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Hot in Town

Posted in Science Politics, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , on July 2, 2009 by telescoper

After a fun but frantic few days in the big city I’ve now escaped back to the relative cool of Cardiff. The Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition appears to be going very well, but my part in it has come to an end. The rest of the team will have the joy of continuing for the rest of the week and then dismantling the exhibit and returning with it at the weekend.

The exhibition proper started on Tuesday and our stand was drawing a lot of visitors right from the word go. That’s partly because we had a very good spot, right near the entrance, but we also had a bit of  coverage on the BBC News which might have helped. Inside the building we attracted quite a lot of people to our stand because we were showing infrared images on a large flatscreen monitor of people as they walked past. That seemed to draw people in large numbers to the other parts of the exhibit which was, after all, the purpose of it.

People look quite strange in the infra-red. Here’s an example:

photo_2

That’s me. The calibration scale to the right is in Celsius: hot is white (37) or yellow and cold is blue or black (26). Red is in the middle, around 30 Celsius. Different people seem to have different hot spots and cold spots: most  appear to have cooler ears and lips compared to the rest of their faces, but noses vary considerably in temperature.

There was only one potentially embarrassing moment, when a group of teenage lads wandered in front of the camera. Apparently, a certain type of mens’ underwear has very high emissivity around 10 microns. I just happened to glance up at the monitor and noticed a prominent hotspot just in time to tilt the camera up before anyone else noticed. Thereafter we kept it focussed above waist level just in case…

After my shift on Tuesday I had to nip back on the tube to my temporary lodgings, shower, change into my dinner jacket and black tie, and then return to the Royal Society for the much-anticipated Soirée. Taking the tube turned out to be a mistake. The heatwave currently gripping London has turned the underground system into something resembling the inside of an oven, so I decided to walk back rather than melt again when I’d got changed. I drew a few strange looks walking through Soho in my glad rags, but at least it was cooler at street level than on the Underground.

The evening occasion  turned out to be very busy too. To my surprise, it wasn’t just champagne and posh nibbles: a substantial meal was on offer in a marquee at the back of the Royal Society building. However, there were large crowds moving through the exhibition and we only had six people on the exhibit. We therefore staggered our trips to the grub tent making sure there was always someone at the exhibit to deal with the invited guests. By the time my turn came round it was 9.30 and the whole thing closed at 10.00. I still had time for a good nosh-up and a couple of glasses of wine, though, so all was well.

At the exhibit there was a steady supply of champagne and VIP guests. Lots of Lords and Ladies and other bigwigs,  but I hadn’t the faintest idea who most of them were. These are all the kind of people who assume that everyone on the planet (a) knows who they are and (b) is impressed to have the opportunity to meet them. Being surrounded by such a sea of effortless superiority is quite intimidating but, fortunately, there were also some familiar faces who stopped by and appeared interested. The noted biologist Steve Jones dropped by, and had his picture taken in the infrared, as did John Polkinghorne. I had met Polkinghorne before not long ago, but he clearly didn’t remember me at all.

“Medals may be worn” was one of the instructions, but I had neglected to bring  my cycling proficiency badge.

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Simon Singh and the “Bogus” Issue

Posted in Science Politics with tags , , , , , , on June 25, 2009 by telescoper

This is an issue that I’ve been meaning to comment about for some time, but hadn’t done so because I really didn’t have a clear view on what opinion to express! I’ve now decided to chip in precisely for that reason, i.e. because I don’t think the matter is as clear as others appear to think.

The story will be familiar to many readers of the blog, so I’ll only give a quick recap of the salient points. Simon Singh is a popular science writer – a very good one, in fact – who recently  co-authored a book on alternative medicine called Trick or Treatment? with Professor Edzard Ernst of Exeter University. In that book they produced evidence showing that many “alternative” medical therapies including homeopathy, acupuncture and chiropractice  were, in fact, useless for the control of many conditions for which they are prescribed by the relevant specialists. Subsequent to the publication of this book, Singh wrote a piece in the Comment pages of the Guardian newspaper in which he specifically criticised the British Chiropractic Association (BCA) for claiming that its members could use spinal manipulation to treat children with colic, ear infections, asthma, sleeping and feeding conditions, and prolonged crying. Singh described these treatments as “bogus” and criticised the  BCA for “happily promoting” them.

The BCA decided to sue Simon Singh for libel. The Guardian removed the article from its web pages and encouraged Singh to settle out of court, offering to pay his legal expenses if he agreed to do so. He refused and decided to defend the libel action in court. At a preliminary hearing in May, the Judge, Mr Justice Eady,  ruled that the wording used by Singh implied that the BCA was being consciously dishonest. Singh has denied that he intended any such meaning.

