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The Transparent Dishonesty of the Research Excellence Framework

Posted in Open Access, Science Politics with tags , , , , , , on May 30, 2012 by telescoper

Some of my colleagues in the School of Physics & Astronomy recently attended a briefing session about the  forthcoming Research Excellence Framework. This, together with the post I reblogged earlier this morning, suggested that I should re-hash an article I wrote some time ago about the arithmetic of the REF, and how it will clearly not do what it says on the tin.

The first thing is the scale of the task facing members of the panel undertaking the assessment. Every research active member of staff in every University in the UK is requested to submit four research publications (“outputs”) to the panel, and we are told that each of these will be read by at least two panel members. The Physics panel comprises 20 members.

As a rough guess I’d say that the UK has about 40 Physics departments, and the average number of research-active staff in each is probably about 40. That gives about 1600 individuals for the REF. Actually the number of category A staff submitted to the 2008 RAE was 1,685.57 FTE (Full-Time Equivalent), pretty close to this figure. At 4 outputs per person that gives 6400 papers to be read. We’re told that each will be read by at least two members of the panel, so that gives an overall job size of 12800 paper-readings. There are 20 members of the panel, so that means that between 29th November 2013 (the deadline for submissions) and the announcement of the results in December 2014 each member of the panel will have to have read 640 research papers. That’s an average of about two a day. Every day. Weekends included.

Now we are told the panel will use their expert judgment to decide which outputs belong to the following categories:

  • 4*  World Leading
  • 3* Internationally Excellent
  • 2* Internationally Recognized
  • 1* Nationally Recognized
  • U   Unclassified

There is an expectation that the so-called QR  funding allocated as a result of the 2013 REF will be heavily weighted towards 4*, with perhaps a small allocation to 3* and probably nothing at all for lower grades. In other words “Internationally recognized” research will probably be deemed completely worthless by HEFCE. Will the papers belonging to the category “Not really understood by the panel member” suffer the same fate?

The panel members will apparently know enough about every single one of the papers they are going to read in order to place them  into one of the above categories, especially the crucial ones “world-leading” or “internationally excellent”, both of which are obviously defined in a completely transparent and objective manner. Not.

We are told that after forming this judgement based on their expertise the panel members will “check” the citation information for the papers. This will be done using the SCOPUS service provided (no doubt at considerable cost) by   Elsevier, which by sheer coincidence also happens to be a purveyor of ridiculously overpriced academic journals. No doubt Elsevier are  on a nice little earner peddling meaningless data for the HECFE bean-counters, but I haven’t any confidence that it will add much value to the assessment process.

There have been high-profile statements to the effect that the REF will take no account of where the relevant “outputs”  are published, including a recent pronouncement by David Willetts. On the face of it, that would suggest that a paper published in the spirit of Open Access in a free archive would not be disadvantaged. However, I very much doubt that will be the case.

I think if you look at the volume of work facing the REF panel members it’s pretty clear that citation statistics will be much more important for the Physics panel than we’ve been led to believe. The panel simply won’t have the time or the breadth of understanding to do an in-depth assessment of every paper, so will inevitably in many cases be led by bibliometric information. The fact that SCOPUS doesn’t cover the arXiv means that citation information will be entirely missing from papers just published there.

The involvement of  a company like Elsevier in this system just demonstrates the extent to which the machinery of research assessment is driven by the academic publishing industry. The REF is now pretty much the only reason why we have to use traditional journals. It would be better for research, better for public accountability and better economically if we all published our research free of charge in open archives. It wouldn’t be good for academic publishing houses, however, so they’re naturally very keen to keep things just the way they are. The saddest thing is that we’re all so cowed by the system that we see no alternative but to participate in this scam.

Incidentally we were told before the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise that citation data would emphatically not be used;  we were also told afterwards that citation data had been used by the Physics panel. That’s just one of the reasons why I’m very sceptical about the veracity of some of the pronouncements coming out from the REF establishment. Who knows what they actually do behind closed doors?  All the documentation is shredded after the results are published. Who can trust such a system?

To put it bluntly, the apparatus of research assessment has done what most bureaucracies eventually do; it has become  entirely self-serving. It is imposing increasingly  ridiculous administrative burdens on researchers, inventing increasingly  arbitrary assessment criteria and wasting increasing amounts of money on red tape which should actually be going to fund research.

