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Mr Osborne? Hi. This is science calling.
Saturday was my debut as an activist in the UK. I walked out of the lab (well, out of a friend’s freshly-warmed house in Lambeth with a fading hangover, truth be told) and joined over 2,000 fellow nerds in marching on Westminster. For those of you outside the UK or living under a rock – there’s a spot of bother with the economy over here and recent governmental murmurs (with the emphasis being on ‘mental’) have pointed to science funding copping a cut of up to 25%.
The rally was part of the Science is Vital campaign, which all started with a blog post. The ensuing flurry of twitchy tweeting soon spawned a veritable Twitternado (just search #scienceisvital), a website, a petition and a fully-fledged lobbying campaign. I was hugely impressed with the turn-out, the speakers and the overall vibe on Saturday; congratulations must go to Jenny Rohn, Evan Harris and everyone else involved. As Oxford neuroscience standard-bearer Colin Blakemore said, it takes something pretty remarkable to get scientists onto the streets en masse – and it wasn’t just the prospect of Evan Harris leading a singalong.
Well - it is, isn't it?!
I was also quietly chuffed to see that a not-entirely-flippant slogan I’d floated during the Twitter build-up had appeared on the official placards (see picture, left; once again for those outside the UK, this is a very unsubtle dig at last year’s parliamentary expenses scandal). Initially I’d thought that throwing muck, however playfully, would probably be the wrong approach to take – surely we want the politicians on side! But I guess it was good for giggles, and it tapped into the frustration of finding yourself the target of savage cuts when you’ve recently seen taxpayers’ money being so impressively mis-spent.
That’s a bit of a red herring, though. In fact, what we’re talking about is the relative merits of science funding compared with other major avenues of government spending. There are going to be cuts. Lots of cuts. Cuts: The Musical, the Guardian has suggested. More than half a million public sector workers will lose their jobs. Much as we in science often feel insulated from the raging of the economic climate, you might think that on this occasion maybe we should get wet too. But Colin Blakemore and others made the strong point that other countries have chosen a different strategy and invested in research rather than shrinking away from it, punting on long-term growth instead of short-term savings.
That’s the problem with science – you really can’t judge it by immediate gains. Ask anybody: it’s a slow game. Slower than chess, and bridge, and Monopoly, and even Risk. It’s like Bresskopoly. It grinds. And that’s what’s really worrying about Vince Cable’s comments about 45% of UK research not being ‘excellent’ – how can you tell? It’s not finished!
The very idea that lopping a quarter off the budget will leave the best 3/4 of projects still funded is ludicrous. Some exciting projects don’t get funding right now – and, yes, some of the ones that do have funding won’t bring in very exciting results. That’s the way it works. The phrase ‘less with more’ is an impossible dream, and a fallacy.
So hands off, George and Vince. If you’re not careful, you’ll wake up in twenty years, all the scientists will be in America and Singapore, and you’ll be living in a cave. With a duck island.
[Have you signed the petition? Written to your MP? Get on it! And follow the campaign here.]
by jonathan
hand me my pitch fork – dem ducks are gonna pay!
Deadline for the petition is 12.30pm, Wednesday 13/12 – that’s TODAY. Please sign!
Yesterday a bunch of scientists and advocates lobbied their MPs in Westminster. The petition clocked up 30,000 names while this was happening, but the situation doesn’t sound promising:
http://blogs.nature.com/scurry/2010/10/13/science-is-vital-lobby-of-parliament
Apparently it was even said that a cut of “only” 25% would be seen as a success for the campaign.
Even if you’ve already signed the petition, think about writing to your MP – everything you need is on the campaign website. People like Evan Harris and Julian Huppert (Lib Dem MP for Cambridge) insist it is not too late. http://scienceisvital.org.uk/write-to-your-mp/
Well put. I’m sad I wasn’t able to make it to the protest myself.