This ruling – which is currently under appeal – effectively means that Singh has to prove that the BCA are consciously dishonest in order to win the libel case. That looks like a very tall order. He also has to pay the costs of the preliminary hearing, which amount to £23,000. If the matter goes to a full trial then he will be out of pocket to a much greater extent than this: a conservative estimate is that his legal costs alone will exceed £100,000, and there will be damages to pay on top of that.

This has become something of a cause célèbre owing, it is alleged, to the intrusion of the courts into matters of scientific debate. The organization Sense About Science has organized a petition (“to keep libel laws out of science”) which has attracted over 10,000 signatures. The issue that signatories are worried about is that the open cut-and-thrust of rational scientific debate will be stifled if a precedent is set that involves one party taking another to court. As they put it

Freedom to criticise and question in strong terms and without malice is the cornerstone of scientific argument and debate, whether in peer-reviewed journals, on websites or in newspapers, which have a right of reply for complainants. However, the libel laws and cases such as BCA v Singh have a chilling effect, which deters scientists, journalists and science writers from engaging in important disputes about the evidential base supporting products and practices. The libel laws discourage argument and debate and merely encourage the use of the courts to silence critics.

The case has also revived calls to reform Britain’s  laws on defamation, which make the defence of a libel action in the UK very difficult from a legal perspective compared to other jurisdictions because, roughly speaking, they place the burden of proof on the defendant not the plaintiff. It is also so expensive to pursue such an action through the courts that the system clearly favours the rich and powerful versus ordinary citizens.

The ruling by Sir David Eady has been singled out for disapproval in the print media and across the blogosphere as an example of how  British law stifles free speech.

So why am I unclear about this? Shouldn’t we keep libel laws out of science? Doesn’t the British law of libel need changing?

Of course I say “yes” to both of those. But it seems to me that the Simon Singh case isn’t really about those questions.

For a start, there is no way that you can regard a Comment article in a national newspaper as the proper place for scientific debate between qualified specialists. Such arguments can and do take place at scientific conferences, seminars and through the pages of learned journals. Simon Singh was not participating in this process when he wrote his article. He was doing something quite different: publicising his book.

Secondly, it is true that Simon Singh is a qualified scientist. He has a PhD in particle physics, in fact. But that does not in itself qualify him as competent to pronounce on issues relating to medical practice. I wouldn’t want to stop anyone stating their opinion about things that they’re interested in. It’s just that he doesn’t get a special ticket because he happened to get a science PhD. My point is that his article was not part of the cut-and-thrust of informed scientific debate between experts, merely an individual commenting on something. The fact that he’s a scientist should not give him a blanket exemption from having to obey the laws that apply to others, especially when he is talking about things outside his speciality. It’s also worth stating here that if what he’d said had clearly just been an opinion it would not have been subject to a libel case. The problem is that it appears to be a statement of fact from an authority on the matter.

Third, note that the original book – which is a proper scientific work in which arguments are presented with accompanying evidence – is not the subject of the libel action, just the newspaper article. The BCA is not using the libel laws to suppress or contest scientific evidence.

Now we come to the crux. Does Mr Justice Eady’s ruling really “defy logic” as many commentators have alleged? What does the word “bogus” actually mean? It seems sensible to turn to an authoritative source, the Oxford English Dictionary. Doing so, I find that the word “bogus” is actually of American origin. The first usage found in the OED is from 1827 where it appears as a noun, meaning “an apparatus used for making counterfeit coins”. Later on it is found as an adjective, with current meanings

Counterfeit, spurious, fictitious, sham: ‘originally applied to counterfeit coin’ (Webster).

It seems to me that since the preliminary hearing was specifically intended to give a ruling on the meaning of the words that had been used in the allegedly libellous document, Mr Justic Eady actually had no choice at all in deciding that the word meant what it did. Clearly “counterfeit” implies a deliberate misrepresentation. Effectively the ruling means that Singh’s words mean that the BCA are no better than Snake Oil salesmen, a defamatory statement if ever I heard one.

Singh has claimed that this was not what he meant by “bogus” and what he intended was something more like “unproved” but I don’t see how it can be an acceptable defence to claim that one’s words mean what you think and not what everyone else thinks. It didn’t work for Humpty Dumpty and it won’t work for Simon Singh. If I write that “Jones the Dentist is incompetent” then that will be libelous (if untrue) even if I later claim I thought that the word incompetent meant something different to what it everyone else thinks.

