U.K. science's reputation damaged by funding fiasco

Published 1 May 2008

In December 2007, the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) — the U.K. main funding body for physics and astronomy, and a body which looks after some of the largest science centers in the country — was faced with a deficit of £80 million; a new report slams the SFTC funding decisions since then

Damaging funding cuts to U.K. physics have left the United Kingdom looking like an “unreliable” and “incompetent” partner for international science, according to a damning report by politicians. Most of the blame for the fiasco is pinned on the head of the research council behind the cuts. The New Scientist’s Zeeya Merali writes that the U.K. Parliament’s Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills committee examined the causes of the physics funding crisis which emerged in December 2007. The Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) — the U.K. main funding body for physics and astronomy, and which looks after some of the largest science centers in the country — was faced with a deficit of £80 million after an unfavorable government spending review last year. To plug the hole, the STFC withdrew from key international physics projects including the International Linear Collider, the Gemini Observatory, and ground-based solar terrestrial physics. The sweeping cuts also left some university physics departments in fear of closure. The move stunned physicists, who had received little warning that U.K. involvement in the projects was in jeopardy. They argued that the measures were taken with little warning or consultation. The 55-page report, based on evidence provided by STFC bosses, civil servants and physicists at three hearings earlier this year, comes to a similar conclusion.

The report condemns the decision-making process behind the cuts as “ineffective” and “secretive” and describes the STFC’s peer-review system as “weak.” The committee laid most blame at the head of the STFC, Keith Mason. In January, solar physicists issued a vote of no confidence in Mason after the STFC axed support for ground-based solar-terrestrial physics projects. The MPs were unconvinced by Mason’s attempts to defend these cuts at committee hearings, describing his arguments as “inaccurate” and “unacceptable.” The new report stops short of demanding Mason’s resignation, but the committee does call for “substantial and urgent” changes to give the STFC “the leadership it desperately needs.” The fates of nearly thirty STFC-funded programs still hang in the balance, with Jodrell Bank in Cheshire, the Daresbury National Laboratory and the U.K. Infra-Red Telescope (UKIRT) — the world’s largest telescope dedicated to infrared astronomy, based in Hawaii — facing an uncertain future. Final cuts were due to be announced in July. The report calls for the STFC to postpone these until the government-appointed “Wakeham review” into the state of U.K. physics is published in September.

In a statement the STFC said that it had already accepted that it had to “consult more widely on its future programme and to improve its communication with staff and its research community.” Jim Wild, a solar physicist at the University of Lancaster in the United Kingdom who was hit by the cuts, believes the committee has drawn the right conclusions. “This is a vindication of what almost all UK physicists have been saying — that this is no way to run world-leading science.” The question now, says Wild, is how to move forward. He points out that it is probably too late to help several U.K. research groups already affected by the cuts, but damage must now be limited. “At the very least, we hope that there will be a moratorium on future irreversible cuts until the outcome of the Wakeham Review is known.”