise about shortages of funding
and shortages of courses that research councils can provide. For
example, I hear regularly from various communities, let us take
another community just to vary it, the deep earth/solid earth
community, which thinks that NERC does not provide sufficient
funding in their area. We get a lot of information from a variety
of sources, from individual scientists, from review panels that
we have, where feedback comes back about particular areas where
the community feels there are shortages either in courses or in
funding available, so I think it would be wrong to characterise
it from my perspective that these perceptions of the scientific
community are not voiced; and they are certainly heard. The question
of course is how to balance that across the whole portfolio, how
to deal with those representations, and those representations
are being made all of the time.
Q248 Chairman: Perhaps I was not
clear enough, it was not simply the worry about not enough cash—and
I have never yet met a scientist who thinks they have enough cash
so that is taken for granted—but it is rather the question
of whether or not there are enough people in the system with the
skills, and do we know that that is the case, and if it is, fine,
if it is not, what are we doing about it?
Mr Visscher: Perhaps I could just add in relation
to the BBSRC's structure that in our Genes and Developmental Biology
Committee we have made a point of having that expertise and typically
one or two people with that area of expertise. If the numbers
of grants increase then we will probably start to draw in a greater
number as well. We also have some expertise within our own secretariat
in this area so it is not as if there is no expertise there. We
also try and get out to the community to engage with them directly.
I know that a member of our staff gave a talk last year to the
Systematics Society on grantsmanship, if you like, and how to
work the research council systems and what the priorities are
and how to go about it, so we try and engage with people and listen
at the same time.
Q249 Baroness Walmsley: When you
have done these skills reviews in the past and identified shortages,
what have you been able to do about it other than focusing more
attention on the funding? In other words, are there any lessons
we can learn from other disciplines in relation to the things
that you have been able to do or is it just keeping a focus when
funding applications come in to make sure that this particular
discipline is not ignored?
Professor Thorpe: We have a number of ways of
intervening to help and typically to build capacity in particular
fields. The most recent one for NERC that I am familiar with is
in environment and human health where we recognised that there
was a lack of capacity of the scientific community addressing
that issue, so we have actually looked at a range of funding interventions,
right from targeted studentships through to encouraging (but it
is only at encouragement level) universities so that courses are
provided in that area and bringing together other funders with
us to address this, in that particular case the Department of
Health and MRC to work with us, so I think there is a range of
ways in which we can effect that sort of capacity-building in
a field that we think needs developing appropriately. It depends
on the field.
Q250 Lord Krebs: If I could just
paraphrase what you said to check that I understood it. I think
it was this: given the breadth of your portfolio in terms of science,
taxonomy as a shortage area has not come on to your radar screen,
and part of the reason for that is that you hear a lot of noise
from many different communities shouting for more resources or
more skills and taxonomy has not stood out sufficiently in the
judgment of NERC to warrant or merit particular attention. Is
that what you were saying?
Professor Thorpe: No.
Q251 Lord Krebs: Then I am glad I
paraphrased it! Tell us what you were saying.
Professor Thorpe: I did not comment on how strongly
taxonomy had come out. The one piece of evidence where I can say
that it has come out is that one of the changes that our new strategy
has brought in is that we have seven thematic areas that we are
supporting, and one of those is biodiversity, and we have a new
layer of advice for the NERC Council, and that is an expert, a
scientific theme leader in each of those seven themes. The theme
leader for each of the themes is producing an action plan of actions,
funding, et cetera, and this is the draft Biodiversity Action
Plan I have in front of me. My council will be considering this
in the next couple of months, but I can say that in this draft
plan there is mention of the requirements for taxonomy as an essential
underpinning of the work in biodiversity and there is mention
of the fact that there are questions about developing the right
expertise and there being a shortage of expertise in this area,
so this is beginning to highlight from the recent work of the
theme leader Lloyd Peck in this area advice to my Council about
this area, so I think there are beginning to be signs. I think
perhaps where I might have given you the impression that you described
is that we have not done this overall skills review yet, and that
is still to come, but in terms of this theme action plan there
is beginning to be evidence.