Truth is of course an acceptable defence against libel, but the “truth” at issue has now become not whether chiropractice is effective or ineffective (a scientific issue) but whether chiropractioners are consciously fraudulent. I’d be wholeheartedly against trying to settle the first question in the courts, but nobody is trying to suggest that. The second question seems to me one that has to be settled that way.

Now let me say that I don’t know anything at all about chiropractice. I don’t know whether it works or doesn’t work, but it does seem to me that Simon Singh was very unwise to use the word “bogus” and even unwiser still to defend the action after he did.

For me, the only really significant issue in this saga is a general one: the overall matter of freedom of speech. In general, I believe strongly in freedom of speech but because we don’t have a written constitution the right to it is not stated as clearly here in the United Kingdom as it is, for example, in the United States. However, don’t forget that there are defamation laws (including libel) in America too. Among those statements considered defamatory per se under US law are statements “injurious to another in their trade, business, or profession”, which certainly would cover chiropractors. The US system is much less plaintiff-friendly than ours, in that it provides for a wider range of potential defences, and it also largely reverses the burden of proof unless there is an affirmative defence. It does not seem obvious to me, though, that Singh would have any more success in defending his case in America rather than here. But, then, I’m not a lawyer.

Even in countries like the United States where Freedom of Speech is enshrined as a constitutional right, it is necessary that it should tempered by wider considerations. It should not be legal for someone to damage another person’s reputation and livelihood by making intentionally false and defamatory assertions. Neither should it be possible to abuse and/or threaten another in such a way as to cause harassment or intimidation. There have to be laws covering such things. The real question is how to make them work in a more impartial way than they do now. To argue that one should be exempted simply by declaring oneself to be a scientist seems to me to be dangerously simplistic. The best way to keep the libel laws out of science is to for scientists not to make potentially libelous statements if they don’t possess the evidence to back them up.

I realise that many of you may think that, in not fully supporting Simon Singh, I am being overtly pro-BCA. I certainly don’t intend to be so. I think there’s blame on both sides. I think that the BCA was unnecessarily aggressive in suing him for libel. Given that they did so, though, Singh seems to me to have made an error of judgement in continuing an action he is very unlikely to win. If he continues with the case now his only hope is that he can produce enough evidence in court that damages the BCA that they drop the action. In the long run, what will probably happen is that he loses the case and the BCA wins damages, but suffers a big dent in its reputation for rather heavy-handed tactics. Along the way it might even happen that there is intense scientific evaluation of the effectiveness of chiropractics, and that might do the BCA more harm than good. Bear in mind that anything said in court under oath is privileged can’t be subject to libel actions…

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Telescope Wars

Posted in Science Politics, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , on June 13, 2009 by telescoper

Over the last few months the Science and Technology Facilities Council has been setting up a review of its ground-based astronomy programme. The panel conducting the review has produced a consultation document, and is asking for input via an online questionnaire. There will also be a (rather short) public meeting in London on July 9th. The consultation period closes on July 31st.

Reviews of this kind would be necessary in the best of times in order to establish long-term scientific priorities and try to align the provision of facilities with those strategic objectives. Unfortunately, we don’t live in the best of times so the backdrop to the current review is a shrinking pot of money available for “traditional” ground-based astronomy and the consequent need to target planned programmes for the chop.

Andy and Sarah have already blogged about this -and they both know a lot more than me about ground-based astronomy – so I won’t try to cover the same ground as them. I would however, like to make a  couple of points.

The review has to help STFC strike a balance between current facilities and projects for the future. The largest elements of the current ground-based programme include the subscription to ESO (including associated costs for ALMA, which amounts to over £200 Million), the twin 8m telescopes known as Gemini (North and South, about £60 Million), E-Merlin (about £24 Million), UKIRT and JCMT (about £34 Million); figures represent costs over the next 10 years or so. The two biggest projects that the UK would like to get involved in are a European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT), an optical telescope currently aimed to be about 42m in diameter, and the Square Kilometre Array, a futuristic radio telescope. Each of these would cost the UK over £100 Million over the next decade.

The consultation document puts it quite succintly:

It would be unrealistic to imagine that in 2020 the UK would have a large stake in large facilities like E-ELT and SKA, and would also retain all its current ground-based facilities. It is always hard to forego a workhorse facility that has supported an active and successful science programme, in order to start construction of some future facility many years hence. But our bid for the capital costs for E-ELT and/or SKA would not be credible if we do not show that we are willing to do this.

