BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Astronomers 'must make own case'
More news regarding the ongoing struggle between UK astronomy projects, and the Science & Technology Facilities Council (STFC), who due to an £80 million shortfall in their budget, are looking to make cuts to some of Britain's flagship astronomy research projects. This from BBC News...
Astronomers must make the best case for their subject to government if they are to stave off further funding woes. That was one of the messages from Keith Mason, head of the funding body for UK astronomy, when he addressed a scientific meeting in Belfast.
Administrators have cut projects and research grants as they attempt to plug an £80m hole in their finances.
Over the past few weeks there have been reports of various projects currently underway in UK astronomy that have been considered for cancellation - first the STFC tried to get out of paying for Britain's access to the Gemini Telescope Observatory, but following a furore, access was once again secured. Next up, the dithering STFC announced that Jodrell Bank was considered low priority, and more recently we have has news that Alice (Accelerators and Lasers in Combined Experiments), built for a cost of £25m, and estimated to cost £3m a year to run, might be shut down before it has even been used, as we see from this linked article..."If we can't do experiments here, we will have to go to our sister lab in the States or to a facility in Siberia," added Professor Wendy Flavell from the University of Manchester, who also hoped to use the facility.
The future of Alice is currently being considered by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), which is looking to plug an £80m deficit in its funding.
UK Science Minister Ian Pearson, who was visiting the Daresbury laboratory, told BBC News that he was committed to the future of the laboratories but would not step in to guarantee funding for individual projects.
"It isn't for government to make decisions on what is the best science - it is really for the individual scientific communities to do that," he said.
Which is about as lame as it gets - if the Minister for Science is so incompetent that he cannot guarantee the security of some of the most important UK astronomy projects currently running, particularly at a time when the field is making such rapid advances, and with such relatively small sums of tax-payers' money involved, he shouldn't be in the job.
It is entirely the Government's responsibility to do what's best for science, as it is their job to do what's best for all areas that are government funded, i.e. paid for by public taxes - the pity is that Government has not only greatly centralised control of science funding over the past decade, (and despite the fact that they publicly continue to stress their commitment to science), but the fact remains that UK astronomy research in particular, is still vastly underfunded. More from BBC News...
Alice's fate, along with 29 other lower priority science facilities, will be announced by the STFC on 1 July. The impact could be particularly hard on the North West, as the eMerlin radio astronomy network, based on Jodrell Bank, is also low down on the list. If it comes out of the review unfavourably it will jeopardise other planned projects and pour more taxpayers' money down the drain, say researchers.Some agencies have already given grants to scientists to exploit the machine, with some grants running until 2011.
"It's a clear example of a lack of joined-up thinking by the research councils," said Professor Flavell, who has said she will have to work abroad if Alice does not get the go ahead.
Other projects, such as a compact particle accelerator known as Emma, also rely on the machine getting the go ahead. The £8.5m project aims to build a machine that could be of use in targeted cancer therapy.
"That's binned if we shut down Alice," said Mrs Smith.
"The laboratory will close by slow attrition over a number of years," said Dr Graham Clark, a synchrotron scientist and representative of the trade union Prospect.
Later this year the lab's main facility - the Synchrotron Radiation Source - will be closed; and the continued uncertainty surrounding other projects is having an effect on staffing.One union official said the laboratory was "haemorrhaging" expertise built up over 45 years. Cuts mean that the lab will also lose 150 posts this year.
The solution to these woes, the unions and scientists say, is funding for Alice or a guarantee that the NLS will be located there.
"Without [a large facility] here, what is the attractor?" asked Mrs Smith.
"I think there is a fallacy that you can have a centre of excellence without the backup and infrastructure related to a large scale facility."
Whilst for their part, the STFC appear to have decided that intimidating scientists is the way to go, as we see from this...Addressing astronomers at the National Astronomy Meeting (Nam) in Belfast, Professor Keith Mason said: "I get really fed up with people saying the astronomy programme is on its last legs and everything's doom-and-gloom and terrible." And he warned them: "There's a real danger that that sort of talk becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
"Certainly in government circles, things that attract money are successful things, not failing things."
He later added: "Let's not paint a big target on our chests."
John Womersley, STFC's director of science strategy, reiterated this point: "I think it's been good that the community has been able to... explain how the loss of science is a bad thing."But he added: "You should ask yourselves when you are critical of STFC's management whether that is actually a route to getting more money given to STFC.
"If you say there is incompetence and corruption in our processes, is that something that government is going to reward with more money? I suspect not."
That's the first hint I've heard of corruption being involved, and although there are no further details given here, that's a pretty serious allegation, if indeed such has been made. But incompetence would certainly seem to be an apt word to describe the recent actions of the STFC - and telling the science community they should keep quiet and not complain about threats to their projects and livelihoods is nothing short of scandalous.
I have no idea how much the STFC costs to run each year, but in my opinion it should be disbanded immediately, with the money being spent on hiring fewer people who are both competent and committed, and moreover who are able do a better job, with any remaining funds being allocated to those projects currently under threat.
This from Carlos Frenk, professor of astronomy at the University of Durham....
"We all know the economy has grown in real terms quite considerably over the last decade - well above inflation.
"So why are we assuming that we should not, as a cutting edge scientific activity, participate of the increase in the wealth of the nation?
"I think we are actually suffering a shrinkage in our resources for which I see no intellectual justification," Professor Frenk added.
"It runs against all the rhetoric from the government, so I believe something has gone wrong. I don't for one minute accept the argument that we should be pleased with the level of funding we had 10 years ago."
So with all this money slushing around, we might enquire as to how this sorry state of affairs has arisen in the first place - it makes for some grim reading...
The STFC's problems emerged from the government's last spending round which left the council short of £80m in the three-year budget plan to 2011.
In order to manage its way out of the crisis, the STFC announced its intention to close certain programmes and cut research grants.
Science societies and union officials warned the damage to UK physics and astronomy would be incalculable and would lead to hundreds of job losses.
The STFC was formed as a new research council in April 2007 through a merger of the Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils (CCLRC) and the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PParc).
So it can be clearly demonstrated that not only has the STFC utterly failed in its duty to ensure adequate funding for astronomy projects is provided by Government, but they have no clear idea of what projects need to be kept or how to manage them, take absolutely no responsibility for their own incompetence, and have now resorted to accusing research scientists of causing, or at least exacerbating the problems by complaining about the very mismanagement and lack of funding which are at the root of the matter.
A final word from Dr. Paul Crowther, (see also) an astronomer from the University of Sheffield...
If you want to have a knowledge-based economy and a scientifically-literate country, you have to invest - at a relatively moderate level compared to other areas of science - in fundamental science."
It's worth reiterating that point - by short-changing the scientific community right now, the Government is helping to ensure that UK science research in the future will become even more impoverished than it is at present, and that the benefits derived from what is currently being discovered will be of little - if any - benefit to groups such as the UK astronomy community, who in the not too distant future may well have ceased to exist as an effective entity, thanks in no small part to the shortcomings of the STFC - in my opinion.
see also : Black Hole in Funding, Say Scientists
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