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Farewell to the Haldane Principle?

Posted in Science Politics with tags Adrian Smith, BIS, David Willetts, Haldane Principle, RCUK on November 17, 2010 by telescoper

Many scientists – myself included – were so relieved at the outcome of the recent Comprehensive Spending Review that we thought the government had accepted the argument that Science is Vital more-or-less completely. Most of us have stopped worrying about whether we’re going to have to go about to carry on doing science and just got on with doing it for the past few weeks.

However, today I came across some worrying news about planned changes to the way the science budget is administered in the UK. In particular, the post currently occupied by Adrian Smith – Director General for Science and Research – is to be phased out. The position will be merged with what are currently other separate positions within the Department of Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) to form a single Director General covering science, universities, research and innovation.

There’s nothing intrinsically sinister about administrative reorganisation, of course, and one can understand that a certain amount of streamlining might well be justified in order to save costs at a time of economic challenge. However, there are worrying signs about this particular change.

One thing is that the new post has only been advertised to civil servants. Apparently there will no longer be a scientist in a position to speak up for science among the higher management of BIS. Adrian Smith is not only an effective manager – as demonstrated by his past success as Principal of Queen Mary, University of London – but is also a respected figure in the field of mathematical statistics. I suspect this combination of skills and gravitas played a big role in securing a reasonably satisfactory outcome for science in the CSR.

Another worrying thing is that the planned reorganisation apparently hasn’t even been discussed with the government’s Chief Scientific Adviser, John Beddington. Former Chief Scientific Advisor Lord May has reacted angrily to the new proposals, calling them “stupid, ignorant and politically foolish”. Strong stuff.

On top of all this is the apparent ambivalence expressed by the Minister for Universities and Science, David Willetts, about the Haldane Principle, which has underpinned British science policy for decades. Roughly speaking, this principle states that it should be researchers rather than politicians who should decide where research funds should be spent.

Willetts recently responded to a question about the Haldane Principle in the form of a Parliamentary written answer:

The Haldane principle is an important cornerstone for the protection of the scientific independence and excellence. We all benefit from its application in the UK.

The principle that decisions on individual research proposals are best taken by researchers through peer review is strongly supported by the coalition Government. Prioritisation of an individual research council’s spending within its allocation is not a decision for Ministers. Such decisions are rightly left to those best placed to evaluate the scientific quality, excellence and likely impact of scientific programmes.

The Government do, however, need to take a view on the overall level of funding to science and research and they have decided to protect and to ring fence the science and research budget for the next four years. This decision has been made in the context of the current economic status of the UK and the strategic importance of research funding, while recognising the value of science to our future growth, prosperity and cultural heritage.

Over the years there has been some uncertainty over the interpretation of the Haldane principle. I intend to clarify this is a statement which will be released alongside the science and research budget allocations towards the end of this year. In order that this statement has the consent of the research community, I intend to consult with senior figures in the UK science and research community to develop a robust statement of the Haldane principle.

A superficial reading of this does start out by giving the impression that it strongly supports the principle. However, I’m not aware of what “uncertainty” there is over its application that requires such clarification. I rather think this is being put up as an excuse to limit its scope, i.e. that the uncertainty is more about how the political establishment can get around it rather than what it actually means.

The fact that the “robust statement” of a Revised Version of the Haldane Principle is going to be wheeled out just when the allocations to the research councils are announced makes me very nervous that its prime function will be to justify big cuts in fundamental science in favour of applied research.

This all seems to add up to a systematic attempt to sideline the scientists currently involved in the development of UK science policy development and its implementation. If nothing else, it seems rather strange from a political point of view to try to bring about this change in a way that is bound to alienate large sections of the scientific community, just when the government seemed to be recognizing the importance of science for the UK.

But then, perhaps I’m reading too much into it. Maybe we just have a new government that’s trying to do too much too quickly, and happens to have made a botch of this particular job…

You can find other blog posts on this issue, e.g. here and here.

6 Comments »

Thought for the Day

Posted in Science Politics with tags John Womersley, STFC on November 12, 2010 by telescoper

No time for a lengthy post today, as I’m off to London for (at least part of ) meeting at the Royal Astronomical Society.

