The sound of silence

by Matt Burleigh

It’s the uncertainty that is so depressing. Out of the blue, on 15 November, UK astronomers found out that the Science and Technology Facilities Council intended to withdraw from the Gemini Observatory (two eight-metre optical telescopes, one in Hawaii and the other in Chile). It was a huge shock. No warning, no consultation.

The council’s website informed us that “[STFC’s governing] Council will approve its overall investment strategy at its meeting on 21 November”. Not “debate”, but “approve”.

Quickly, letters of protest to Council members were organised from the eight-metre users committee, and the Gemini time allocation committee. We waited for news from the meeting ... and waited ... and nothing. STFC will not comment.

The STFC’s Delivery Plan has been presented to the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills, and will be published on 11 December. Until then, the vacuum is being filled by rumour and speculation. Everyone is asking the same question: what’s next for the chop?

I am an observational astronomer. I use Gemini to study white dwarfs, stars that were once like our own Sun. I’m especially interested in finding evidence for planets around white dwarfs, and even directly imaging them, to find out about the future of our own solar system.

Directly imaging planets around other stars is tough to do, but the field is about to get a major boost with the installation of second generation instruments on Gemini, such as the Near-Infrared Coronagraphic Imager. The UK, led by Hugh Jones, professor of astronomy at the University of Hertfordshire, is also a strong partner in an instrument for Gemini called the Precision Radial Velocity Spectrograph, which will be able to detect planets of Earth’s size around nearby red dwarf stars. Our use of these exciting instruments is now in danger.

The loss of Gemini would be a grievous blow to my research. Of course, we would still have access to the European Southern Observatory’s four Very Large Telescopes, but these are all on one site in the southern hemisphere. In case the Swindon bean counters haven’t figured it out yet, the Earth is round and you can’t see the northern sky from Chile!

But I don’t just use the large eight-metre class telescopes. I also make lots of use of smaller facilities such as the four-metre William Herschel Telescope on La Palma in the Canaries and data from the UK Infrared Deep Sky Survey being carried out on the UK infrared telescope on Hawaii. This is the deepest survey of the infrared sky ever undertaken, and is giving UK astronomers a world lead in this wavelength.

My immediate thought on hearing the bad news last month was that if STFC can pull out of a leading modern facility like Gemini, will they have no second thoughts axing these smaller, older facilities?

All of the astronomers in the UK are having similar thoughts, whether they are observers, radio or X-ray specialists, theoreticians, instrument builders or space scientists. Is their favourite facility next? Most of all, the fear is for the grants line. If postdocs are axed in large numbers, what will be the impact on young careers and the prospects for PhD students?

STFC grants make up a significant part of the income of many university physics departments. How will cuts affect them? Astronomy courses help to attract undergraduates to study physics. Will the news of severe cutbacks impact on recruitment, also reducing departmental income? Is my job in danger?

The lack of consultation and the silence that has followed seem deliberately designed to stifle dissent. It leaves me with little confidence in those managing the budget for UK astronomy. This current crisis has its roots in the sudden decision last year to merge the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council into the much larger new “facilities” council. That move was also made with minimal consultation, a fait accompli.

Many of us objected, but we hoped against hope that things would pan out fine. Instead, our worst fears appear to be being realised. PPARC was our council, but we are a minor part of STFC. I simply don’t understand why astronomy has to pick up the bill for the overspend on Diamond and other facilities that have nothing to do with our science.

I hope that my worst fears are not justified and that my paranoia, fuelled by this silence from Swindon, is unnecessary. I hope STFC’s Council has presented the minister with a plan that has a minimal impact on astronomy, and retains some UK access to Gemini.

Just a final thought that helps me to put this crisis into perspective. Northern Rock has now borrowed £25 billion of taxpayers’ money. The Chancellor promises us that it will all be returned though, like many others, I am sceptical. The cost of operating the Gemini telescopes is £4 million a year. I’m going for a beer before I weep.

"Further work"

by Brian Owens

The phrase "we will need to undertake further work..." crops up several times in HEFCE's consultation document on the new Research Excellence Framework.

The biggest area that is still up for debate is how to deal with the arts, humanities, social sciences, mathematics and statistics. For these, HEFCE will "develop a quality assessment regime involving a light touch form of peer review informed by quantitative indicators". But, so far, "we have not undertaken significant development work on this," says HEFCE. The consultation is seeking preliminary input on how this system should work. The time line for this is not as tight though, it only needs to be in place by 2013, to inform funding from 2014.

