Nurse, Willetts and National Attitudes to Science Funding
Towards the end of the 2012 Dimbleby Lecture Sir Paul Nurse made an impassioned plea for greater government support for science. Sitting to his left was the UK Science Minister, David Willetts, who is probably more accustomed to talking to scientists than listening to them, but who surely must have been impressed by what he heard. However, at times of financial difficulty does it make sense to invest in science? One unexpected side effect of the global economic crisis is the way it has revealed striking differences in national attitudes to science and science funding. In simple terms, the question that cash-strapped governments have had to ask is whether or not scientific research is a luxury or a necessity. In other words, when a government invests in science, do those $,£,€ provide a positive return to the economy, or is scientific investigation no more than an indulgence, an outward indicator of national prosperity that can be dispensed with when times are hard? Judging by political decisions in recent months in the UK, France and Spain, there is no clear answer.
At one end of the spectrum is France, the only one of these three similar sized western European democracies to have a Ministry for Higher Education and Science, headed by the French Science minister M. Laurent Wauquiez. At the other end of the spectrum, though only recently so, is Spain, which until a few weeks ago also had a Ministry of Science. However, as part of the Spanish government’s austerity programme the Ministry of Science has been abolished, with the Secretary of State for research, development and innovation, Carmen Vela Olmo, now occupying a place in the Ministry of Economy and Competition. This retrograde step gives Spain something akin to the arrangement in the UK where the aforementioned Minister for Universities and Science, David Willetts, resides within the Department (Ministry) for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS).
The view of the Spanish government is clearly that science is an unaffordable luxury, and along with the disappearance of the science ministry, so €2bn is wiped from the science budget. The angst this has caused researchers in Spain is clear, with comments here in Nature and elsewhere. But across the border in France things couldn’t be more different. Science is evidently seen as an activity that can contribute to economic recovery, with some €7.7bn of new money to be invested over the next ten years. Although direct comparisons are admittedly problematic, as the French money has a broader remit in embracing higher education, they nevertheless reveal a clear difference in attitude. In the UK, where governments frequently tackle awkward issues by sitting on the fence, the decision has been to er.., sit on the fence. Science funding is frozen for four years, which as Nurse pointed means a real terms cut, probably of some 20%. This is not as bad as some had feared, and clearly nowhere near as destructive as the pain in Spain.
The economic analysis of investment in science is fraught with complexity, even for professional economists, but most studies that have been conducted suggest that for every unit of currency spent, a larger amount returns to the economy. The government in Spain is eyeing a modest short-term saving but undoubtedly losing out on long-term prosperity, while the French have done exactly what Nurse asked of the UK government, which is to show “greater courage to properly support its stated aspiration of harnessing science and engineering to rebalance the economy towards innovation-based sustainable growth”. One can only hope that Willetts has the necessary courage and that Spain can find a champion like Nurse.
This is an interesting piece. Certainly different countries have followed different paths. I’ve followed the Spanish case closely because I know a little about the system. It seems to be that the situation is a bit more complicated than the Nature piece suggests, and I think that most inside the Spanish system would accept that it is not the most efficient or dynamic research system in the world (and thus cuts paradoxically may do less damage than they would in a highly efficient and dynamic system). Spanish science has also made the profound mistake of going down a ‘by the numbers’ route of research assessment (at least in the disciplines that I am familiar with) with the result that research priorities and careers are already highly distorted as the imperative to publish in the high-impact factor journals trumps everything else. Spain also has a lot of S&T (especially T, but also S) activity at the regional level, including some very impressive networks and centres but also quite a few not so impressive ones that in my impression are disconnected both from industry and from research and which seem to function mainly as symbols of hi-tech modernity/regional vanity.
My point here is that it is easy to contrast the UK situation with that of other countries but we are rarely comparing like with like. Those countries that are increasing S&T investment tend to spend lots of public money on (and have a strong base of) generic applied research and technology development. Increased funding in these countries is going to all of that, not just (and perhaps not mainly) to the kinds of things the Research Councils fund in our university and investigator-led research dominated public research system.
UK calls for more funding for S&T can often seem like thinly veiled calls for more “basic” research. The “T” (or “engineering” often seems tacked on). Nurse himself, in full-on lobbying mode, painted a picture where (basic) science rather than engineering was largely responsible for technological innovation.
Science and technology may be intimately related and with a boundary that can often be unclear but they are not the same thing. We need to protect the former and clearly investigator-led research (whether that is truly basic or is applied to a problem) is important in that – but we also need to think a hell of a lot harder about the latter. And we need to be much more wary of comparing apples and oranges.
Kieron – thanks for the comment and the extra insight into the Spanish problems. I agree the straightforward comparison of funding models in different countries is tricky, if not impossible, rather I was trying to extract something about national attitudes.
As for calls for more science funding in the UK, I have to declare a vested interest. Certainly I would like to see more going into basic science having seen such work in several labs at UCL lead directly to IP and commercialisation, but this is not to say that engineering is any less likely to prime innovation.
I agree there is an “attitude problem” in the UK, I just think that it has probably harmed applied reserach & technology more than basic research! However, as I said in response to @Ananyo, I do think that trying to turn our science base into a conveyor belt of innovation (largely on the basis of a profound misunderstanding on the part of policy-makers, university leaders and, yes, some scientists, of how the US innovation system works) is misguided and probably counterproductive in the long-run.
In terms of investigator-led/curiousity driven research funding I tend to think that consistency/stability is more important than the absolute level. Boom and bust over last 12 years or so simply damages precious capacity (and damages lives and careers).
Not sure I agree about there being more harm to applied than basic research – but this is very much a ‘gut feeling’, and I’m not aware of any solid evidence one way or the other. Certainly MRC and Wellcome funding, with which I’m most familiar, has leaned quite markedly toward applied/translational research. Yes, they still fund basic work, but a glance over their web pages reveals very clearly where their priorities lie.