Lord May of Oxford: I wanted to go a bit beyond
the discussion of what is the demand and how responsive you are
to it to suggest that—and unfortunately I have missed some
of the earlier meetings but I have read the testimony—both
NERC and BBSRC are actively contributing to the problem rather
than its solution. To start with NERC, if I may, NERC has stated
in one place here that it does not fund taxonomy per se, which
I find pretty weird. It is as if taxonomy was some technical thing
you acquired or some hippy phenomenon whereas the house of the
life sciences is built with taxonomic bricks assembled in the
architectural plan of systematics. It is a discipline and I find
that statement incomprehensible. When you put it together with
the fact that universities are reluctant to employ taxonomists
because they are worried they will score badly in the RAE, which
then feeds into a decline in teaching, you have got a vicious
circle that feeds upon itself. My question essentially is: why
do you not fund taxonomy per se?
Chairman: Starting with NERC?
Q252 Lord May of Oxford: I have got
a different question for BBSRC.
Professor Thorpe: We have a completely open,
responsive-mode grant scheme and so long as it covers the environmental
science mission, which in the broadest sense covers NERC, then
our responsive-mode grant scheme is available to all those that
apply.
Q253 Lord May of Oxford: So when
you say you do not fund it you mean you do not get any proposals
that you would call taxonomy per se?
Professor Thorpe: I think it is quite difficult
to judge what proportion of a particular proposal you would class
as taxonomy. That has been quite difficult to do. There is no
doubt that it is very competitive to win grants and I think all
communities need to write their proposals bringing out the environmental
science frontier knowledge that is going to be generated by the
proposal if they are going to be successful in those competitions.
I imagine, like a number of disciplines, taxonomy-related proposals
need to be written with that clear message of the environmental
relevance and scientific relevance.
Q254 Lord May of Oxford: Just to
interrupt because I do not want to go on and on. You say—and
I do not need to be told that the grant system is competitive—that
you would not discriminate against taxonomy and it is simply flatly
incorrect to say that you do not fund taxonomy per se and that
you would welcome it?
Professor Thorpe: Yes.[1]
Q255 Lord May of Oxford: Going on
from the responsive mode, why did NERC decide not to fund taxonomy
in the directed mode that it did as part of the very successful
taxonomy initiative in the 1990s that was specifically in response
to a much earlier inquiry from this Committee? Why did it decide
not to pursue that?
Professor Thorpe: Our directed programmes, as
you call them, are within the strategic priorities that we set
in our strategy, and our current strategy is aligned along seven
themes and one of those is biodiversity and that is relevant to
taxonomy, although it is not the only place where it would appear,
and we have not announced the programmes that are within each
of those schemes yet because we are relatively early in the cycle
but I am sure, judging from the draft theme action plan that I
have seen, that there will be opportunities for that sort of research
to be bid for within that theme.
Q256 Lord May of Oxford: I would
have difficulty distinguishing between biodiversity and taxonomy
systematics.
Professor Thorpe: I can only use the language
that our strategy is couched in and that is the language it is
couched in.
Q257 Lord May of Oxford: If I could
move on to BBSRC, if I have read things correctly, you have suggested
that research qua research carried out by employees in museums
and gardens should be provided by the parent department. I declare
an interest as an ex-Chairman of the Trustees of the Natural History
Museum, and it was during the 1990s that I understood the rules
to have been changed so that institutions such as the Natural
History Museum and Kew could compete for competitive funds, and
indeed have done so, at least when I was more familiar with them,
very successfully, so could you perhaps give me a gloss on this
statement that it is not your responsibility to provide funds
for research for things like the Natural History Museum?
Dr Game: That is not actually what we have said.