Other areas that are still under development include how researchers should be assigned to institutions and subject groups, the algorithm to produce the quality indicator based on citations, and indicators of research income and numbers of research students will be used. HEFCE is also looking for suggestions for quantitative indicators that can be used to capture user value and the quality of applied research.

HEFCE has commissioned further technical advice, to report in early 2008, on some of the data and methodological issues, and will run a "substantial" pilot exercise next year.

All this shows that the REF is still very much a work in progress, and although the general framework has been decided, there is still room for academics to tweak it here and there to try and deal with the problems that are bound to crop up.

But the timetable is tight, as HEFCE acknowledges:

November 2007 to February 2008 - Consultation on key elements of the framework and on bibliometric indicators. In parallel, further work on developing bibliometric techniques.

March to August 2008 - Substantial pilot of proposed approach

Autumn 2008 - Further consultation and decisions on the framework and indicators to be used for the science-based disciplines

Early 2009 - Launch of full bibliometrics exercise for science-based disciplines

November 2009 - Output of bibliometrics exercise available for use in funding; decisions on new funding approach to be phased in from 2010

From late 2009 - Consult on light touch peer review to run in 2013

The science-based disciplines

by Brian Owens

Here are HEFCE's proposed subject groups for the science-based disciplines for the new Research Excellence Framework. The six groups map to Main Panels A to E and G in the 2008 RAE, except for Unit of Assessment 23, Computer Science and Informatics, which has been taken from Panel F and combined with the engineering subjects covered by Panel G. The rest of Panel F, mathematics and statistics, will be assessed with the light-touch peer review system being developed for the arts and humanities.

Subject group	RAE 2008 units of assessment	HESA cost centres
Clinical Medicine (RAE Panel A)	1 Cardiovacular Medicine 2 Cancer Studies 3 Infection and Immunology 4 Other Hospital based Clinical Subjects 5 Other Lab based Clinical Subjects	1 Clinical Medicine (part)
Health Sciences (RAE Panel B)	6 Epidemiology and Public Health 7 Health Services Research 8 Primary Care and Other Community Based Clinical Subjects 9 Psychiatry, Neuroscience and Clinical Psychology	1 Clinical Medicine (part)
Subjects Allied to Health (RAE Panel C)	10 Dentistry 11 Nursing and Midwifery 12 Allied Health Professions and Studies 13 Pharmacy	2 Clinical Dentistry 5 Nursing and Paramedical Studies 6 Health and Community Studies 8 Pharmacy and Pharmacology (part)
Biological Sciences (RAE Panel D)	14 Biological Sciences 15 Pre-clinical and Human Biological Sciences 16 Agriculture, Veterinary and Food Sciences	1 Clinical Medicine (part) 3 Veterinary Science 4 Anatomy and Physiology 8 Pharmacy and Pharmacology (part) 10 Biosciences 13 Agriculture and Forestry
Physical Sciences (RAE Panel E)	17 Earth Systems and Environmental Science 18 Chemistry 19 Physics	11 Chemistry 12 Physics 14 Earth, Marine and Environmental Sciences
Engineering and Computer Science (RAE Panel G, with part of F)	23 Computer Science and Informatics 24 Electrical and Electronic Engineering 25 General Engineering and Mineral & Mining Engineering 26 Chemical Engineering 27 Civil Engineering 28 Mechanical, Aeronautical and Manufacturing Engineering 29 Metallurgy and Materials	25 Information Technology, Systems Sciences and Computer Software Engineering 16 General Engineering 17 Chemical Engineering 18 Mineral, Metallurgy and Materials Engineering 19 Civil Engineering 20 Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering 21 Mechanical, Aero and Production Engineering

HEFCE launches post-RAE consultation

by William Cullerne Bown

The consultation on replacing the Research Assessment Exercise with a metrics-based approach, at least in the sciences and medicine, has just been launched by the HEFCE.

HEFCE's published a Consultation document and two reports that it has been looking at, a general one from the bibliometric team at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands and a smaller one on interdisciplinary research from Evidence in Leeds. The main web page for what's now termed the "Research Excellence Framework" is here.

There'll be more here later in the day, but my first impressions are that there are few surprises in the proposals. Outside of six subject groupings (three for medicine, three for the rest of science), "light touch" peer review will be retained. In the sciences, universities will choose the staff to submit and assessment will then be based on bibliometrics, research income and numbers of postgraduate students.