However, yesterday I came across the following quote from John Womersley, Director of Science Programmes at the Science and Technology Facilities Council:

“The quickest way to get out of the economic dilemmas is to be able to evolve scientifically and that requires a scientifically trained workforce,” Womersley explained, adding that only 20 to 30 percent of astronomy is about understanding the universe. “The rest is about training people.”

Apparently this sort of message “works with government” and “intellectual purity” doesn’t.

I find this a profoundly uninspiring message for those of us who happen to think astronomy is worth doing for its own sake, i.e. that astronomy has intrinsic scientific value. John Womersley might well be right in saying that the Treasury isn’t interested in “pure science”, but where did the figure of 20 to 30 percent come from, and what does this say about the sinking status of astronomical research in the UK’s system of science funding? I fear the worst for British astronomy over the next few years, as the funding squeeze on STFC takes hold if this is what senior STFC managers really think about astronomy.

Isn’t there anyone at STFC prepared to champion the science, rather than pushing the spin-offs and training angle all the time? The latter are important, but they add to, rather than replace, the case that the pursuit of scientific knowledge is vital for our intellectual and cultural development as a society.

Another thing to point out is that STFC doesn’t actually train anyone. All the training John talks about is done by university staff. So if >70% of astronomy is about training then surely that’s an argument for a huge increase in university research grants, fellowships and studentships? Or is the idea that STFC provides the telescopes and universities provide the training in exchange for being allowed to use them?

And isn’t funding, say, the ESO subscription a staggeringly expensive way of training folk for industry or commerce? In any case the biggest barrier in the UK to having a scientifically educated workforce is actually the lack of physics teachers in state schools and the very poor quality of the science part of the national curriculum. Won’t the Treasury spot that fallacy?

It may of course be that many of you share John Womersley’s view. I’d be interested in the results of the following straw poll

34 Comments »

The New Scheme for STFC Research Grants

Posted in Science Politics with tags research grants, STFC on November 11, 2010 by telescoper

Quickly donning my Community Service hat, I thought I’d pass on a little bit of news from the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) to my avid readership (both of them).

You may recall that a few months ago STFC sent out a consultation document to its “community”, in which departments were asked to comment on three proposals for a new system of research grant funding.

Well, the Committee responsible for considering this issue has now reported back in a lengthy document that can be found here.

So which of the three options are they recommending, do I hear you ask? Well, actually, none of them.

What they are in fact recommending, in essence, is that in future there will only be a single three-year “consolidated” grant per department in each discipline (e.g. particle physics or astronomy). The security of the existing (five-year) rolling grants will all but vanish, although a vestigial element of this will be retained by allowing some part of the three-year allocation to be spent over a 4 year period. What will also be lost is the flexibility of the current standard 3-year grants to provide a small amount of funding for novel ideas by individual researchers. In the new system, all scientists in a given department will be allowed to apply only once every three years.

The proposal clearly sounds the death knell for any form of “responsiveness” in grant funding from STFC, further strengthening the impression (which has been growing for many years) the Executive wishes to impose a rigid top-down management on all its science programmes.

It looks to me like they have combined the least attractive aspects of the three proposals into a single scheme that is considerably worse, from the point of view of delivering science, than the sum of its parts. Nevertheless, STFC Council has endorsed the new proposal and it looks like it is now going to be implemented.

One might wonder what was the point of consulting on three alternatives and then implementing something completely different to all of them, but the answer to that appears to be simply the desire to save administrative costs.

I’m sure there’ll be comments and reaction to this announcement, so please feel free to add yours through the box below!

26 Comments »

Business Class

Posted in Biographical, Science Politics with tags Cardiff Business Club, CERN, Dr Lyndon Evans, Gerald Davies, Large Hadron Collider, Particle Physics on November 9, 2010 by telescoper

I’d never heard of Cardiff Business Club until Friday afternoon, when I received a message that they were hosting a lecture by Dr Lyndon Evans, the Director of the Large Hadron Collider experiment at CERN in Geneva, followed by a dinner, and had sent a bunch of invitations to the School of Physics & Astronomy at Cardiff University, where I work.

Given the short notice it was a bit of a scramble to get a group together, but in the end eight of us – 3 staff and 5 students – headed off in taxis yesterday to the swish St David’s Hotel in Cardiff Bay for the welcoming reception.