 

I agree that it maintaining the current programme as well as acquiring an interest in both E-ELT and SKA is completely implausible. The more relevant question though is how deep we have to cut the ongoing astronomy programme in order to afford either of these, or whether we can do that at all. It seems quite likely to me that future funding of the ground-based programme is likely to suffer drastically, both because of cuts to the overall STFC grant that appear inevitable in the next comprehensive spending review and also the current STFC leadership’s bias in favour of space technology at the expense of science. On the latter point, it is worth noting that it is specifically the ground-based astronomy programme that is being lined up against the wall here; space-based projects of negligible scientific value, such as Moonlite and BEPI-Columbo are not to going be weighed in the same balance. At the very least, future involvement in a next-generation X-ray telescope  should certainly have been in the mixer with other observatory-type facilities on the ground. I fear that the STFC Executive sees the current UK ground-based programme as significantly too large, and would like to squeeze it all into the box marked ESO. I would like to be able to sound more optimisitic, but I think that the most likely outcome of this review is therefore that the only current facilities that will survive into the medium term will be those provided through ESO  membership. JCMT and UKIRT are nearing the end of their useful life anyway, but the writing is definitely on the wall for both Gemini and E-Merlin. Not that it hasn’t been before now…

If this the way things go, then the remaining issue is whether we can afford to be involved in both E-ELT and  SKA, which seems to me to be most unlikely. If we have to pick one, which should it be? That is clearly going to be the topic of much debate. In the spirit of the drive for rationalisation I touched on above, it may well be that we don’t do anything at all outside the ESO umbrella. In that case the United Kingdom ends up with a ground-based astronomy programme consisting of the ESO facilities plus a share in the E-ELT (itself an ESO proposal). I think this would be a tragedy because  I find the scientific case for SKA much stronger than that for E-ELT; it would have been a closer call if the ELT were still the 100m optical telescope as originally proposed many years ago (and which I used to call the FLT). I’m sure many will disagree for legitimate scientific reasons (rather than the desire to play “mine’s bigger than yours” with the Americans, who are currently developing a 30m telescope).

I’m sure there will also be many astronomers who would rather have neither SKA nor E-ELT if it means losing access to the suite of smaller telescopes that continue to produce many interesting scientific results. If it came to a vote I’m not sure what the result would be, which is why I want to encourage anyone who has any input to fill in the questionnaire!

A final little wrinkle on this question is the following. Suppose STFC decides  not to support future involvement in SKA – I hope this isn’t the way things turn out, but in our dire financial circumstances it might be – does this make continued funding for E-Merlin more likely or less likely? Answers on a postcard (or even via the comments box)..

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Returning to Lognormality

Posted in Biographical, Science Politics, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , on June 7, 2009 by telescoper

I’m off later today for a short trip to Copenhagen, a place I always enjoy visiting. I particularly remember a very nice time I had there back in 1990 when I was invited by Bernard Jones, who used to work at the Niels Bohr Institute.  I stayed there several weeks over the May/June period which is the best time of year  for Denmark; it’s sufficiently far North that the summer days are very long, and when it’s light until almost midnight it’s very tempting to spend a lot of time out late at night.

As well as being great fun, that little visit also produced my most-cited paper. I’ve never been very good at grabbing citations – I’m more likely to fall off bandwagons rather than jump onto them – but this little paper seems to keep getting citations. It hasn’t got that many by the standards of some papers, but it’s carried on being referred to for almost twenty years, which I’m quite proud of; you can see the citations per year statistics are fairly flat. The model we proposed turned out to be extremely useful in a range of situations, hence the long half-life.

nph-ref_history

I don’t think this is my best paper, but it’s definitely the one I had most fun working on. I remember we had the idea of doing something with lognormal distributions over coffee one day,  and just a few weeks later the paper was  finished. In some ways it’s the most simple-minded paper I’ve ever written – and that’s up against some pretty stiff competition – but there you go.

Picture1

The lognormal seemed an interesting idea to explore because it applies to non-linear processes in much the same way as the normal distribution does to linear ones. What I mean is that if you have a quantity Y which is the sum of n independent effects, Y=X1+X2+…+Xn, then the distribution of Y tends to be normal by virtue of the Central Limit Theorem regardless of what the distribution of the Xi is  If, however, the process is multiplicative so  Y=X1×X2×…×Xn then since log Y = log X1 + log X2 + …+log Xn then the Central Limit Theorem tends to make log Y normal, which is what the lognormal distribution means.

The lognormal is a good distribution for things produced by multiplicative processes, such as hierarchical fragmentation or coagulation processes: the distribution of sizes of the pebbles on Brighton beach  is quite a good example. It also crops up quite often in the theory of turbulence.

I;ll mention one other thing  about this distribution, just because it’s fun. The lognormal distribution is an example of a distribution that’s not completely determined by knowledge of its moments. Most people assume that if you know all the moments of a distribution then that has to specify the distribution uniquely, but it ain’t necessarily so.

