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The Dangerous Myth of the “Great Man of Science”

Posted in Science Politics with tags , , , , on October 18, 2015 by telescoper

I’ve waited quite a while before writing anything substantial about the Geoff Marcy case, partly because I was too angry to reflect properly and partly because this is something impossible to write about with raising some very unpleasant ghosts. The scandalous behaviour of Geoff Marcy – whose repeated sexual harassment of a number of female members of his Department went unchallenged by the University of California at Berkeley for fifteen years – resulted in a  slap on the wrist and a “don’t do it again” from the authorities followed by a badly misjudged email from the Head of the Department of Astronomy (where Marcy worked) which includes the following statement:

Of course, this is hardest for Geoff in this moment. For those who are willing and able, he certainly can use any understanding or support they can offer (this wouldn’t include endorsement of the mistakes he acknowledges in an open letter on his website). I ask that those who have the room for it (now or later), hear him out and judge whether there is room for redemption in all that will transpire.

No. It just isn’t “hardest for Geoff”. It’s hardest for the women he harassed, some of whom had to wait 15 years for some semblance of justice. This comment displays a lack of compassion for Marcy’s victims. This not only compounds an already disgraceful episode, but also gives a very clear indication of an attitude that explains why nothing was done earlier. It’s hard to believe that nobody knew what Marcy was up to, but it seems he had powerful friends to protect him.

Subsequently, however, a majority of faculty in the Astronomy Department composed a strongly worded statement concluding that Marcy could no longer perform the functions of a faculty member. I suspect it was that, rather than the feeble actions of the University authorities that persuaded Marcy finally to resign. He should, of course, have been sacked forthwith. He has now gone, but the fallout from this episode will last a very long time. Hopefully out of the debris some good will emerge, not just for Astronomy at Berkeley – because this problem is by no means unique to that place – but for science as a whole. I’d love to believe that Geoff Marcy is an isolated example, but I’m afraid that just isn’t the case.

I think it’s important not to let this case slip from our collective memory before lessons can be learned – hot topics grow cold so quickly these days. So many things are desperately wrong about this case that it’s impossible to comment on all of them, so I’ll just pick up on a few and make some personal comments and hopefully some suggestions. I’m focussing on sexual harassment because of the Marcy case, but what I say applies equally to other forms of harassment (e.g. racially motivated or homophobic) and bullying in the workplace.

The first issue I want to raise is that of procedure. I wish harassment and bullying didn’t happen, but sadly they do. If all members of a University department (staff and students) are to work together in an atmosphere of dignity and mutual respect then there has to be some sort of code of conduct and a process for dealing with behaviour that is unacceptable under the code. But it is not enough for these to exist. Staff and students also have to be aware of their existence and also to believe that the disciplinary process will be enforced rigorously. I have no doubt that UCB has a code of conduct, but the process of enforcing it failed lamentably. It’s not hard to see why given the attitude of the Department Chair.

In my opinion as soon as an allegation of sexual harassment is made it should always be given to an independent person to investigate. By “independent” I mean from outside the Department concerned and preferably someone who has no direct personal knowledge of the individuals involved. That would at a stroke prevent pals of the perpetrator from closing ranks. This is what we do in my own institution, in fact. I’m not saying that there are no instances of sexual harassment here but I really don’t believe anything would be allowed to go on as long here as it did at UCB.

A properly enforced disciplinary procedure shouldn’t just protect the person making the complaint; it needs also to protect innocent individuals from malicious allegations. It must also realise that people do make mistakes. Who can say that they have never made any inappropriate remark in jest that may have inadvertently caused offence? I certainly can’t. Likewise it is possible simply to misread a situation, to misinterpret a remark or body language, or to take a straightforward comment as a flirtation of some sort. We’re all humans and we can’t read each other’s minds. I don’t think such errors need to go to a full disciplinary hearing; an informal warning should do for a first offence, as long as there is an apology. Repeated offences are a different matter. A first offence of sexual harassment of the kind committed by Geoff Marcy should at the very least have received a final written warning, followed by summary dismissal for any further offence. Any difference in seniority must also be taken into account. All cases of harassment are unacceptable but harassment of a student by a senior Professor takes “unacceptable” to an extreme.

Failure to act strongly when such behaviour is proven just sends out the message that the institution doesn’t take sexual harassment seriously. Confidentiality is needed during an investigation – to protect both sides – but if the conclusion is that misconduct has taken place, it must be ackowledged publicly. Justice has to be seen to be done. Sexual assault, of course, is another matter entirely – that should go straight to the police to deal with.

So far I’ve just talked about protocols and procedures, but these can only ever apply a sticking-plaster solution to a problem which is extremely deeply rooted in the culture of many science departments and research teams across the world. These tend to be very hierarchical, with power and influence concentrated in the hands of relatively few, usually male, individuals. A complaint about harassment generally has to go up through the management structure and therefore risks being blocked at a number of stages for a number of reasons. This sort of structure reinforces the idea that students and postdocs are at the bottom of the heap and discourages them from even attempting to pursue a case against someone at the top.