Earlier in the day I’d been in contact with Alun Davies, the Secretary of Cardiff Business Club, who had asked me if I would deliver the vote of thanks at the end of Dr Evans’ lecture. Naturally, I agreed to do the honours. I’m not actually a particle physicist, of course, but I was the closest thing available. This all meant that, instead of joining my colleagues at the reception, I went off to meet the speaker and various officers of the club in a private lounge where we were plied with drinks and canapés. As well as meeting Lyn Evans, I also got the chance to chat with the Club Chairman, legendary former rugby international Gerald Davies who is an extremely friendly and charming bloke.

Thence it was downstairs to the lecture, during which I sat on the platform, facing the audience, from where it was extremely difficult to see the speaker’s slides. It was a 30-minute overview of the science, technology, and even politics behind the LHC, which went down extremely well. I remember this quote in particular

The greatest economic benefits of scientific research have always resulted from advances in fundamental knowledge rather than the search for specific applications.

It’s particularly interesting, in the light of government suggestions that we should focus science funding more on applied sciences and technology, to note that this remark was made by Margaret Thatcher.

At the end I did my best to keep my vote of thanks as brief as possible – brevity has never been my strong suit, I’m afraid – and we then went off to dinner, with me rejoining the physics crowd at their table in a far-flung corner of the room.

Not surprisingly, the dinner turned out to be quite a formal affair – preceded by grace and followed by the loyal toast – which I think made some of our party feel a little bit uncomfortable, but at least it was all free! The room was dominated by men in suits who all looked like they were used to going everywhere Business Class. We academics usually travel by Economy Class only.

Proceedings drew to a close quite early, at 10pm. Unfortunately, the temptation to adjourn to the pub for a “quick drink” proved too strong to resist.

I got home at 2.30am.

3 Comments »

A New Theory of Dark Matter

Posted in Science Politics, The Universe and Stuff with tags astroparticle physics, bosons, Cosmology, dark matter, fermions, Keith Mason, Particle Physics on November 6, 2010 by telescoper

Since this week has seen the release of a number of interesting bits of news about particle physics and cosmology, I thought I’d take the chance to keep posting about science by way of a distraction from the interminable discussion of funding and related political issues. This time I thought I’d share some of my own theoretical work, which I firmly believe offers a viable alternative to current orthodox thinking in the realm of astroparticle physics.

As you probably know, one of the most important outstanding problems in this domain is to find an explanation of dark matter, a component of the matter distribution of the Universe which is inferred to exist from its effects on the growth of cosmic structures but which is yet to be detected by direct observations. We know that this dark matter can’t exist in the form of familiar atomic material (made of protons, neutrons and electrons) so it must comrpise some other form of matter. Many candidates exist, but the currently favoured model is that it is made of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) arising in particle physics theories involving supersymmetry, perhaps the fermionic counterpart of the gauge bosons of the standard model, e.g. the photino (the supersymmetric counterpart of the photon).

However, extensive recent research has revealed that this standard explanation may in fact be incorrect and circumstantial evidence is mounting that supports a radically different scenario. I am now in a position to reveal the basics of a new theory that accounts for many recent observations in terms of an alternative hypothesis, which entails the existence of a brand new particle called the k-Mason.

Standard WIMP dark matter comprises very massive particles which move very slowly, hence the term Cold Dark Matter or CDM, for short. This means that CDM forms structures very rapidly and efficiently, in a hierarchical or “bottom-up” fashion. This idea is at the core of the standard “concordance” cosmological model.

However, the k-Mason is known to travel such huge distances at such high velocity in random directions between its (rare) encounters that it not only inhibits the self-organisation of other matter, but actively dissipates structures once they have been formed. All this means that structure formation is strongly suppressed and can only happen in a “top-down” manner, which is extremely inefficient as it can only form small-scale structures through the collapse of larger ones. Astronomers have compiled a huge amount of evidence of this effect in recent years, lending support to the existence of the k-Mason as a dominant influence (which is of course entirely at odds with the whole idea of concordance).

Other studies also provide pretty convincing quantitative evidence of the large mean free path of the k-Mason.

Although this new scenario does seem to account very naturally for the observational evidence of collapse and fragmentation gathered by UK astronomers since 2007, there are still many issues to be resolved before it can be developed into a fully testable theory. One difficulty is that the k-Mason appears to be surprisingly stable, whereas most theories suggest it would have vanished long before the present epoch. On the other hand, it has also been suggested that, rather than simply decaying, the k-Mason may instead transform into some other species with similar properties; suggestions for alternative candidates emerging from the decay of the k-Mason are actively being sought and it is hoped this process will be observed definitively within the next 18 months or so.

