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The STFC Delivery Plan

Posted in Science Politics with tags astronomy, BIS, Particle Physics, RCUK, Science funding, STFC on December 20, 2010 by telescoper

Excuse the very quick and sketchy post on such an important topic, but I’ve got a lot of things to do before the dreaded Christmas lunch.

This morning the allocations of funding for the research councils were announced. The statement accompanying the ensuing Delivery Plan for the Science and Technology Facilities Council can be found here, while the plan itself is here. You’ll probably also want to read Paul Crowther’s analysis here.

Other research councils have also published their plans; you can find the one for EPSRC here.

The headline announcement reads:

After transferring responsibility for space science to the UK Space Agency, STFC’s overall baseline allocation for 2011-12 for resource funding (previously termed “near-cash”) is £377.5m rising to an allocation of £381.14m in 2014-15. This excludes administration which will be separately allocated. Our capital baseline allocation for 2011-12 is £91m, with an indicative allocation for the remainder of the spending review period reducing to £68m in 2014-15.

So not at all bad news for resource funding, but the implications of the capital cut are unclear (at least to me).

I haven’t had time to read the entire document, but did have a quick look at the crucial Appendix D which shows how each discipline is expected to fare:

Particle Physics expenditure will rise from £133M to £148M over 4 years
Astronomy expenditure will fall from £77M to £69M over the same period
Expenditure on Synchtron facilities (e.g. Diamond Light Source) will increase from £42M to £56M.

Within an approximately flat-cash settlement, therefore, Astronomy is a clear loser (although much of the cuts in expenditure relate to decisions already made, such as withdrawal from the Gemini Telescopes). Confusingly, much of the increase in Particle Physics expenditure relates to an increase in the CERN subscription, which I thought was supposed to be falling …

As far as I understand it, the plan also maintains grant funding at the current level (although it will move into the new consolidated grant system as quickly as this can be achieved).

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got time for right now, and comments/reactions/corrections/clarifications are very welcome through the box below.

14 Comments »

Important News from STFC

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

Donning my community service hat, I’ll just pass on some important news from the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) concerning Astronomy research grants. The message is contained in an email that has been circulated concerning the new grant system and you can also find it at Paul Crowther’s website here. I urge all astronomers to read the text in full. I believe separate instructions are going out to particle physics and nuclear physics groups concerning their grants.

The main points are that:

The new system of consolidated grants will be implemented for the forthcoming deadline (7th April 2011).
There will be no more standard grants.
Detailed guidance on how to apply the consolidated grants is not yet available.

A lot of questions remain to be answered, such as how on Earth people are going to be able to write a big proposal in the short time available when there are as yet no proper instructions, how groups with several existing grants will go about consolidating them when they all have different start and end dates, how the consolidated grants will be assessed, etc.

Also, it is now clear that results of the existing grant round (for grants due to start in April 2011) will not be forthcoming until January at the earliest, so that Swindon Office will be trying to sort out the new system at the same time as trying to complete the last round of the old one.

The combinations of delays to this round with the hasty implementation of a drastically different scheme for the next round is bound to cause a lot of problems both for STFC staff and researchers wanting to apply for grants, not to mention the Astronomy Grants Panel (of which I am a member).

The main purpose of this change is to save administrative costs at STFC, but it seems to me the main effect will be transfer an increased burden to universities, at least in the short term. Once again everything’s being done by the seat of the pants, with a complete lack of joined-up thinking.

Please don’t shoot the messenger, or anyone else on the AGP!

3 Comments »

A Gloom of Uninspired Research

Posted in Education, Poetry, Politics, Science Politics with tags Cardiff, EPSRC, George Orwellian, research, STFC, The Excursion, tuition fees, William Wordsworth on November 26, 2010 by telescoper

I don’t mind admitting that I’m a bit down today. Being stuck at home with a fever and sore throat, and with mounting backlog of things to do isn’t helping my mood. On top of that I’ve got a general sense of depression about the future.

On the one hand there’s the prospect of huge increases in tuition fees for students, the motivation for many demonstrations all around the country (including an occupation here at Cardiff). I have to admit I’m firmly on the side of the students. It seems to me that what is happening is that whereas we used to finance our national gluttony by borrowing on over-valued property prices, we’ve now decided to borrow instead from the young, forcing them to pay for what we got for free instead of paying for it ourselves; it’s no wonder they’re angry. Call me old-fashioned, but I think universities should be funded out of general taxation. How many universities, and what courses, are different questions and I suspect I differ from the younger generation on the answers.

The other depressing thing relates to the other side of academic life, research. The tide of managerialism looks like sweeping away every last vestige of true originality in scientific research, in a drive for greater “efficiency”. I’ve already blogged about how the Science & Technology Facilities Council (STFC) is introducing a new system for grants which will make it impossible for individual researchers with good ideas to get money to start new research projects. Now it seems the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) is going to go down the same road. It looks likely that in future only large-scale, low-risk research done in big consortia will be funded. Bandwagons are in; creativity is out.

Improving “efficiency” sounds like a good idea, but efficiency of what? These plans may reduce the cost of administering research grants, but they won’t do anything to increase the rate of scientific progress. Still, scientific progress can’t be entered easily on a spreadsheet so I suppose in this day and age that means it doesn’t matter.

I found the following in a story in this weeks Times Higher,

A spokeswoman for the Science and Technology Facilities Council also cited stability and flexibility as the main rationales for merging its grants programmes into one “consolidated grant”, a move announced earlier this month.

It looks like STFC has seconded someone from the Ministry of Truth. The change to STFC’s grant system is in fact driven by two factors. One is to save money, which is what they’ve been told to do so no criticism there. The other is that the costly fiasco that is the new RCUK Shared Services Centre was so badly conceived that it has a grant system that is unable to adminster 5-year rolling grants of the type we have been used to having in astronomy. On top of that, research grants will last only 3 years (as opposed to the previous 5-year duration). There’s a typically Orwellian inversion going on in our spokesperson’s comment: for “stability and flexibility”, read “instability and inflexibility”.

We’re not children. We all know that times are tough, but we could do with a bit less spin and a bit more honesty from the people ~~ruining~~ running British science. Still, I’m sure the resident spin doctors at STFC are “efficient”, and these days that’s all that matters.

The following excerpt from Wordsworth’s The Excursion pretty much sums it up.

Life’s autumn past, I stand on winter’s verge;
And daily lose what I desire to keep:
Yet rather would I instantly decline
To the traditionary sympathies
Of a most rustic ignorance, and take
A fearful apprehension from the owl
Or death-watch: and as readily rejoice,
If two auspicious magpies crossed my way;–
To this would rather bend than see and hear
The repetitions wearisome of sense,
Where soul is dead, and feeling hath no place;
Where knowledge, ill begun in cold remark
On outward things, with formal inference ends;
Or, if the mind turn inward, she recoils
At once–or, not recoiling, is perplexed–
Lost in a gloom of uninspired research;
Meanwhile, the heart within the heart, the seat
Where peace and happy consciousness should dwell,
On its own axis restlessly revolving,
Seeks, yet can nowhere find, the light of truth.

13 Comments »

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 »

In the Dark