There's no mention of selecting papers, so although it's not stated, it seems HEFCE is leaning towards assessing all publications, which could have a big impact on the willingness of academics to publish work they expect to get a low citation count, often for users. This isn't tackled directly, but HEFCE's flagging behavioural consequences as a concern and asking people to suggest additional metrics that could allow it to measure the value of research to users. 

Rather alarmingly for those who hoped the end of the RAE would eliminate a huge swathe of work, HEFCE talks about increases in workload in the short term. The issue seems to be in verifying who has actually published what, despite the promise of new technology.

And HEFCE's already flagging that the timetable for doing all of this is short and that it may struggle to find the expert resources it needs to make it all a success.

The utter pointlessness of Nick Clegg

by Brian Owens

The latest developments in the ongoing saga of the National Institute of Medical Research:

PART 1 Like all other important decisions on science in the UK, the future of the National Institute for Medical Research now lies with the Treasury. It’s weighing up whether to allow the MRC and chums to buy the three acre site behind the British Library near St Pancras station so that they can construct the world’s biggest biomedical lab around a relocated NIMR. No one can move until the men in charge of Northern Rock give the nod. But of course, our economic overlords won’t be taking responsibility for the decision or answering any questions about it. So the unaccountability of the UK
government grows.

PART 2 The land is actually owned by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, which bizarrely—but totally consistently in the case of the celebrated anti-science department that still has no chief scientist—has tried to put the land on the open market. It’s the Two Cultures in action—it’s like something straight out of CP Snow’s The Corridors of Power.

PART 3 The site is in the Holborn and St Pancras constituency of Labour’s Frank Dobson. He’d prefer a local use but says the backing of Cancer Research UK and the Wellcome Trust will make the development very difficult to stop. So rather than lead Somerstown on a hopeless charge, he’s pushing for planning gain on the previous, smaller Temperance Hospital site bought by the consortium nearby on Hampstead Road.

PART 4 The site is also within the London Borough of Camden, now controlled by the Lib Dems with the aid of the Conservatives. Its borough plan has the site zoned as a mixture of local housing and other local-friendly amenities. Both Ming Campbell and Nick Clegg have been along to tell locals that the site must be saved for local use.

PART 5 Now that he wants to be Prime Minister, we called Clegg to find out what he thought should happen to the NIMR and why it was right in this case to put local concerns ahead of the future of a large chunk of Britain’s medical research. We phoned and phoned. We emailed. We left messages. Nada. Oops, could that be the embarrassed silence of a tinker toy politician we hear, one who thought it would be nice to play to the local gallery and wasn’t interested in the bigger questions?

Medical research is of course only one of a multitude of issues any leader has to deal with. But that’s why this story is telling. It’s not a case of vision and spin. It’s a matter of making a decision. The most damaging accusation levelled at Lib Dems has always been that they’re irrelevant. But Clegg is in a different league. The man who wants the keys to Number 10 is making an art out of evasive pointlessness.

Colin Macilwain leaves Nature for editor’s chair at ResearchResearch

by William Cullerne Bown

Well this feels like a big day. I'm stepping down from being the Editor at ResearchResearch and Colin Macilwain's taking over.

In fact, it feels like such a big day that we've even put out a press release.

Colin (left) joins after fourteen years at the journal Nature, including five years as news editor.

Nothing's happening until January, and even then I'll still be writing. In fact, I'm looking forward to spending more time with my interviews. But it still feels strange.

In the press release, I say, “Colin is an inspiring journalist. He knows more about research policy around the world than almost anybody. His concern for accuracy, relevance and - ultimately - truth has been there for everyone to see week after week in Nature. He’s a leader and I’m sure our news, both on paper and online, will flourish under his guidance.”

And anyone who knows Colin knows that's all true.

Aimless

by William Cullerne Bown

A review by the Ministry of Defence’s top civil servants has concluded that R&D at the department, on which the UK spends £2.6 billion a year, has “no unifying vision or clear strategic direction”.

"Maximising Defence Capability Through R&D" was posted unannounced by the MoD on its website earlier this month. It was written by a team co-chaired by Roy Anderson, the MoD’s Chief Scientific Adviser, and Peter Spencer, the Chief of Defence Procurement.

The review team found that R&D management is segmented, with little re-use of crosscutting technology. Development is not managed as a programme and there are no metrics to assess performance.

Interpretations of what counts as R&D differ across the MoD, leading to a lack of clarity.

The value and utility of R&D outputs are rarely measured in their own right, in part because payment milestones are not always linked to development achievements.