This hierarchy of power suits those – usually men – who style themselves as “Great Scientists”. These individuals generally flourish at the head of a team of students and postdocs, but take as much as credit as they can for themselves, often actively hindering the career prospects of junior collaborators. They usually bring in large amounts of grant funding or other awards and possibly even the prospect of a Nobel Prize. In this way they convince their employers that they are indispensible to their institution, which encourages the bosses to turn a blind eye to their transgressions. They may be flawed humans but they are perceived to be great scientists. They are untouchable. Power corrupts, but it’s also too easily acquired by those who are corrupt already.

In reality the only reason why such people may appear indispensible is that they have made themselves so by neglecting (or abusing) their responsibilities to junior staff and students by (for example) not allowing them opportunities to pursue their own research. I’ve many stories of this type of controlling behaviour, which usually results in postdocs and students being discarded or forced out of research for lack of wider experience.

The fact of the matter is that the “Great Man of Science” is a myth, and a dangerous one at that. I’m not saying that there are no great scientists (male or female). I am saying that the elevated status awarded to some eminent individuals is deeply unhealthy and can lead to abuse of power, as recent events have revealed all too clearly.  They are also an increasingly distorted reflection of how science actually works, which is more often than not through collaborations of equal but complementary efforts.

The unhealthy power structures I’ve discussed will not be easy to dismantle entirely, but there are simple things that can be done to make a start. “Flatter”, more democratic, structures not only mitigate this problem but are also probably more efficient by, for example, eliminating the single-point failures that plague hierarchical organisational arrangements. On the other hand, turkeys don’t vote for Christmas and the existing arrangements clearly suit those who benefit from them. If things are to change at all, however, we’ll have to start by recognising that there’s a problem.

P.S. For the record I’ll just state that I’m obviously not a “Great Man of Science”. Nor am I a great scientist. I’m not a great manager of people either. But I like to think that I’ve done my job as Head of School sufficiently well that I now consider myself entirely dispensible!

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The 2015 Nobel Prize for Physics: could it be Vera Rubin?

Posted in Science Politics, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , on October 4, 2015 by telescoper

Just a quick note to point out that the 2015 Nobel Prize for Physics will be announced next Tuesday, 6th October. According to the Nobel Foundation’s website the announcement will be made “no earlier than 11.45am” Swedish time, which is one hour ahead of British Summer Time.

As is the case every year there’s quite a lot of speculation going on about who might garner this year’s prize. There’s a piece in Nature and another in Physics World, to give just two examples. There’s also the annual prediction from Thomson Reuters, which has never to my knowledge been correct (although some of the names they have suggested for a given year have won it in a subsequent year); perhaps they will strike lucky this time round.

For myself, I’ll just say that I think Vera Rubin is conspicuous by her absence from the list of Nobel Physics laureates – her classic work on galactic rotation and the evidence for dark matter in galaxies surely deserves an award, possibly alongside Kent Ford. Most Nobel Prizes are awarded for work done decades before the year of the award; the research in this case was mostly done in the 1970s. I think recognition is long overdue. I’m biased in favour of astronomy, of course, but my fingers will be crossed that Vera Rubin’s time will come on Tuesday!

I’m not going to open a book  – even Ladbrokes stopped taking bets on the Nobel Prize for Physics some years ago! – but I’d be interested to hear opinions through the comments box…

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Can UK Science Survive Outside the EU?

Posted in Politics, Science Politics with tags , , on September 23, 2015 by telescoper

Please watch the following video made by the organization Scientists for EU. You could also read the document referred to in the video (“International Comparative Performance of the UK Research Base – 2013”) which can be found here.

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Science is (even more) Vital (than ever)

Posted in Politics, Science Politics with tags , on September 17, 2015 by telescoper

It’s almost five years since I participated in a rally in London to protest against proposed cuts to the UK science budget. Since then research funding has been heavily squeezed by a “flat cash” settlement that threatens the survival our science base, with consequent damaging effects on the long-term future of the economy. This graphic, from a post by Stephen Curry, says it all:

science is still vital

Back in 2010, most of us were relieved that the outcome of the Chancellor’s spending review was a level funding in cash terms, although the decline in real terms funding since then has been enormously challenging across the board. The forthcoming spending review puts us in an even more dangerous situation. After the 2010 election the Coalition government announced a “ring fence” that protected science spending from cash cuts for the duration of the last Parliament (although this has, as the graphic above demonstrates) translated into real-terms cuts year on year. This time any commitment to a ring-fence from the Conservative government has been conspicuous by its absence. Indeed, its decision to claw back funding of STEM subjects through HEFCE has demonstrated its intention to remove even this modest protection. The government has signalled its desire to cut overall spending massively this time, and there are few places left for the axe to fall other than in research. Now the UK’s research councils are being told to budget for cuts of 20% and 40% to their core funding. This will lead to the abandonment of many international research projects and lead to large-scale redundancies across the sector, driving the best of our scientists abroad. These plans are bad not only for science, but for the economy as a whole because it is only through growth triggered by research and innovation that this country can hope to recover from the mess that it is currently in.