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SKA Site Duel ends in Dual Site for SKA

Posted in Science Politics, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , , on May 26, 2012 by telescoper

I wasn’t going to post about this but then I realised nobody seemed to have used the obvious headline so thought I might as well knock out a quickie.

Yesterday, after much to-ing and fro-ing an announcement was finally made  concerning the site of the Square Kilometre Array.  The two contenders for the honour of hosting this superb project were South Africa and Australasia (both Australia and New Zealand get a bit, actually).

So who won?

Well, formally the decision was to split the project between both. At first sight this looks like a political compromise, but wiser heads than me disagree and say that this an excellent outcome on science grounds. I’d be interested to hear  opinions on that, in fact.

In any case, a quick skim through the STFC announcement makes it clear that South Africa actually gets the lion’s share of the actual dishes, which will be operated alongside the  Meerkat facility, and will do what I think is the more exciting science.  Having been to Cape Town just recently I know how much the SKA project means for astronomy in South Africa so I’m delighted for them that the outcome is so positive.

It does, however, remain to be seen what the implications of this decision are for the overall cost and scientific value-for-money, but for the time being the thing I’m most pleased about is that a decision has been reached.  I think the SKA project is by far the most exciting ground-based astronomy project around, and it will be very exciting to watch it grow.

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EPSRC Blues

Posted in Science Politics with tags , , , , , on May 15, 2012 by telescoper

I woke up this morning to find via Twitter an interesting blog post about a demonstration in London against the policies of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

For those of you not up with the ins and outs of the UK science funding regime, EPSRC is the agency that funds the more mainstream areas of physics (as well as chemistry, engineering and some mathematics) while the more exotic bits (particle physics, nuclear physics and astronomy) are the responsibility of the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC). The current protest seems to be lead by a number of eminent chemists, including Prof. Sir Harry Kroto, Prof. Sir John Cadogan and Prof. Anthony Barrett.

Almost five years ago – was it really so long? – owing to a mixture of funding cuts and incompetent management, STFC was born into a financial crisis that made many of us doing astronomy and particle physics wish that we also were protected by the friendly hands of EPSRC rather than left out in the cold as we felt we were at STFC. Things have slowly improved at STFC, which now has an executive team that actually seems to listen to its community as well as speaking the language that Whitehall wants to hear. Funding is still tight, but STFC is a noticeably happier ship now than it was it first launched.

In the meantime, any envy we might have had about our colleagues in, e.g., condensed matter physics being safer in the EPSRC stable has now well and truly evaporated. Their strategy, “Shaping Capability“, expressed in dreadful management-speak, involves the imposition of arbitrary priorities such as the restriction of fellowship applications to certain areas chosen by The Management. Worse, its new funding rules attempt to target funding at commercially-driven research. Dark clouds are gathering in the “blue skies” under which UK science has hitherto flourished.

The unresponsive top-down character of EPSRC has strengthened under the leadership of David Delpy who must have been made in the same factory as Keith Mason, former Chief Executive of STFC, whose diplomatic skills were similarly remarkable by their absence.

For some reason, this reminds me of the following quote from Smiley’s People

In my time, Peter Guillam, I’ve seen Whitehall skirts go up and come down again. I’ve listened to all the excellent argument for doing nothing, and reaped the consequent frightful harvest. I’ve watched people hop up and down and call it progress. I’ve seen good men go to the wall and the idiots get promoted with a dazzling regularity.

I’ve argued before that I think EPSRC’s approach is fundamentally wrong. When taxpayers’ money used is used to generate immediate commercial returns, it ends up in the pockets of entrepreneurs when the research succeeds and, if it doesn’t, the grant has effectively been wasted. Commercial Impact should not be a factor in awarding public funding, because it is perfectly suited as a criterion for attracting private funding. This is why we have a national fiscal policy: the only justification for levying taxation is to fund projects which will not yield short-term economic returns. There is no reason to spend public money on commercial projects: we need to justify pure research by a non-economic valuation.

This morning EPSRC have issued a press release calling upon scientists to work together ahead of the forthcoming comprehensive spending review. It doesn’t mention the demonstration, or other manifestations of unrest within the EPSRC community, but instead re-asserts the need for its so-called strategy, with a clear message not to rock the boat ahead of the next Comprehensive Spending Review.