However the biggest problem facing this idea is the extreme difficulty of detecting the k-Mason at experimental or observational facilities. Some scientists have claimed evidence of its appearance at various laboratories run by the UK’s Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), as well as at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, but these claims remain controversial: none has really stood up to detailed scrutiny and all lack independent confirmation from reliable witnesses. Likewise there is little proof of the presence of k-Mason at any ground-based astronomical observatory, which has led many astronomers to conclude that only observations done from space will remain viable in the longer term.

So, in summary, while the k-Mason remains a hypothetical entity, it does furnish a plausible theory that accounts, in a broad-brush sense, for many disparate phenomena. I urge particle physicists, astronomers and cosmologists to join forces in the hunt for this enigmatic object.

NOTE ADDED IN PROOF: The hypothetical “k-Mason” referred to in this article is not to be confused with the better-known “strange” particle the k-Meson.

18 Comments »

The Waiting Game

Posted in Science Politics with tags astronomy, research grants, STFC on November 4, 2010 by telescoper

I thought I’d briefly don my “community service” hat and send a message to any astronomers reading this who have “responsive mode” grant applications currently under review by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC).

Obviously I can’t discuss any details here (or anywhere else for that matter), but I’ve had a few email enquiries about when the results are likely to be known. I’m sure the chair of the Astronomy Grants Panel, Andy Lawrence (aka the e-astronomer) has had even more. It seems worth posting a brief message to make the situation as clear as possible to anyone waiting for news.

The current situation is that all the rolling grant specialist panel presentations have now finished, but the full AGP has to reconvene later in November to complete the process of assigning a final ranking to all the applications.

The process is, therefore, ongoing. It would be even if it were not for the fact that the Comprehensive Spending Review results were only announced on 20th October. It will therefore still be some time before STFC knows its budget for the next few years, and only when it knows that can it produce a delivery plan that stipulates how much of its funding will be available for research grants. And only after that is done will the Astronomy Grants Panel be able to determine its final proritisation, after which STFC will decide precisely which proposals will be funded and which don’t make the cut. In an ideal world this process would be finished by the end of this calendar year, but I’m afraid there’s quite a lot of evidence that we don’t live in an ideal world, especially as science funding is concerned.

So there you have the situation as clear as I can make it, which isn’t very clear at all. You’ll all just have to wait. The most important thing is not to assume that it’s going to be bad news if you hear nothing quickly…

Diem noctis exspectatione perdunt, noctem lucis metu.

(Seneca, De Brevitate Vitae)

2 Comments »

Poisoned Chalice, Anyone?

Posted in Science Politics with tags Keith Mason, STFC on November 1, 2010 by telescoper

In the July instalment of news from STFC Council, among the items discussed were the arrangements for selecting a successor to the current Chief Executive Officer, Professor Keith Mason. Apparently a sub-group of the Council has been established to work out how to proceed; its terms of reference are also given. Among the latter you can find the following statement:

Keith Mason comes to the end of his second and final term as a Research Council CEO in March 2012 having served as PPARC CEO and then as founding CEO of STFC. Council believes it to be important that in the context of the selection of a new chief executive that a clear understanding is reached with STFC’s various stakeholders as to the role and responsibilities of the STFC chief executive in leading a complex and diverse organisation through what will undoubtedly be times of further change, uncertainty and financial pressure. Council also believes it will be important to understand as we move forward any lessons that should be learnt from the circumstances behind the communication recently received by the chairman from individuals within STFC’s academic communities expressing concern about STFC’s leadership.

The italics are mine. The communication referred to in the above extract must be the petition, signed by over nine hundred scientists, expressing no confidence in the current executive and discussed here recently in a guest post by Professor George Efstathiou.

The fear is that the Science and Technology Facilities Council will decide to appoint a Chief Executive, perhaps from the world of commerce or industry, who has even less sympathy for the fundamental sciences, such as astronomy and particle physics than the current one.