As scientists and as people who care about this country’s future we can not allow these cuts to go ahead. I will be attending an event at the Conway Hall in London organised by Science is Vital to campaign against these reckless plans. I encourage you to do likewise. I don’t know if the government will listen, but we have to try.

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Research Funding – A Modest Proposal

Posted in Education, Science Politics with tags , , , , , on September 9, 2015 by telescoper

This morning, the Minister for Universities, Jo Johnson, made a speech in which, among other things, he called for research funding to be made simpler. Under the current “dual funding” system, university researchers receive money through two main routes: one is the Research Excellence Framework (REF) which leads to so-called “QR” funding allocations made via the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE); and the other is through research grants which have to be applied for competitively from various sources, including the Seven Research Councils.

Part of the argument why this system needs to be simplified is the enormous expense and administrative burden of the Research Excellence Framework.  Many people have commented to me that although they hate the REF and accept that it’s ridiculously expensive and time-consuming, they didn’t see any alternative. I’ve been thinking about it and thought I’d make a suggestion. Feel free to shoot it down in flames through the box at the end, but I’ll begin with a short introduction.

Those of you old enough to remember will know that before 1992 (when the old `polytechnics’ were given the go-ahead to call themselves `universities’) the University Funding Council – the forerunner of HEFCE – allocated research funding to universities by a simple formula related to the number of undergraduate students. When the number of universities suddenly increased this was no longer sustainable, so the funding agency began a series of Research Assessment Exercises to assign research funds (now called QR funding) based on the outcome. This prevented research money going to departments that weren’t active in research, most (but not all) of which were in the ex-Polytechnics. Over the years the apparatus of research assessment has become larger, more burdensome, and incomprehensibly obsessed with short-term impact of the research. Like most bureaucracies it has lost sight of its original purpose and has now become something that exists purely for its own sake.

It is especially indefensible at this time of deep cuts to university core funding that we are being forced to waste an increasingly large fraction of our decreasing budgets on staff-time that accomplishes nothing useful except pandering to the bean counters.

My proposal is to abandon the latest manifestation of research assessment mania, i.e. the REF, and return to a simple formula, much like the pre-1992 system,  except that QR funding should be based on research student (i.e. PhD student) rather than undergraduate numbers. There’s an obvious risk of game-playing, and this idea would only stand a chance of working at all if the formula involved the number of successfully completed research degrees over a given period .

I can also see an argument  that four-year undergraduate students (e.g. MPhys or MSci students) also be included in the formula, as most of these involve a project that requires a strong research environment.

Among the advantages of this scheme are that it’s simple, easy to administer, would not spread QR funding in non-research departments, and would not waste hundreds of millions of pounds on bureaucracy that would be better spent actually doing research. It would also maintain the current “dual support” system for research, if that’s  a benefit.

I’m sure you’ll point out disadvantages through the comments box!


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“Credit” needn’t mean “Authorship”

Posted in Science Politics, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , on September 4, 2015 by telescoper

I’ve already posted about the absurdity of scientific papers with ridiculously long author lists but this issue has recently come alive again with the revelation that the compilers of the Times Higher World University Rankings decided to exclude such papers entirely from their analysis of citation statistics.

Large collaborations involving not only scientists but engineers, instrument builders, computer programmers and data analysts –  are the norm in some fields of science – especially (but not exclusively) experimental particle physics – so the arbitrary decision to omit such works from bibliometric analysis is not only idiotic but also potentially damaging to a number of disciplines. The “logic” behind this decision is that papers with “freakish” author lists might distort analyses of citation impact, even allowing – heaven forbid – small institutions with a strong involvement in world-leading studies such as those associated with the Large Hadron Collider to do well compared with larger institutions that are not involved in such collaborations.  If what you do doesn’t fit comfortably within a narrow and simplistic method of evaluating research, then it must be excluded even if it is the best in the world. A sensible person would realise that if the method doesn’t give proper credit then you need a better method, but the bean counters at the Times Higher have decided to give no credit at all to research conducted in this way. The consequences of putting the bibliometric cart in front of the scientific horse could be disastrous, as insitutions find their involvement in international collaborations dragging them down the league tables. I despair of the obsession with league tables because these rankings involve trying to shoehorn a huge amount of complicated information into a single figure of merit. This is not only pointless, but could also drive behaviours that are destructive to entire disciplines.

That said, there is no denying that particle physicists, cosmology and other disciplines that operate through large teams must share part of the blame. Those involved in these collaborations have achieved brilliant successes through the imagination and resourcefulness of the people involved. Where imagination has failed however is to carry on insisting that the only way to give credit to members of a consortium is by making them all authors of scientific papers. In the example I blogged about a few months ago this blinkered approach generated a paper with more than 5000 authors; of the 33 pages in the article, no fewer than 24 were taken up with the list of authors.