I’ve heard that argument many times in the context of STFC during its crisis period. I firmly believe that rocking the boat in that case helped it get off the rocks. It remains to be seen whether the EPSRC protest, which is currently rather small, will gather enough momentum to make a difference. It all depends on what fraction of EPSRC scientists have actually signed up to the Delpy Agenda. Is the new campaign representative of the views of the EPSRC community? No doubt many research groups will be prospering under the new regime, at least in the short term. Time alone will tell what the long-term impact of short-termism will be.

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The case for JUICE

Posted in Science Politics, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , on May 8, 2012 by telescoper

Here’s a nice blog peace giving the case for JUICE (The Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer recently selected by the European Space Agency for its next L-class mission).

Duncan Forgan's avatarWell-Bred Insolence

There’s been a lot of chatter in astronomy circles about the negative consequences of ESA’s latest L-class (i.e. large) space mission selection.  JUICE (The JUpiter Icy moon Explorer) was selected over two rival missions – the New Gravitational wave Observatory (NGO), and the Advanced Telescope for High ENergy Astrophysics (ATHENA).  In the current age of global austerity, one group’s win is several groups’ losses, and understandably the X-Ray and gravitational wave communities are upset at the choice.  Indeed, reading the comments section on astro blogs might make planetary scientists go a little pale. Not least the fact that ATHENA supporters have already delivered a 1450 signature petition demanding a rethink.  The fact that the decision making process has been somewhat cloudy doesn’t help matters.

It does indeed suck that this is a zero-sum game (in fact, probably…

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It’s JUICE!

Posted in Science Politics, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , on May 3, 2012 by telescoper

Not unexpectedly, the European Space Agency announced yesterday that it’s next large mission will be the Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer (aka JUICE). There’s a piece in Physics World about the selection – and rejection of the other two contenders, NGO and ATHENA. Andy Lawrence has commented already on his own blog and is also quoted extensively in the Physics World article.

A lot of allegations are flying around about how the selection process was conducted, specifically relating to conflicts of interest. I don’t know any details, so I won’t comment on whether this is justified outrage or simply sour grapes.

Anyway, for what it’s worth, I think I agree with what Andy Lawrence says in the Physics World story in that the final decision was pretty inevitable after NASA’s decisions in the areas of gravitational waves and X-ray astronomy pulled the rug out from under the other contenders. I’ll also add that, although it’s far from my own specialism, I think JUICE looks like a very exciting mission. I wish it every success.

It just remains to be seen how long the recriminations will rumble on.

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Controversy brewing at ESA?

Posted in Science Politics with tags , , , , on April 23, 2012 by telescoper

Interesting stuff over at the e-astronomer relating to ESA’s handling of the process of selecting its next L-class mission. The plot thickens.

andyxl's avatarThe e-Astronomer

So the Athena folk are somewhat miffed at being pipped by Juice. (This metaphor doesn’t seem quite right ? Ed.) But what about Horse Number Three ? Aren’t the NGO folk doing a Grand Petition ? Nope. It seems their tactic is a semi-formal complaint about inadeqacies in the process : an email letter direct to Gimenez. I am not sure how widely it has been circulated, but I understand it is stern stuff, bringing up issues of inappropriate revisions of costings and risk factors, and inadequately resolved conflicts of interest. Feel free to comment if you have clear knowledge, but please (a) do not leak things that are confidential, and (b) keep coments about process and not about individuals.

Its not really clear what competition means when a very small number of items is under consideration, and moreoever each item represents one community-segment, each of which ESA wishes to…

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Bad News for Astrophysics from ESA

Posted in Science Politics, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , , , , , on April 18, 2012 by telescoper

Just a quick post to pass on the news (which I got from Steinn Sigurdsson’s blog) that the ESA Executive (see correction in comments below) Space Science Advisory Committee (SSAC) of the European Space Agency (ESA) has made a recommendation as to the next large mission to be flown. The short list consisted of a mission to Jupiter’s moons (JUICE), an X-ray observatory (ATHENA), and a gravitational wave observatory (NGO). The last two of these are severely de-scoped versions of missions (IXO and LISA respectively) that had to be re-designed in the aftermath of decisions made in the US decadal review not to get involved in them.

Not unexpectedly, the winner is JUICE. Barring a rejection of this recommendation by the ESA Science Programme Committee (SPC) this will be the next big thing for ESA space science.

