How Climate Research Starves Other Scientists Of Funding

By Paul Homewood

 

In 2009/10, UK Research Councils spent £234 million on “Climate Change Research and Training”, according to figures sent to me by the EPSRC under the FOI Act. The analysis is below.

 

FY	Mitigation	Adaptation	Training (M)	Training (A)	Fund. Climate Science	Infrastructure	TOTAL
2009-10	117,136,250	17,191,081	0	21,360,989	50,473,780	28,405,002	234,567,102

 

This money, naturally, does not grow on trees, particularly at a time of government cut backs.

The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) is one of the seven UK Councils and is a major contributor to such funding. They have addressed this problem of conflicting and increasing demands on a limited budget by introducing what they call “Shaping Capability”. In essence, this is designed to “focus our investments, to remain internationally leading in areas that are of long-term strategic importance to the UK.”

They go on to explain “In addition the strategy for areas identified as grow, maintain or reduce may encourage a particular focus e.g. on research that meets particular industry needs, addresses a societal challenge or community identified grand challenge.”

Put simply, the EPSRC are making top down decisions about which areas should receive more funding and which ones less, rather than judging individual applications on their own intrinsic merit.

As a result certain areas of science are having all funding withdrawn, for, at the least, the next year. For instance PhD fellowships will no longer be available for Engineering graduates, and will be limited to only Statistics & Applied Probability for Mathematicians, as the EPSRC website makes clear.

 

Scientists are furious about this. In a letter to the Daily Telegraph last month, 78 leading UK scientists had this to say.

We support the ambition of David Willetts, the science minister, to make Britain “the best place in the world to do science”. However, this will remain beyond reach as long as the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), the principal source of funding for the physical sciences and mathematics, persists in making disastrous errors in its operations and in damaging scientific discovery in Britain.

The council’s pronouncements that research PhD students will no longer be funded through standard grants; that fellowships will only be open in areas chosen by unqualified EPSRC officials; that grant applicants must present an assessment of the “impact” of their work over 10 to 50 years, and that the EPSRC will decide without consulting researchers what level of support is available for every subject, are all seriously flawed. Taken together, they pose a serious threat to British science.

EPSRC has exceeded its remit so spectacularly that it has lost the confidence of a significant proportion of the scientific community. EPSRC must now be subject to scrutiny by Parliament and be held accountable. Appropriate action must be taken to ensure that such a situation cannot occur again. EPSRC should be restructured with an unfaltering focus on scientific excellence, or be replaced.

Twenty five eminent mathematicians wrote to the Prime Minister :-

 

We wish to approach you following recent developments at the Engineering and Physical Sciences Council which are likely to cause irreversible damage to the mathematical sciences in Britain.

The issue here is not cuts, but how to make the most effective use of limited science resources.

EPSRC’s model is one of central planning and micro-managing research. Civil servants in an unaccountable quango are picking winners, deciding which science to fund based on their perception of strategic priorities. They call it Shaping Capability.

In July 2011 they decided to stop funding research fellowships in all areas of the mathematical sciences other than statistics and applied probability. This will force many of our best PhD students to leave the country to get their first academic job, and will prevent us from attracting the best foreign postdoctoral researchers. Postdoctoral fellowships are an essential part of the pipeline that allows some PhDs to become leading scientists. If EPSRC continues this policy, British mathematics will face mediocrity in a decade.

 

And more than 100 Chemists also wrote to David Cameron, complaining :-

 

We believe that changes proposed by the EPSRC will undermine the work we do and very seriously injure an invaluable section of the UK economy.

We are profoundly disturbed by the EPSRC’s decision to reduce significantly funding for synthetic organic chemistry.

We believe that this action will damage chemistry departments and will encourage young academics to move abroad. Perhaps, most worryingly, this decision will significantly disadvantage biomedical research and innovation, resulting in fewer spin out companies and SME’s being created.

Jostling for funds between scientists, of course, is nothing new, but it is the EPSRC’s top down, bureaucratic approach that has really got so many leading scientists spitting feathers.

Research grants should be justified on the intrinsic merits of a project, and not because a bureaucrat can tick the right boxes.

Somehow we seem to have got our priorities drastically wrong when, instead, we get research grants like these three handed out:-

• Nottingham University – £306754 – “From Greenhouse Effect to Climategate: A Systematic Study of Climate Change as a Complex Social Issue”
• St Andrew’s University – £83252 – “Enhancing Local Authorities Community engagement: co-designing & prototyping strategies for carbon emission reductions”
• Glasgow University – £197935 – “News Media and Public Beliefs and Behaviours in Relation to the Transformation of the Energy System: Climate Change, Technology and Resources”

 

Perhaps I am just getting old!

 

FOOTNOTE

Just to be clear, the three examples are grants from the ESRC (Notts and St Andrews) and NERC (Glasgow). Funding for the EPSRC, ESRC and NERC all come out of the overall pot at RCUK.

 

FOOTNOTE 2

To give a perspective, the EPSRC, as at the March 2011, had live grants to the value of £126 million on the books for Climate Change related research. This amount includes both money already spent or committed. (Grants may be for just a year, but are often spread over several years.

According to the EPSRC website, they support at any one time a portfolio of between £2 billion and £3 billion. Therefore, Climate Change grants make up about 5% of this.