Papers just don’t have five thousand “authors”. I even suspect that only about 1% of these “authors” have even read the paper. That doesn’t mean that the other 99% didn’t do immensely valuable work. It does mean that pretending that they participated in writing the article that describes their work isn’t be the right way to acknowledge their contribution. How are young scientists supposed to carve out a reputation if their name is always buried in immensely long author lists? The very system that attempts to give them credit renders that credit worthless. Instead of looking at publication lists, appointment panels have to rely on reference letters instead and that means early career researchers have to rely on the power of patronage.

As science evolves it is extremely important that the methods for disseminating scientific results evolve too. The trouble is that they aren’t. We remain obsessed with archaic modes of publication, partly because of innate conservatism and partly because the lucrative publishing industry benefits from the status quo. The system is clearly broken, but the scientific community carries on regardless. When there are so many brilliant minds engaged in this sort of research, why are so few willing to challenge an orthodoxy that has long outlived its usefulness. Change is needed, not to make life simpler for the compilers of league tables, but for the sake of science itself.

I’m not sure what is to be done, but it’s an urgent problem which looks set to develop very rapidly into an emergency. One idea appears in a paper on the arXiv with the abstract:

Science and engineering research increasingly relies on activities that facilitate research but are not currently rewarded or recognized, such as: data sharing; developing common data resources, software and methodologies; and annotating data and publications. To promote and advance these activities, we must develop mechanisms for assigning credit, facilitate the appropriate attribution of research outcomes, devise incentives for activities that facilitate research, and allocate funds to maximize return on investment. In this article, we focus on addressing the issue of assigning credit for both direct and indirect contributions, specifically by using JSON-LD to implement a prototype transitive credit system.

I strongly recommend this piece. I don’t think it offers a complete solution, but certainly contains  many interesting ideas. For the situation to improve, however, we have to accept that there is a problem. As things stand, far too many senior scientists are in denial. This has to change.

 

 

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Who needs critics? Or peer review for that matter…

Posted in Art, Literature, Music, Science Politics with tags , , , , , on August 9, 2015 by telescoper

No time for a proper post today so I’m going to rehash an old piece from about six years ago. In particular I direct your attention to the final paragraph in which I predict that peer review for academic publications will soon be made redundant. There has been quite a lot of discussion about that recently; see here for an example.

Critics say the stangest things.

How about this, from James William Davidson, music critic of The Times from 1846:

He has certainly written a few good songs, but what then? Has not every composer that ever composed written a few good songs? And out of the thousand and one with which he deluged the musical world, it would, indeed, be hard if some half-dozen were not tolerable. And when that is said, all is said that can justly be said of Schubert.

Or this, by Louis Spohr, written in 1860 about Beethoven’s Ninth (“Choral”) Symphony

The fourth movement is, in my opinion, so monstrous and tasteless and, in it’s grasp of Schiller’s Ode, so trivial that I cannot understand how a genius like Beethoven could have written it.

No less an authority than  Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians (Fifth Edition) had this to say about Rachmaninov

Technically he was highly gifted, but also severely limited. His music is well constructed and effective, but monotonous in texture, which consists in essence mainly of artificial and gushing tunes…The enormous popular success some few of Rachmaninov’s works had in his lifetime is not likely to last and musicians regarded it with much favour.

And finally, Lawrence Gillman wrote this in the New York Tribune of February 13 1924 concerning George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue:

How trite and feeble and conventional the tunes are; how sentimental and vapid the harmonic treatment, under its disguise of fussy and futile counterpoint! Weep over the lifelessness of the melody and harmony, so derivative, so stale, so inexpressive.

I think I’ve made my point. We all make errors of judgement and music critics are certainly no exception. The same no doubt goes for literary and art critics too. In fact,  I’m sure it would be quite easy to dig up laughably inappropriate comments made by reviewers across the entire spectrum of artistic endeavour. Who’s to say these comments are wrong anyway? They’re just opinions. I can’t understand anyone who thinks so little  of Schubert, but then an awful lot of people like to listen what sounds to me to be complete dross.

What puzzles me most about the critics is not that they make “mistakes” like these – they’re only human after all – but why they exist in the first place. It seems extraordinary to me that there is a class of people who don’t do anything creative themselves  but devote their working lives to criticising what is done by others. Who should care what they think? Everyone is entitled to an opinion, of course, but what is it about a critic that implies we should listen to their opinion more than anyone else?