The review team spent part of their time looking at a sample of individual projects. Several had not been exploited successfully, nor were they likely to be in the future, thanks to lack of coordination between R&D sponsors.

The team also found that there is no central repository of knowledge and findings from MoD-funded R&D and no formal mechanism for disseminating R&D findings for possible use on other projects. The quality of road mapping and technology planning was variable, especially for immature and cross-cutting technologies.

The majority of MoD’s R&D spending results in intellectual property owned by industry to which the government enjoys user rights. This is not catalogued centrally and the team found little evidence of localised IP management. As a result, the MoD does not sufficiently value past R&D or realise its full potential benefit.

In a forward to the report, Paul Drayson, the defence minister, promises change will now be "vigorously pursued”. But that seems a pretty wimpish response to what is in reality a damning verdict on recent years at the MoD. It seems the top brass have been going into the technology battle without a plan of any kind. Feeble.

Fat Chance

by Alan Malcolm

Sir David King’s Foresight team has just produced its report: “Tackling Obesity: Future Choices”

It estimates that the current cost, £7bn, of treating obesity related medical problems will rise over the next few decades to a staggering £47bn.

The report calls for a concerted effort to tackle the issue involving not only biology and other life sciences, but also social and political action.

Let us hope it fares better than did “Health of the Nation” published 15 years ago. It set 10 year targets to reduce obesity, reduce caloric intake, and reduce saturated fat intake. It failed totally to make any impact whatsoever. One government inspired action was to allow and encourage schools to sell off playing fields.

Central and local Government expenditure on sport in the UK is roughly one quarter that in France.

French researchers up in arms over CNRS plan

by Laura Hood

It is not just railway workers who are exercising their traditional French right to protest today, researchers across the country were also due to take to the streets this morning to fight the government’s attempts to “dismantle” the public research system.

Plans to restructure the CNRS, France’s main research agency, have been trundling along for months now, but bubbling concerns from the academic community have boiled over into sheer rage this week as it emerged that Nicolas Sarkozy and Valérie Pécresse have shut them out entirely from the decision making process.

As part of a wider shake up of the higher education system, the government plans to put universities at the centre of the research system. This, it would appear, means stripping the CNRS of its decision making powers and using it only as a body through which government funds can be channelled in specific directions.

Researchers have already registered their discontent with this idea, but they were dealt a huge blow last Tuesday which seemed to seal the organisation’s fate. When members of the CNRS scientific board gathered together to discuss the changes, they were told by Arnold Migus, the CNRS president, that the government was no longer willing to hear their views. Instead it would finalise the reforms on its own.

Shocked by the news, CNRS national committee president Yves Langevin sent letters to 1,000 members, warning them that their organisation was in jeopardy. He also gave an interview to Humanité, saying giving the government too much control would have disastrous consequences for blue-skies research. How could scientists explore new avenues, he asked, if they can only work on projects deemed to be important by politicians?

The researchers’ message seems to have been somewhat eclipsed by media coverage of the railway strike in France. But if Langevin and protest group Sauvons La Recherche are to be believed, Sarkozy won’t have his way without a struggle. SNCS calls for mass protest over CNRS plans - on Research Day: Europe.

Research as subsidy

by William Cullerne Bown

Returning from the big Lisbon conference on the European Research Area, my colleague Laura Hood brought an intriguing snippet back from Brian Ager, director general of big pharma's trade association, the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations.

Ager was understandably unhappy about the long delays in reaching a deal between pharma firms, the Commission and member states over the Innovative Medicines Initiative. The IMI is supposed to pool public and private funds in a new, industry-led organisation to fund R&D. It's one of a series of Joint Technology Initiatives that sound nice in principle but which are bogged down in arguments over the exact terms of the deal - eg who should own the IP on resulting discoveries? This, of course, is precisely the kind of substantive issue that has already killed Plan A for the EU's Galileo satellite navigation system. So, while Ager's frustration is understandable, so is the slow progress. The EU is discovering that there ain't no deal until there's a deal.

But the thing that intrigued me was Ager's warning that, in response to the IMI, the US is already preparing its own initiative, and that this could siphon away potential investors.

Away from civil aviation, where it's been entrenched for decades, this is the first time I've seen such open competition between governments on hi-tech projects. This seems to suggest that the global competition that we're getting used to for research talent is expanding into other dimensions. It revealed in a rather crude way the attempts by big firms to play governments off against each other. And it reinforces the view that public R&D funding is, in increasingly important ways, just the last subsidy allowed by the WTO.