Dear Professor Stewart

White Paper on Science and Technology : government consultation

Many of us share the concerns of the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster about the state and performance of UK Science and Technology. We have been following the debates in the press and at public meetings with much interest. Many of us agree with the comment and advice provided by the Royal Society.

We would agree that there is a need for a review and an overview of government's role in promoting UK Science and Technology. However, unless the unintended effects of ideologically inspired and financially constrained policies are taken into account, this massive exercise may prove to be no more successful than the policies of the 1980s. My enclosed observations therefore represent a bottom-up view of recent trends within academia. I hope that you would recognise that they are construed to be helpful and not just cynical.


Yours sincerely


Dr. Mahes Visvalingam

Comments by Dr. M. Visvalingam on:

White Paper on Science and Technology : government consultation

Of the questions raised by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, the following seems to be central.

"Does the UK get the very best value for money from Government's considerable expenditure on science and technology?"

From my perspective as a university lecturer and an official of a professional body, I say no! What follows are my personal views. They do not necessarily reflect those of my employer or colleagues.

Our universities are the engine houses which power our research and development in science and technology (shortened hereafter to just R & D).  They do so directly through knowledge production and also through education and training of the army of graduates and postgraduates who eventually undertake R & D in industry and government. Successive governments of all persuasions have extended and nurtured the university system throughout this century. Investment in R & D is a gamble but as the Chancellor noted, the UK has made numerous and outstanding intellectual and technological contributions. We have had good value for money out of our universities.

Despite this, the university sector has been subjected to major re-structuring and enormous stress through the 1980s as part of an ideologically inspired campaign to make them more self-sufficient, ironically through policies for indirect intervention. The Chancellor quite rightly must now assess the success of these policies which were designed to get even better value for money.

The Chancellor asked whether "We need more or less planning ...?" Again, the answer has to be context dependent. In the current context, I would say that the government has an obligation to mitigate some of the damage it has inflicted upon UK science and technology. With respect to universities, I would urge the Chancellor to investigate whether and how we should:

1. Re-focus the energies and efforts of mature academics

The mature academics are the sparks which ignite and release the full value of the university system to power innovation both within and outside their sector. But, they are also the people that academic institutions rely on to shoulder the bulk of management and administration. This is inevitable to some extent but a small number of Research Fellowships have been endowed, largely through charity, to enable talented academics to dedicate the prime of their lives to scientific endeavour. Instead of freeing more talented individuals to concentrate on their own and supervised research, the policies of the 1980s have exacerbated the administrative load.  The should-be innovator has been increasingly distracted by:

• having to cope with an incessant spate of piece-meal policy changes

• major academic re-organisations at national and local levels

• responding to various exercises, e.g. research plans, research assessment exercises, academic audits, consultation papers (e.g.
  from the HEFCs), modularisation, semesterisation ... Again, too many reforms all at once.

• image-making and profiling of themselves and their institutions to attract students and research funds

• exploring all potential sources of income, often reaping very little rewards for their time and effort in a recessionary period. Every
  one is under pressure to behave like rats caught in the maze of a government inspired experiment

• organising low-level income generating activities, such as training courses, conferences, workshops, etc. Many of these merely provide superficial awareness of imported technological bandwagons to managers
  
  The proportion of time spent on these activities is disproportional to intended benefits; instead, teaching and research are suffering.

2. Clarify the role of research scientists and equip them for it

Many of the Chancellor's questions put the emphasis on market-led research. Whilst technical advantage is clearly desirable, history has proved time and again that sustained exploitation requires aggressive and imaginative, customer-oriented marketing; this currently lies outside the training, expertise and pre-disposition of the research scientist.  What are the pros and cons of diluting the efforts of the researcher? Do invention, innovation and exploitation require different aptitudes? If not, do we get better value for money by moulding an academic into a first class researcher or a jack-of-all trades?

3. Make science more attractive to the talented young

A great deal more than improvements in pay and status are needed to achieve this, such as:

• academic jobs that enable them to develop and contribute expertise without a great deal of unnecessary hassle and diversion

• the restoration of academic freedom. We should fund promising people, not just nominal proposals

• better career prospects. The irony is that administrative, managerial and service staff can and do get promoted more easily
  than academics. There is a blockage at the top of the lecturer scale and a widespread belief that income generation and research
  management weigh more than research output and good science.

The vision of bright young scientists may be blurred by idealism but they are neither blind nor stupid. Many of the above disincentives stem from government policy and can be reversed.

4. Spread the risks involved in basic curiosity-led research by continuing the practice of floor funding

The resources for this should be more widely distributed for the reasons outlined in Appendix I.

5. Audit the output of directed and EC-funded research appropriately

A train of more and more relatively short-lived 'new' initiatives is putting pressure on scientists to become chameleons seeking marriages-of-convenience to raise income. There is less encouragement towards the development of genuine expertise which requires long-term commitment. I am not averse to managed collaborative research ventures and am currently persuading my professional society to organise a consortium to ensure the continuity of basic and strategic research in our field (Appendix II). However, are knee-jerk reactions to top-down government direction of research giving the UK good value for money? Who, using what criteria, should assess this?  The peer-
review system, with its vested interests, is not entirely reliable. There must be independent financial auditing to establish whether consortia and centres of excellence, i.e. the major cost centres, are delivering the anticipated economic returns. If not, they are giving us no more value for money than curiosity-led research.

The Chancellor indicated that he is not seeking to encroach on the R & D programmes of his colleagues. This gives no hope to the many able academics whose proposals to Research Councils were alpha-rated but not funded for financial reasons nor to others who have given up wasting their time on SERC research grant applications. Outstanding researchers, who refuse to cobble together proposals aimed primarily at securing funds, are being reminded that the pen and paper they use costs money. Meanwhile, colleagues engaged in academically less demanding applications often receive bonanza grants when their government department sponsors decide to spend up their budgets.

CONCLUSION

Japan's technological and economic success was spurred by her national desire to re-build her wounded pride and her marketing strategy. In the UK, the carrot-and-stick policies of the 1980s have incited self interest at all levels in the naive belief that personal ambition and advancement must ultimately benefit the nation. There is a vast disparity between government's intentions and today's reality. The truth is depressing; and yes, it does sound silly when policies designed to get the very best value for money encourage, perhaps unintentionally, a gross under-utilisation of scarce expertise and talent and a wastage of funds.

In any human system with many players, there are bound to be a range of competing and contradicting opinions but we cannot continue to ignore the behaviour and perceptions of the people who have to innovate. I trust that the Chancellor will bear in mind that responsibility for the current problems must lie with those vested interests which have instigated and benefited from the policies of the last decade. Their ideas and beliefs have been tried and found naive and wanting. We now need to look elsewhere for fresh inspiration and direction. In the meantime, I hope that the Chancellor will put a brake on further changes currently being proposed by the HEFCs for the funding of
research.


Dr. M. Visvalingam, Department of Computer Science, University of Hull

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