The latest (October) News from Council contains a report from the sub-Group advising on the appointment of the new CEO which makes interesting reading. For example, the mandatory requirements for candidates for the post include that he/she should

Have a strong and respected STEM background and qualification (at least to PhD level), or similar (e.g. in the biomedical sector) provided candidates can demonstrate an appreciation and understanding of the scale and complexity of STFC science and research;
Command the respect of the academic communities and be seen as champion of STFC’s research base;
Be recognised as having previously and successfully led and managed (with total accountability) an organisation or organisational unit of an appropriate and relevant degree of complexity;
Demonstrate a very high intellectual calibre;
Have experience of working within an international context;

This suggests that they will be looking for someone with a background in academic research although not specifically in physics or astronomy. This will come as a relief to many working in areas covered by STFC’s remit, and even might inspire a few people I know to start writing updating their CVs. However, I think it will be extremely difficult for STFC to persuade anyone of sufficient calibre to take up a post which has, for the entire duration of the existence of the organisation, involved responding to a calamitous series of financial crises and restructurings with very little scope for implementing a coherent science programme. In fact, three years since its inception, the STFC still hasn’t produced any document that represents a science strategy of any real substance.

I hope that STFC has better times ahead of it, but I wonder how many qualified candidates would just see this job as a poisoned chalice?

11 Comments »

Das Kapital

Posted in Science Politics with tags Comprehensive Spending Review, ESO, STFC on October 29, 2010 by telescoper

After a short-lived burst of optimism following the announcement of the better-than-expected results of the Comprehensive Spending Review for science funding, it seems levels of nervousness are again increasing about what might lie in store for the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC).

It appears the “near-cash” funding for RCUK, the umbrella organisation that sits above the seven Research Councils will be fixed over the period of the CSR but, within that overall pot, the Medical Research Council (MRC) will have its funding stream protected in real terms, meaning the others will be have to be reduced in real terms. How the pie will be divided up remains to be seen, but I believe there is some pretty tough negotiating going on behind the scenes right now. RCUK chief Adrian Smith has apparently been given detailed instructions by the Treasury on how to carry out the budget allocations, but I haven’t seen the manual…

However, this is only part of the story. The other part, as the e-astronomer has already pointed out, is rather scary. As well as “near-cash” funding, the Research Councils also receive funds marked “capital”. I’m not an accounting expert, but I’m told this is all pretty normal practice for large organisations. What has emerged recently is that the capital part of the RCUK budget is to be cut by a whopping 44%. A rumour is spreading that STFC has been told to expect at least a 30% cut in capital funding and instructed to budget accordingly.

This could herald a return of the nightmare scenario I blogged about not long ago. The point is that, owing to the nature of STFC, a very large part of its budget is tied up in the capital stream. In fact it’s even worse than you might imagine because large international subscriptions, including CERN and ESO, are currently paid for, at least in part, out of STFC’s capital budget. According to the journal Nature,

That money pays for everything from radio telescopes to Antarctic research stations. In particular, the cuts will hit the Science & Technology Facilities Council (STFC), which funds particle physics and astronomy. The council, which has struggled financially for years, has been told to prepare for its capital funding to fall by a third, according to documents seen by Nature. That could jeopardize Britain’s participation in organizations such as the European Southern Observatory.

Another factor that adds to the vulnerability of our ESO membership is the longrunning saga of the VISTA telescope. When the UK joined ESO (in 2002), this telescope – which hadn’t been built then – was put up as an “in kind” contribution to the UK’s joining fee. However, VISTA wasn’t actually handed over to ESO until December 2009, significantly behind schedule and it is still undergoing performance verification. In principle, ESO could require the UK to pay a substantial fine for the late delivery and it is STFC that would have to find the funds. I don’t know what the precise fine would be, but I’ve heard figures from £16M to about twice that.

Although Science Minister David Willetts is on record as saying that he was not planning to withdraw from any European collaborations, including ESO, the VISTA debacle may force his hand if it means the cost of continuing membership exceeds the penalties for withdrawal.

Withdrawing from ESO would destroy a huge part of the UK’s ground-based astronomy activity, as we have already withdrawn from (or are planning to withdraw from) most other facilities we used to have access to. It would also damage our credibility as international scientific partners in a more general sense. But if it isn’t ESO that gets chopped it will be something else. It’s difficult to see how STFC can cope with this cut without something going to the wall.