The School of Physics and Astronomy at Cardiff University has a considerable involvement in gravitational wave physics, so the decision is disappointing for us but not entirely surprising. It’s not such a big blow either, as we are mainly involved in ground-based searches such as LIGO.

The biggest local worry will be for the sizeable community of X-ray astronomers in the UK. With no big new facilities likely for well over a decade one wonders how the expertise in this area can be sustained into the future, even if LOFT is selected as one of the next medium-sized missions. Or, given that STFC funding is already spread extremely thin, perhaps this is time for the UK to organize a strategic withdrawal from X-ray astronomy?

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Sêr Cymru

Posted in Science Politics with tags , , , on March 24, 2012 by telescoper

The Welsh Government’s vision for a world-leading science base in Wales was unveiled on Thursday 15 March during a keynote address by Wales’ Chief Scientific Officer, Professor John Harries, who delivered a public lecture at Cardiff University to reveal how he thinks this strategic agenda can steer Welsh science and engineering into the future.

Here is the lecture in its entirety

One the principal components this strategy is the Sêr Cymru (“Star Wales”) project which will involve expenditure of about £50 million over 5 years to attract research leaders to Wales. This announcement attracted quite a lot of local news coverage, e.g in the Western Mail, but it isn’t exactly a new proposal. In fact I blogged about it several months ago. Here is a summary of the points I made back then together with some new comments.

The basic point is that Welsh universities currently only attract about 3% of the UK’s total research funding whereas the famous Barnett formula allocates Wales about 5% of the total in other areas of public expenditure. Nobody involved in research would argue for funds to be allocated on any other basis than through quality, so there’s no clamour for having research funding allocated formulaically a là Barnett; the only way to improve the success rate is to improve the quality of applications. John Harries suggests that means poaching groups from elsewhere who’ve already got a big portfolio of research grants…

The problem with that strategy is that it’s not very easy to persuade such people to leave their current institutions, especially if they’ve already spend years acquiring the funding needed to equip their laboratories. It’s not just a question of moving people, which is relatively easy, but can involve trying to replace lots of expensive and delicate equipment. The financial inducements needed to fund the relocation of a major research group and fight off counter-offers from its present host are likely to be so expensive that the benefit gained from doing this takes years to accrue, even they are successful.

I agree with Prof. Harries that Welsh universities need to raise their game in research, but I don’t think this “transfer market” approach is likely to provide a solution on its own. I think Wales needs a radical restructuring of research, especially in science, across the whole sector, which I think is unacceptably complacent about the challenges ahead.

For a start, much more needs to be done to identify and nurture younger researchers, i.e. future research stars rather than present ones. Most football clubs nowadays have an “academy” dedicated to the development of promising youngsters, so why can’t we do a similar thing for research in Wales? Research groups in different Welsh universities also need to develop closer collaborations, and perhaps even full mergers, in order to compete with larger English institutions.

More controversially, I’d say that the problem is not being helped by Welsh universities continuing to be burdened by the monstrous bureaucracy and bizarre practices of the Research Excellent Framework, which allocates “QR” research funds according to priorities set by HEFCE in a way that reflects the thinking of the Westminster parliament. The distribution of QR funding in Wales, which is meant to supplement competitive grant income from UK funding bodies, should be decided by HEFCW in line with Welsh strategic priorities. Wales would be far better off withdrawing from the REF and doing its own thing under the auspices of the Welsh Assembly Government.

In fact there are dark rumours circulating that HEFCW will not have enough money to pay any QR funding anyway. If that’s true then the widening funding gap between Wales and England will do more damage than can possibly be remedied by importing a few big shots from elsewhere. The sum involved (£50 million) seems like a lot, but it won’t pay for more than a few groups around Wales if they are in experimental science or engineering technology, because the cost of setting up new labs and acquiring new equipment is considerable. Although buying in mercenaries might be of short-term benefit, what are the chances that they’ll take someone else’s dollar in the near future?

Wales needs a sustainable research base, so at very least I’d like to see a bottom-up project, encouraging younger researchers at PhD and PDRA level, perhaps through a system of national fellowships, to complement the “top-down” of the Star Wales project. Unless that happens, we might have leaders with no-one to follow them.