(Actually, to be precise, Louis Spohr was also a composer but I defy you to recall any of his works…)

Part of the idea is that by reading the notices produced by a critic the paying public can decide whether to go to the performance, read the book or listen to the record. However, the correlation between what is critically acclaimed and what is actually good (or even popular) is tenuous at best. It seems to me that, especially nowadays with so much opinion available on the internet, word of mouth (or web) is a much better guide than what some geezer writes in The Times. Indeed, the   Opera reviews published in the papers are so frustratingly contrary to my own opinion that I don’t  bother to read them until after the performance, perhaps even after I’ve written my own little review on here.  Not that I would mind being a newspaper critic myself. The chance not only to get into the Opera for free but also to get paid for spouting on about afterwards sounds like a cushy number to me. Not that I’m likely to be asked.

In science,  we don’t have legions of professional critics, but reviews of various kinds are nevertheless essential to the way science moves forward. Applications for funding are usually reviewed by others working in the field and only those graded at the very highest level are awarded money.  The powers-that-be are increasingly trying to impose political criteria on this process, but it remains a fact that peer review is the crucial part of the process. It’s not just the input that is assessed either. Papers submitted to learned journals are reviewed by (usually anonymous)  referees, who often require substantial changes to be made the work before the work can be accepted for publication.

We have no choice but to react to these critics if we want to function as scientists. Indeed, we probably pay much more attention to them than artists do of critics in their particular fields. That’s not to say that these referees don’t make mistakes either. I’ve certainly made bad decisions myself in that role,  although they were all made in good faith. I’ve also received comments that I thought were unfair or unjustifiable, but at least I knew they were coming from someone who was a working scientist.

I suspect that the use of peer review in assessing grant applications will remain in place for a some considerable time. I can’t think of an alternative, anyway. I’d much rather have a rich patron so I didn’t have to bother writing proposals all the time, but that’s not the way it works in either art or science these days.

However, it does seem to me that the role of referees in the publication process is bound to become redundant in the very near future. Technology now makes it easy to place electronic publications on an archive where they can be accessed freely. Good papers will attract attention anyway, just as they would if they were in refereed journals. Errors will be found. Results will be debated. Papers will be revised. The quality mark of a journal’s endorsement is no longer needed if the scientific community can form its own judgement, and neither are the monstrously expensive fees charged to institutes for journal subscriptions.

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Why Research Loans Should Replace Grants For Commercially-Driven Research

Posted in Education, Politics, Science Politics with tags , , , on August 4, 2015 by telescoper

Two recent items in the Times Higher about UK Higher education – concerning the abolition of maintenance grants for less well-off students and whether business should contribute more to the cost of research reminded me of a post I wrote almost exactly five years ago. Was it really so long ago? Anyway, I am old so I am allowed to repeat myself even if people aren’t listening, so here’s the gist of the argument I made way back then….

Universities essentially do two things, teaching and research. However, when you think about it, there’s a fundamental inconsistency in the way these are funded. It seems to me that correcting this anomaly could significantly improve  both the main benefits  universities contribute to the UK economy.

First, research. If  research is going to pay off in the short term it should be funded by private investors, interested businesses or venture capitalists of some sort. Dragon’s Den, even. When the public purse is so heavily constrained, it should only be asked to fund those things that can’t in practice be funded any other way. This is pretty much the opposite of what the Treasury thinks. It wants to concentrate public funds in projects that  can demonstrate immediate commercial potential. Taxpayer’s money used in this way either ends up in the pockets of entrepreneurs if the research succeeds or, if it doesn’t,  the grant has effectively been wasted. It’s yet another example of the taxpayer bearing the risk that an investment might fail, but not sharing in the benefits if it succeeds. This is analogous to the way  the taxpayer bailed out the banking sector in the aftermath of the Credit Crunch in 2008, only to see the profits subsequently transferred back into private hands.  This is happening to an increasing extent elsewhere in the United Kingdom, as public services built up through state investment are being transferred to for-profit organizations. Even our beloved National Health Service seems to be on an irreversible path to privatization.

My proposal for research funding would involve phasing out research grants for groups that want to concentrate on commercially-motivated research and replace them with research loans. If the claims the researchers  make to secure the advance are justified, they should have no problem repaying it  from the profits they make from patent income, commercial sales,  or other forms of exploitation. If not, then they will have to pay back the loan from their own funds (as well as being exposed for having made over-optimistic claims). In the current economic situation the loans could be made at very low interest rates and still save a huge amount of the current research budget for higher education. Indeed after a few years – I suggest the loans should be repayable in 3-5 years –  it would be self-financing. I think a large fraction of research in the Applied Sciences and Engineering should be funded in this way.

The money saved by replacing grants  to commercially driven research with loans could be re-invested in those areas where public investment is really needed, such as pure science and medicine. Here grants are needed because the motivation for the research is different. Much of it does, in fact, lead to commercial spin-offs, but that is accidental and likely to appear only in the very long term. The real motivation of doing this kind of research is to enrich the knowledge base of the UK and the world in general. In other words, it’s for the public good. Remember that?

Most of you probably think that this is a crazy idea, but if you do I’ll ask you to now think about how the government funds teaching in universities and ask yourself why research is handled in such a  different way.