The Royal Astronomical Society has written to Fellows requesting that they write to their MPs to point out the consequences of drastic cuts to STFC’s budget, citing withdrawal from ESO as one possible outcome.

There’s no doubt about it, it’s brown trousers time.

5 Comments »

Engineering a Conflict

Posted in Finance, Politics, Science Politics with tags Colin MacIlwain, Engineering, Particle Physics, Science on October 25, 2010 by telescoper

I don’t have time to post much today so I thought I’d just put up a quick item about something that the e-astronomer (aka Andy Lawrence) has already blogged about, and generated a considerable amount of discussion about so I’ll just chip in with my two-penny-worth.

Some time ago I posted an item explaining how, in the run-up to last week’s Comprehensive Spending Review, the Royal Academy of Engineering had argued, in a letter to the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), that government research funding should be

… concentrated on activities from which a contribution to the economy, within the short to medium term, is foreseeable. I recognise that this calls for significant changes in practice but I see no alternative in the next decade. This may mean disinvesting in some areas in order properly to invest in others.

They went on to say that

BIS should also consider the productivity of investment by discipline and then sub-discipline. Once the cost of facilities is taken into account it is evident that ‘Physics and Maths’ receive several times more expenditure per research active academic compared to those in ‘Engineering and Technology’. This ratio becomes significantly more extreme if the comparison is made between particle physics researchers and those in engineering and technology. Much of particle physics work is carried out at CERN and other overseas facilities and therefore makes a lower contribution to the intellectual infrastructure of the UK compared to other disciplines. Additionally, although particle physics research is important it makes only a modest contribution to the most important challenges facing society today, as compared with engineering and technology where almost all the research is directly or indirectly relevant to wealth creation.

I had hoped that this unseemly attack on particle physics would have been seen for what it was and would have faded into the background, but a recent article by Colin Macilwain has brought it back into the spotlight. I quote

UK engineers have started a scrap that will grow uglier as the spending cuts begin.

I should add that MacIlwain isn’t particularly supportive of the engineers’ position, but he does make some interesting remarks on the comparitively low status held by engineers in the United Kingdom compared to other countries, a point alsotaken up on Andy Lawrence’s blog. In my opinion this bare-faced attempt to feather their own nest at the expense of fundamental physics isn’t likely to generate many new admirers. Neither is the fact – and this is a point I’ve tried to make before – that the engineers’ argument simply doesn’t hold any water in the first place.

The point they are trying to make is that research in engineering is more likely to lead to rapid commercial exploitation than research in particle physics. That may be true, but it’s not a good argument for the government to increase the amount of research funding. If engineering and applied science really is “near market” in the way that the RAEng asserts, then it shouldn’t need research grants, but should instead be supported by venture capital or direct investment from industry. The financial acumen likely to be available from such investors will be much for useful for the commercial exploitation of any inventions or discoveries than a government-run research council. To be fair, as MacIlwain’s article explains, a large fraction of engineering research (perhaps 75%) is funded by commerce and industry. Moreover some engineering research is also too speculative for the market to touch and therefore does merits state support. However, that part that needs state support needs it for precisely the same reason that particle physics does, i.e. that its potential is long-term rather than short term. This means that is in the same boat as fundamental physics and shouldn’t keep pretending that it isn’t. If engineering research needs government funding then ipso facto it’s not likely to generate profits in the short term.

I think scientists and engineers would all be better off if they worked together to emphasize the amazingly successful links between fundamental physics and technology, as demonstrated by, e.g., the Large Hadron Collider at CERN and the mutual interdependence of their disciplines.

United we stand, and all that…

10 Comments »

The Day After: A Welsh Perspective

Posted in Education, Politics, Science Politics with tags Cardiff University, CSR, education, HEFCE, HEFCW, Physics, Universities, Wales on October 21, 2010 by telescoper

It’s well after 11am and I’m still at home. Came down last night with some sort of bug that kept me awake nearly all night with frequent visits to the smallest room in the house. Whatever it is is still rumbling on so I’ve decided to stay at home until I give myself the all clear.

This sudden attack of lurgy is probably not connected with yesterday’s dramatic announcements of the results of the comprehensive spending review, which are now being dissected and analysed all over the mainstream press, the blogosphere, and countless common rooms around the country.