Our problem is with proposals that come in for what one might
describe as pure taxonomy, in the sense of someone wanting to
put a proposal in where they say, "I would like to write
a monograph on taxon X because that is what I do; I am an expert
in this field"—
Q258 Lord May of Oxford: A bit like
somebody saying, "I would like to do research on diatoms
because I think they are interesting and that is what I do"?
Dr Game: Exactly. All we are saying is that
in order to compete in a competitive system there has to be some
reason advanced for why taxon X is better than taxon Y or whatever.
If you look, we have funded taxonomic monographs and monographic
studies, some put forward by the museums and gardens in the past,
but relatively few of them, and I can give examples of them. For
example, we funded a study of the actimomyces which followed on
from the fact that the streptomyces genome had been sequenced
and people needed to know more about the structural relationships
between those organisms because it would help investigate potential
industrial uses. We funded a study of the dictyostelids on the
basis that that was a very important area in studying the evolution
of early vertebrates and again genomics had offered a path. In
both those cases the taxonomist offered a reason why we would
want to do this in comparison with a piece of science in any other
particular area, so the only trouble we have really is with people
who appear not to want to try to justify their work in the broader
sense of its relevance to either other scientists or to the mission
of our organisation, because there is very little way you can
actually rate one proposal against another unless you have some
justification offered for why you want to do it, otherwise you
are just dealing with a letter which says, "I am really good;
give me some money."
Lord May of Oxford: I have to say I did not
fully understand that. From my point of view, you write a proposal
that would make an excellent contribution to our understanding
of how the world works and the fact that it has to be shoehorned
into some list of things I do not fully understand. There is an
undertone in some of this conversation of the feeling that I thought
Banks had solved when President of the Royal Society 200 years
ago. Banks's presidency was characterised by a great deal of controversy
because at that time people felt that science was the physical
sciences and he was just doing gardening, and I do detect undertones
of that: if you are going to do something on taxonomy then you
had better explain how it is interesting to something else. While
I am sympathetic to it, I think I have more experience perhaps
than even you collectively of writing, judging and managing research
grants and I fully appreciate—and we do not need to be told
again of the competitive nature. What we are trying to find out
is why there is this apparent disadvantage of this discipline
which is a sine qua non for addressing biodiversity and
consequent things like delivery of ecosystems services. It is
immensely practical even if it looks to some people as if it is
arcane and peculiar and just an enthusiasm of someone in a cubby
hole.
Chairman: Do you want to respond to that? Lord
Krebs, does your question amplify that one?
Lord Krebs: It is probably better to take a
response.
Q259 Chairman: Let us take the responses
and then we will come back.
Mr Visscher: Just briefly to respond to the
funding of the grants that do get through the system. In fact,
the success rate of grants with a taxonomic aspect to them within
the BBSRC system is above average. Over a two-year period, if
we look back at the success rate, it was just over 50 per cent
against average of 25 per cent, and so I think that shows that
good grants can be funded and do get funded. You have had information
on the total spend that we have put through in this area which
is of the order of £26 million, so it is perfectly possible
for these to get through.
Professor Thorpe: In NERC about 64 per cent
of its responsive-mode grants are in the area of biodiversity,
so in all of the areas that you just described NERC supports a
lot of grants. I do not think it is true that NERC would regard
it as "gardening".
Chairman: We are pleased to hear that. Lord
Krebs?
1 NERC stated in paragraph 9 of the main RCUK written
submission to the inquiry that it "is not primarily concerned
with systematics and taxonomy per se, focusing instead
on using the information, particularly in the context of how biodiversity
contributes to key ecosystem processes and services." In
NERC's supplementary evidence in April 08, we tried to dispel
the apparent misconception, voiced in earlier oral sessions, that
NERC does not fund taxonomy. We stated among other things in paragraph
20 of that submission that "it is true that we do not fund
alpha taxonomy in vacis. However we do fund it, and other systematics
and taxonomy research, where it is required to address important
environmental science questions. Back
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