Way back in the mists of time when I was a student, I didn’t have to pay fees and even got a maintenance grant from the government that was more-or-less sufficient to live on. That system changed so that students don’t get grants any more, but may qualify for loans. They also have to pay fees. The government only pays an amount directly to the university on their behalf if they are studying an “expensive” subject, i.e. a laboratory-based science, and that amount is very small (and decreasing with time). This change of policy happened because the (then) Labour government wanted to boost the rate of participation in universities, but didn’t think the taxpayer should pay the whole cost. The logic goes that the students benefit from their education, e.g. in terms of increased earnings over their working lifetime, so they should pay a contribution to it. The policy has changed since then into one in which many students bear the full cost of their tuition.

I don’t come from a wealthy family background so it’s not clear whether I would have been able to go to University under the current system. I would have been prepared to borrow to fund tuition fees, but without a maintenance grant for day-to-day living I don’t think I could have afforded it as my parents could not have supported me financially. In my opinion the removal of maintenance grants is far more likely to deter students from poorer backgrounds from going to University than the introduction of fees.

Anyway, the problem with all these changes is that they have led to a huge increase in enrolment on degree courses in “vocational” areas such as Leisure & Tourism, Media Studies, and Business while traditional courses, such as those in STEM disciplines, providing the sort of rigorous intellectual training that is essential for many sectors of the economy, have struggled to keep up. This is partly because subjects like Mathematics and Physics are difficult, partly because they are expensive, and partly because the UK school system has ceased to provide adequate preparation for such courses. I’m by no means against universities supplying training in vocational subjects, but because these are the areas where the primary beneficiary is indeed the student, I don’t think the government should subsidise them as much as the more rigorous courses that we really need to encourage the brightest students to take up. Universities are not just for training. They have a much deeper purpose.

If it’s fair to ask students to contribute to their teaching, it’s fair to ask commercial companies to pay for the research that they exploit. Just as student grants should be re-introduced for certain disciplines, so should research loans be introduced for others. You know it makes sense.

However, if you want to tell me why it doesn’t, via the comments box, please feel free!

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The Renewed Threat to STEM

Posted in Education, Finance, Science Politics with tags , , , , , , on July 26, 2015 by telescoper

A couple of years ago, soon after taking over as Head of the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences (MPS) at the University of Sussex, I wrote a blog post called The Threat to STEM from HEFCE’s Funding Policies about how the funding policies of the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) were extremely biased against STEM disciplines. The main complaint I raised then was that the income per student for science subjects does not adequately reflect the huge expense of teaching these subjects compared to disciplines in the arts and humanities. The point is that universities now charge the same tuition fee for all subjects (usually £9K per annum) while the cost varies hugely across disciplines: science disciplines can cost as much as £16K per annum per student whereas arts subjects can cost as little as £6K. HEFCE makes a small gesture towards addressing this imbalance by providing an additional grant for “high cost” subjects, but that is only just over £1K per annum per student, not enough to make such courses financially viable on their own. And even that paltry contribution has been steadily dwindling.  In effect, fees paid by arts students are heavily subsidising the sciences across the Higher Education sector.

The situation was bad enough before last week’s announcement of an immediate £150M cut in HEFCE’s budget. Once again the axe has fallen hardest on STEM disciplines. Worst of all, a large part of the savings will be made retrospectively, i.e. by clawing back money that had already been allocated and which institutions had assumed in order to plan their budgets. To be fair, HEFCE had warned institutions that cuts were coming in 2015/16:

This means that any subsequent changes to the funding available to us from Government for 2015-16, or that we have assumed for 2016-17, are likely to affect the funding we are able to distribute to institutions in the 2015-16 academic year. This may include revising allocations after they have already been announced. Accordingly, institutions should plan their budgets prudently.

However, this warning does not mention the possibility of cuts to the current year (i.e. 2014-15). No amount of prudent planning of budgets will help when funding is taken away retrospectively, as it is now to the case. I should perhaps explain that funding allocations are made by HEFCE in a lagged fashion, based on actual student numbers, so that income for the academic year 2014-15 is received by institutions during 15/16. In fact my institution, in common with most others, operates a financial year that runs from August 1st to July 31st and I’ve just been through a lengthy process of setting the budget from August 1st 2015 onward; budgets are what I do most of the time these days, if I’m honest. I thought I had finished that job for the time being, but look:

In October 2015, we will notify institutions of changes to the adjusted 2014-15 teaching grants we announced in March 20158. These revised grant tables will incorporate the pro rata reduction of 2.4 per cent. This reduction, and any other changes for individual institutions to 2014-15 grant, will be implemented through our grant payments from November 2015. We do not intend to reissue 2014-15 grant tables to institutions before October 2015, but institutions will need to reflect any changes relating to 2014-15 in their accounts for that year (i.e. the current academic year). Any cash repayments due will be confirmed as part of the October announcements.

On top of this, any extra students recruited as as  result of the government scrapping student number controls won’t attract any support at all from HEFCE, so we wll only get the tuition fee.And the government says it wants the number of STEM students to increase? Someone tell me how that makes sense.

