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Ananyo Bhattacharya's article decrying how scientists have sold their souls to Mammon paints a truly alarming picture. He seems to suggest that the once noble British scientist has been reduced to serfdom, only awarded grants on the promise of economy-boosting innovation and commercial success.
What's worse, this promise isn't even made by scientists themselves. Instead, the wily science minister David Willetts, helped by mendacious mandarins and urged on by scheming sociologists, has conspired to replace intellectual excitement with boring utilitarianism. The Golden Age of academic freedom is over – apparently.
Bhattacharya's article was stirring stuff and a provocative read. It must have been fun to write. Unfortunately, it relies too heavily on supposition and misunderstanding to contribute much that is meaningful to an important debate about the relationship between public funds and public science. There have already been pointed critiques of the article from Kieron Flanagan and Ian Hopkinson, but our principal difficulty with the piece is that it ignores the obvious questions of why the taxpayer should fund science, and how the science community should make that case.
On Twitter, Bhattacharya defended his article as a principled and passionate defence of basic research. To give him his due, we do indeed need passion and principles just as much as we need basic research. However, we also need pragmatism. There are (thankfully) many differences between MPs and scientists, but one commonality is that as people in receipt of public support, financial or otherwise, we must be prepared to make a good account of ourselves. On balance, scientists outperform their parliamentary counterparts on that front, but that doesn't mean we can be complacent.
Pragmatism does indeed involve some compromise. Bhattacharya correctly identifies this as a source of friction with elected politicians eager to have "results" – for which read "economic growth" – to show for the investments made. Hence the impact agenda, which obliges scientists to at least consider the economic and societal benefits of their work. They do this prospectively in project grant applications to the research councils, and retrospectively as part of the current Research Excellence Framework, which will evaluate the quality of the UK research base.
Bhattacharya sees the impact agenda as a pernicious influence, but he overestimates the impact of "impact", as it were. Agreed, it is by no means perfect, and this response to his article is not meant to be a defence of how it has been handled, but his claim that there has been a calculated acquiescence is incorrect.
The scientific community is in fact extremely wary of the government's bean-counting instinct, fearing it will accomplish the very opposite of what it is intended to. The cool welcome that the impact agenda received from scientists when it was first rolled out forced the research councils to refine it. The policy is not a decree to simply follow research programmes that will pay short-term dividends.
There may be residual difficulties at the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), but at Imperial College last month, the chief executive of the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) was happy to publicly affirm that, when its panels of scientists meet to decide on grant awards, the quality of the science therein is taken as the most important criterion for success. Impact statements assessing future potential are only considered in the case of a tie-break between two applications of equal scientific merit.
Problems of the measurement, or mis-measurement, of the "value" of science remain, regardless of how it is determined. At the same time it is reasonable for the government of the day, as the representative of the taxpayer, to consider how publicly funded scientists might help with national and international challenges, such as pollution, global warming, food production, disease or ageing populations.
We also need to acknowledge and understand the role that science has in aiding economic growth, since only through prosperity will we be able to fund solutions to these challenges. It would be unreasonable for scientists to think themselves above such concerns, particularly when we argue for increased funding in straitened times – as we continue to do.
The solutions to many of today's challenges may well come ultimately from the funding of basic research, but there is also a place for directed endeavours. There is no question of abandoning blue-skies research, but rather of finding an agreed balance between curiosity-driven science and applied work. In a democratic society that is something that scientists and politicians and the public should be talking about, but – by and large – we do not.
As scientists and campaigners we will continue to stand up and say that basic research must be protected, not only because of its track record of success but also its intrinsic worth. Ideas, not economies, are what really inspire us. Of course, there will always be exceptions and the matter remains too complex to do proper justice to here, but there has been no Faustian bargain.
What is beyond doubt is that the participation of scientists – sociologists included – in the debate with government about what we can offer and what we owe to our fellow citizens is a good thing.
Imran Khan is director of the Campaign for Science and Engineering. Stephen Curry is a professor of structural biology at Imperial College and vice-chair of Science is Vital. He writes regularly about science on his Reciprocal Space blog
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