I haven’t got the energy right now to go over the ramifications in detail, but encourage you to read the whole thing, which is available in a nifty online reader for your perusal. I will, however, make a few brief comments, with particular emphasis on the situation here in Wales.

First, the announcement of large cuts to the teaching budget administered by HEFCE has clearly sent shockwaves through academia. It appears that only STEM subjects will continue to receive the state contribution and in future students will have to bear the full cost of tuition (but only after they’ve graduated and started to earn over the threshold of £21K). As a supporter of the Science is Vital campaign I was relieved that we seem to won a victory, although the war is far from over. However, I feel great sadness at the cost that our success seems likely to inflict on other disciplines. If you think these are nervous times for scientists, imagine what it must be like working in the Arts and Humanities.

Of course this all applies directly only to English universities: the budgets for Higher Education in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are administered separately, so in principle things could work out very differently for Higher Education here in Wales.

However, the total amount of money available for the Welsh Assembly Government (WAG) to spend is fixed by the Westminster government through the Barnett Formula. This determines the overall cash for the devolved governments by allocating a proportion of what England spends on those things that are devolved., i.e. Wales is notionally allocated an amount for Higher Education which is proportional to HEFCE’s allocation and similar for other areas of spending such as Health. Once the size of the overall pot is fixed, however, the WAG is not obliged to spend its money in the same way that England does.

Buried in the pages of the CSR document is Wales’ allocation over the CSR period, which shows real terms cut of about 7.5% over the term. However, the Welsh Assembly Government’s reaction puts it rather differently:

In real terms, our total Budget is set to fall by around 3.1% per year on average, or 12% in total over the coming four years. This means that our Budget in 2014/15 will be £1.8bn lower in real terms than it is this year. Overall, in cash terms the reductions to our Budget will be 3% over the period.

Our capital Budget has been hit particularly hard, and will be cut by 40% in real terms – 34% in cash terms – over the next four years. This substantial reduction, particularly next year, where the cut is more than 25% in real terms, will clearly have a major impact on the private as well as the public sectors.

These figures seem different from those in the CSR document, which might be because of some nuance such as the way capital expenditure is accounted. If anyone can explain the discrepancy through the comments box I’d be grateful.

The main point is, though, that if Wales is going to keep current levels of investment in Higher Education (or even cut less than the English are doing) then it will have to take the money from elsewhere, which is not going to be easy to get through the Welsh Assembly. The picture, therefore, may not be any better here in Wales than it is in England, and could well turn out even worse, depending on how the WAG sets its own spending priorities. To complicate matters further, there’s an election next year for the Welsh Assembly, so there’s a wider political perspective to consider.

Within the overall issue of Higher Education spending is the question of whether Wales will decide to protect funding for STEM disciplines at the expense of all others. The WAG has already produced a document that suggests a strong focus on the so-called regional agenda, which may mean more money going into Further Education, vocational training, and part-time studies rather than, say, research-led science. I know what I would prefer, but whatever I say, it’s the WAG’s decisions that really count. And so it should be. After all, unlike me, they were elected!

Of course, if STEM subjects aren’t protected in Wales, those of us working in those areas are likely to lose even more ground to English universities, which already out-perform us in many respects. We have to make our case as best we can and see what happens.

However, I will end with some more local news which is extremely promising. Yesterday we had a staff meeting in the School of Physics & Astronomy at Cardiff University during which two extremely positive items came to light. One is that we will shortly be interviewing for the extra physics posts we advertised some time ago. Hopefully there will be a new Professor and three new Lecturers joining the staff in the very near future. I’m told we had a huge number of applicants for these positions, and the shortlists for these positions are very strong indeed. This is all very encouraging.

On top of this there is another exciting development on the horizon. After the disappointing outcome of the last RAE for physics in Wales, we have been thinking very hard at working closer with colleagues at Swansea with a view to building a sort of South Wales Physics Alliance. The departments are complementary in many ways: Swansea does particle physics, but Cardiff doesn’t; Cardiff does astronomy, but Swansea doesn’t. Where we are both relatively weak is in so-called “mainstream” physics, which is in the minority in both departments. With a bit of help, I think these two small(ish) departments could form a research institute that really challenges our competitors abroad (especially in England). I’m strongly in favour of this plan, and hope it goes ahead with full HEFCW support (including extra cash), but in this as in some many things, it’s a case of “fingers crossed”.

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In the Dark