What a mess! It’s going to be back to the drawing board for me and my budget. And if a 2.4 per cent cut doesn’t sound much to you then you need to understand it in terms of how University budgets work. It is my job – as the budget holder for MPS – to ensure that the funding that comes in to my School is spent as efficiently and effectively on what the School is meant to do, i.e. teaching and research. To that end I have to match income and expenditure as closely as possible. It is emphatically not the job of the School to make a profit: the target I am given is to return a small surplus (actually 4 per cent of our turnover) to contribute to longer-term investments. I’ve set a budget that does this, but now I’ll have to wait until October to find out how much I have to find in terms of savings to absorb the grant cut. It’s exasperating when people keep moving the goalposts like this. One would almost think the government doesn’t care about the consequences of its decisions, as long as it satisfies its fixation with cuts.

And it’s not only teaching that is going to suffer. Another big slice of savings (£52M) is coming from scrapping the so-called “transitional relief” for STEM departments who lost out as a result of the last Research Excellence Framework. This again is a policy that singles out STEM disciplines for cuts. You can find the previous allocations of transitional relief in an excel spreadsheet here. The cash cuts are largest in large universities with big activities in STEM disciplines – e.g. Imperial College will lose £10.9M previous allocated, UCL about £4.3M, and Cambridge about £4M. These are quite wealthy institutions of course, and they will no doubt cope, but that doesn’t make it any more acceptable for HEFCE to break a promise.

This cut in fact won’t alter my School’s budget either. Although we were disappointed with the REF outcome in terms of league table position, we actually increased our QR income. As an institution the University of Sussex only attracted £237,174 in transitional relief so this cut is small potatoes for us, but that doesn’t make this clawback any more palatable from the point of view of the general state of health of STEM disciplines in the United Kingdom.

These cuts are also directly contrary to the claim that the UK research budget is “ring-fenced”. It clearly isn’t, and with a Comprehensive Spending Review coming up many of us are nervous that these cuts are just a foretaste of much worse things to come. Research Councils are being asked to come up with plans based on a 40% cut in cash.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

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Bad Statistics, Bad Science

Posted in Bad Statistics, Science Politics, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , on July 2, 2015 by telescoper

I saw an interesting article in Nature the opening paragraph of which reads:

The past few years have seen a slew of announcements of major discoveries in particle astrophysics and cosmology. The list includes faster-than-light neutrinos; dark-matter particles producing γ-rays; X-rays scattering off nuclei underground; and even evidence in the cosmic microwave background for gravitational waves caused by the rapid inflation of the early Universe. Most of these turned out to be false alarms; and in my view, that is the probable fate of the rest.

The piece goes on to berate physicists for being too trigger-happy in claiming discoveries, the BICEP2 fiasco being a prime example. I agree that this is a problem, but it goes far beyond physics. In fact its endemic throughout science. A major cause of it is abuse of statistical reasoning.

Anyway, I thought I’d take the opportunity to re-iterate why I statistics and statistical reasoning are so important to science. In fact, I think they lie at the very core of the scientific method, although I am still surprised how few practising scientists are comfortable with even basic statistical language. A more important problem is the popular impression that science is about facts and absolute truths. It isn’t. It’s a process. In order to advance it has to question itself. Getting this message wrong – whether by error or on purpose -is immensely dangerous.

Statistical reasoning also applies to many facets of everyday life, including business, commerce, transport, the media, and politics. Probability even plays a role in personal relationships, though mostly at a subconscious level. It is a feature of everyday life that science and technology are deeply embedded in every aspect of what we do each day. Science has given us greater levels of comfort, better health care, and a plethora of labour-saving devices. It has also given us unprecedented ability to destroy the environment and each other, whether through accident or design.

Civilized societies face rigorous challenges in this century. We must confront the threat of climate change and forthcoming energy crises. We must find better ways of resolving conflicts peacefully lest nuclear or conventional weapons lead us to global catastrophe. We must stop large-scale pollution or systematic destruction of the biosphere that nurtures us. And we must do all of these things without abandoning the many positive things that science has brought us. Abandoning science and rationality by retreating into religious or political fundamentalism would be a catastrophe for humanity.

Unfortunately, recent decades have seen a wholesale breakdown of trust between scientists and the public at large. This is due partly to the deliberate abuse of science for immoral purposes, and partly to the sheer carelessness with which various agencies have exploited scientific discoveries without proper evaluation of the risks involved. The abuse of statistical arguments have undoubtedly contributed to the suspicion with which many individuals view science.

There is an increasing alienation between scientists and the general public. Many fewer students enrol for courses in physics and chemistry than a a few decades ago. Fewer graduates mean fewer qualified science teachers in schools. This is a vicious cycle that threatens our future. It must be broken.