I do want to add, though, that what you’re saying about investment in science funding can arguably be applied to many other areas of government funding. For example, by cutting back on investments in transportation infrastructure you reduce the UK’s future economic propsects by eliminating a vital component of a modern economy. Not to mention the fact that you actually reduce the government’s income because people lose jobs and the economy winds down, etc. Indeed, I am consistently amazed by the short-sightedness of the political class in this respect. If tackling the deficit – produced by a crash in the financial sector – is such a pressing issue, then maybe they should institute taxes on those who make enough to bear the burden. Raise the top rate to 70%, institute a tax on bank profits, etc. The government’s approach here is not born of sound economic reasoning; we learned that austerity measures don’t help the economy back in the 1930s! But, thanks to the growth of neo-liberal ideology in the 1980s and 1990s we now have to re-teach Keynes to a whole new group of public/private school ignoramuses who are blind to their own privilege.
Bringing this back to your post: I think that we as scientists should not resort to “We’re special, hands off our money!” Instead, we should be part of the larger political response to this sort of neo-liberal austerity drivel. Don’t just go to protests regarding science funding, go to protests regarding the cuts programme in general. Don’t just write letters about science funding, also write letters about all the other cuts in the pipeline. The British people have been spoon-fed a series of lies from the media that massive cuts are necessary and good for the long-term prospects of the UK. They’re not, and they damage the nation’s long-term prospects. Balancing the budget needn’t be done in this manner. Don’t kid yourself, kid: Tory cuts wreck lives.
I’ll make two additional comments to this, starting with #1, then progressing to #2.
#1: If cuts are to be made — and forgive me for my realpolitik — the scientific community have to be absolutely clear in their pronouncement of what will happen to science as a result. These predictions have to be well thought out, and not hyperbolic. The economic circumstances faced by the UK (or, hats to @blake, the perception of such circumstances), will occur again in the future in both this country and others. If funding cuts cause disproportionate destruction to the scientific-economic complex in the UK, then it will serve as a potent model for the next few generations of what not to do. Thus I propose a mass exodus. Or sabotage. Or strikes — no more fruits of science for anybody here.
#2: Let’s face it — scientists are political pussies. We demonstrate, through our actions, that we’re happy to do our thing for little financial incentive; we just like our way of life. Perhaps we suffer greatly from the Dunning-Kruger effect — our work is so dependent on exploring the limitations of our knowledge and abilities that we tend to underestimate our own contribution to society and overinflate those of others. Not that transport isn’t important. And not that things which receive more funding are overemphasised. We just have an innate bias to metacogitate and let the attention slip away. So I argue that @blake’s point that the argument is isomorphic to that for transportation fails to carry the DK weighting.
i’ve just learned that @name twittifies. i meant blake, in comment @3. i believe in you, wordpress.
@3 here meaning comment 3, not twitter 3.
Oh man, the Dunning-Kruger effect is psychology gold. Thanks for the link! I can’t think of anything better to provide a causal explanation for the manner in which politicians approach science in general:
Government: “Dr. Nutt, tell us how dangerous this ‘skunk’ weed is.”
Dr. Nutt: “Actually, it’s not all that dangerous.”
Government: “Shut-up! We know what’s bad for our neurothingamabobs. We learned all about it in PPE at Oxford.”
But going back to your larger point, the unfortunate thing is that because most of the fruits of any of these investments occur over the long-term it takes intelligence and foresight to see the issue. (Hence the problem with letting politicians decide it themselves.) If bin-men go on strike it becomes immediately clear why we need them. If scientists go on strike it takes a couple of decades for the knowledge based economy to grind to a halt.
now I’m feeling slightly sheepish about the intellectual rigour of my first comment… but ja I would agree with Blake that this is a bad time to be cutting spending, not that cutting spending is per se but this is just not the right time for it. What really should be happening is that government should be saving during the boom years and spending during the recession. Massive oscillations in public funding just isn’t good for anyone, least of all us scientists. I’m with Neil, let’s come up with a sneaky plot to teach those politicians a lesson – our lab has a laser and lots of tetrodotoxin…
Majorly true on the timing issue. If we were in the middle of an economic boom right now then maybe, just maybe, the private sector could take up some of the slack. But cutting back right now is just a guarantee for massive oscillations as you say, or even worse a total down-state. And I only like those things when they occur in the brain.
Turns out Stiglitz agrees with Blake. (Who knew?!) Check out his damning piece in the Guardian today – the day Osborne will announce the spending cuts…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/oct/19/no-confidence-fairy-for-austerity-britain
Meanwhile, it sounds like science will escape the worst, which is a credit to the campaigners:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11579949