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Worries for Science in Spain

Posted in Finance, Politics, Science Politics with tags , on March 10, 2012 by telescoper

I recently received the following email letter, concerning the state of science funding in Spain.  As well as passing it on to colleagues I thought I would post it on this blog where it might have wider impact:

Dear colleague,

You probably know very well how the global crisis is affecting southern Europe, and in particular Spain. Some of us are promoting a campaign among the worlwide scientific community to prevent our conservative government from straining even more the science system in Spain, that so many successes has obtained in the last decade, but whose future is now at stake.

In the next few weeks, and contravening recommendation from the European Commission stating that public deficit control measures should not affect Research and Development (R&D) and innovation, the Spanish Government and Parliament could approve a State Budget for 2012 that would cause considerable long-term damage to the already weakened Spanish research system, contributing to its collapse.

There is an open letter that we are sending to distinguished scientists all over the world, including many Nobel Prize Winners and Members of Academies of Science, asking them to sign, support the motion and spread the word:

http://www.investigaciondigna.es/wordpress/sign

Please do help us by signing the letter and passing it on to your colleagues.

Kind regards,

Alexander Knebe

The “open letter” you can read by clicking on the link contains some interesting – and alarming – information that has serious implications for our colleagues not only in Spain but elsewhere in Europe. Take a look, for example, at the following picture that shows the fraction of GDP being invested in science:

This isn’t just about Spain, although the situation is clearly especially serious for Spanish Science. It’s a timely reminder that the UK is also well below the EU average in terms of science spend. Is it a coincidence that the EU’s worst-performing economies are all on the right of this figure? Is that where we want the UK to be too?

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STFC Team Selection

Posted in Football, Science Politics with tags , on February 27, 2012 by telescoper

It’s been such a busy day today I almost missed a seemingly unimportant message on Twitter from the Science and Technology Facilities Council about its new management structure. Only when I got home this evening did I read it carefully and discover that it’s not really as innocuous as I’d assumed. In fact it looks like the Chief Executive has been busy during the recent transfer window.

The new team at STFC will line up like this

It doesn’t look all that different from the old one, except it’s a slightly more compact  formation with less width in the wide areas, and perhaps fewer clichés in the final third.

The controversy however comes with ashen-faced manager Ron John Womersley’s team selection. As per the announcement:

Following staff input, and Council approval, I have conducted an internal selection process to fill the new senior positions in the structure and can now announce the following appointments from 1 April 2012:

    • Executive Director National Laboratories: Dr Andrew Taylor
    • Executive Director Business and Innovation: Dr Tim Bestwick
    • Executive Director Corporate Services: Mr Gordon Stewart
    • Executive Director Strategy, Performance and Communications: Dr Sharon Cosgrove

In addition, Mrs Jane Tirard will continue in her role with the new title of Executive Director Finance, and Dr Janet Seed will extend her acting stewardship of the programmes area as Acting Executive Director Programmes pending an open recruitment exercise for the position.

So three prominent members of the previous line-up are no longer part of the team:

For example, out goes hard-tackling wide man and own-goal specialist, Richard Wade, who apparently leaves on a free transfer. Or is he just on the subs’ bench for the time being?  According to the diagram, Tim Bestwick stays but will move from a central position to the right side, roughly changing position with Gordon Stewart who also keeps his place in the team. Andrew Taylor, formerly in midfield, moves to an inside forward role where, as Director of the National Laboratories, he will sometimes be “in the hole” (i.e. Didcot).

Most pundits reckon the new-look STFC will deploy a Diamond-Light Source shaped midfield aimed at closing down the opposition, as opposed to the old team which concentrated more on closing down its own facilities. It looks like the reorganization was made with  one eye on European challenges, but Womersley remains committed to the national game, as last week’s scouting trip to the University of Neasden makes clear.

The STFC supporters’ club  (Sid and Doris Bonkers) expressed delight with the team changes, but former manager Keith Mason remains bound and gagged in the basement of UKSA was unavailable for comment.

Harry Redknapp is 97.

P.S. The STFC statement describes the staff departures thus:

STFC has benefited from the very significant personal contributions of the existing senior management team. They have helped develop STFC into a successful workplace as recognised by the recent Investor in People accreditation (Silver status), and our positive Comprehensive Spending Round outcome. However, the changing dynamics of STFC mean that it is time for a change and not all senior managers will continue with the organisation.

Do I detect a note of insincerity?

 

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