The danger is that the decreasing level of understanding of science in society means that knowledge (as well as its consequent power) becomes concentrated in the minds of a few individuals. This could have dire consequences for the future of our democracy. Even as things stand now, very few Members of Parliament are scientifically literate. How can we expect to control the application of science when the necessary understanding rests with an unelected “priesthood” that is hardly understood by, or represented in, our democratic institutions?

Very few journalists or television producers know enough about science to report sensibly on the latest discoveries or controversies. As a result, important matters that the public needs to know about do not appear at all in the media, or if they do it is in such a garbled fashion that they do more harm than good.

Years ago I used to listen to radio interviews with scientists on the Today programme on BBC Radio 4. I even did such an interview once. It is a deeply frustrating experience. The scientist usually starts by explaining what the discovery is about in the way a scientist should, with careful statements of what is assumed, how the data is interpreted, and what other possible interpretations might be and the likely sources of error. The interviewer then loses patience and asks for a yes or no answer. The scientist tries to continue, but is badgered. Either the interview ends as a row, or the scientist ends up stating a grossly oversimplified version of the story.

Some scientists offer the oversimplified version at the outset, of course, and these are the ones that contribute to the image of scientists as priests. Such individuals often believe in their theories in exactly the same way that some people believe religiously. Not with the conditional and possibly temporary belief that characterizes the scientific method, but with the unquestioning fervour of an unthinking zealot. This approach may pay off for the individual in the short term, in popular esteem and media recognition – but when it goes wrong it is science as a whole that suffers. When a result that has been proclaimed certain is later shown to be false, the result is widespread disillusionment.

The worst example of this tendency that I can think of is the constant use of the phrase “Mind of God” by theoretical physicists to describe fundamental theories. This is not only meaningless but also damaging. As scientists we should know better than to use it. Our theories do not represent absolute truths: they are just the best we can do with the available data and the limited powers of the human mind. We believe in our theories, but only to the extent that we need to accept working hypotheses in order to make progress. Our approach is pragmatic rather than idealistic. We should be humble and avoid making extravagant claims that can’t be justified either theoretically or experimentally.

The more that people get used to the image of “scientist as priest” the more dissatisfied they are with real science. Most of the questions asked of scientists simply can’t be answered with “yes” or “no”. This leaves many with the impression that science is very vague and subjective. The public also tend to lose faith in science when it is unable to come up with quick answers. Science is a process, a way of looking at problems not a list of ready-made answers to impossible problems. Of course it is sometimes vague, but I think it is vague in a rational way and that’s what makes it worthwhile. It is also the reason why science has led to so many objectively measurable advances in our understanding of the World.

I don’t have any easy answers to the question of how to cure this malaise, but do have a few suggestions. It would be easy for a scientist such as myself to blame everything on the media and the education system, but in fact I think the responsibility lies mainly with ourselves. We are usually so obsessed with our own research, and the need to publish specialist papers by the lorry-load in order to advance our own careers that we usually spend very little time explaining what we do to the public or why.

I think every working scientist in the country should be required to spend at least 10% of their time working in schools or with the general media on “outreach”, including writing blogs like this. People in my field – astronomers and cosmologists – do this quite a lot, but these are areas where the public has some empathy with what we do. If only biologists, chemists, nuclear physicists and the rest were viewed in such a friendly light. Doing this sort of thing is not easy, especially when it comes to saying something on the radio that the interviewer does not want to hear. Media training for scientists has been a welcome recent innovation for some branches of science, but most of my colleagues have never had any help at all in this direction.

The second thing that must be done is to improve the dire state of science education in schools. Over the last two decades the national curriculum for British schools has been dumbed down to the point of absurdity. Pupils that leave school at 18 having taken “Advanced Level” physics do so with no useful knowledge of physics at all, even if they have obtained the highest grade. I do not at all blame the students for this; they can only do what they are asked to do. It’s all the fault of the educationalists, who have done the best they can for a long time to convince our young people that science is too hard for them. Science can be difficult, of course, and not everyone will be able to make a career out of it. But that doesn’t mean that it should not be taught properly to those that can take it in. If some students find it is not for them, then so be it. I always wanted to be a musician, but never had the talent for it.

I realise I must sound very gloomy about this, but I do think there are good prospects that the gap between science and society may gradually be healed. The fact that the public distrust scientists leads many of them to question us, which is a very good thing. They should question us and we should be prepared to answer them. If they ask us why, we should be prepared to give reasons. If enough scientists engage in this process then what will emerge is and understanding of the enduring value of science. I don’t just mean through the DVD players and computer games science has given us, but through its cultural impact. It is part of human nature to question our place in the Universe, so science is part of what we are. It gives us purpose. But it also shows us a way of living our lives. Except for a few individuals, the scientific community is tolerant, open, internationally-minded, and imbued with a philosophy of cooperation. It values reason and looks to the future rather than the past. Like anyone else, scientists will always make mistakes, but we can always learn from them. The logic of science may not be infallible, but it’s probably the best logic there is in a world so filled with uncertainty.

 

 

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