If you’re wondering why I mentioned citations, it’s because it looks like they’re going to play a big part in the Research Excellence Framework, yet another new bureaucratical exercise to attempt to measure the quality of research done in UK universities. Unfortunately, using citations isn’t straightforward. Different disciplines have hugely different citation rates, for one thing. Should one count self-citations?. Also how do you aportion citations to multi-author papers? Suppose a paper with a thousand citations has 25 authors. Does each of them get the thousand citations, or should each get 1000/25? Or, put it another way, how does a single-author paper with 100 citations compare to a 50 author paper with 101?

Or perhaps the REF should use the logarithm of the number of citations instead?

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Divided Loyalties

Posted in Biographical, Science Politics with tags , , , , on May 16, 2009 by telescoper

It’s easy to tell that summer is on the way. England are playing the West Indies at Cricket. It’s the penultimate weekend of the Premiership football season. The undergraduates are taking their exams. I’m sitting with a pile of projects to mark. And it’s raining.

I suppose I have to mention the football. My team, Newcastle United, gave themselves a chance of avoiding relegation on Monday night by beating local rivals, Middlesborough 3-1. A win today at home against Fulham would pretty much have guaranteed safety. They lost 1-0. It now looks inevitable that they will be relegated after 16 years in the top flight.

It’s a thankless task being a Newcastle supporter. I’ve followed them all my life and they have managed to avoid winning any competition of any significance since the Fairs cup in 1968 (now called the UEFA cup). They have loyal fans and a wonderful stadium, but somehow seem completely unable to convert that into success on the field. This season they were doomed as soon as the manager Kevin Keegan quit over the owner Mike Ashley’s refusal to allow him to be involved in signing any players. After a period without a manager, during which they lost game after game, the club appointed veteran relegation specialist Joe Kinnear, who did OK for a while then at Christmas had to go into hospital with heart problems. Another run of poor results followed until, in desperation, the club appointed the iconic former player Alan Shearer to his first managerial position. His lack of experience showed, though, and he’s only managed to win one game. In short, the season has been a shambles.

When my father died (about 18 months ago), I thought that my interest in Newcastle United would wane. Football and music were the only two things we had in common after my parents split when I was about 12 and I went to live with my mother. I saw him only rarely in later years,and much of the time we spent together involved talking about football. However, I still find myself getting nervous on match days and looking anxiously for the scores whenever they’ve been playing. It’s like there is an umbilical cord that still connects me to my home town and I can’t get rid of it.

That feeling was reinforced yesterday when, following a conversation at the RAS Club last week, Robert Smith sent me a booklet that he had received when he attended a conference in Newcastle in 1965. The Official Guide to Newcastle upon Tyne (priced 2/6) filled me with a mixture of nostalgia and amusement. Ironically, given the football team’s inadequacies the motto of the city is FORTITER DEFENDIT TRIUMPHANS, which was also the motto of my old school, the Royal Grammar School (also mentioned in the booklet).

The little picture on the left shows the armorial bearings of the City of Newcastle upon Tyne. The official blazon is: Arms:- Gules three Castles triple towered Argent. Crest on a Wreath of the Colours. A Castle as in the arms issuant therefrom from a demi Lion guardant supporting a Flagstaff Or, flying therefrom a forked Pennon of the Arms of Saint George.

Supporters: – on either side a Sea Horse proper crined and finned Or.

Obviously supporters don’t guarantee success, even if they’re proper crined and finned.

Of course, I shall be disappointed if and when Newcastle get relegated next week, but I don’t go along with all the guff in the newspapers about how it will have dire consequences for the city. They’ve been relegated twice before in my lifetime, and the world didn’t end then nor will it now. In any case, I’d reckon the Football Club has taken much more out of the economy of Newcastle in recent years than it has put back into it. Hard-earned cash from supporters has gone straight into the pockets of overpaid players and inept management staff. Maybe relegation will shake the Club up, which will be good in the long run.

Anyway, every cloud has at least one silver lining and this one has two. At the start of the season, I was prescient enough to place a large bet on Newcastle to get relegated at quite long odds. I expect to be handsomely compensated by Mr William Hill when they do go down. The other thing is that they will have to play Cardiff City in the Championship next year, which will give me the chance to see them play in Cardiff’s brand new stadium.

Incidentally, Cardiff City blew their promotion hopes in spectacular fashion. Needing only to avoid losing to Preston North End by 5 goals in order to secure a place in the play-offs, they lost 6-0.

Meanwhile we’ve been coming down slowly from the high that was Thursday’s launch of Herschel and Planck. I was surprised to see Matt Griffin in the department yesterday afternoon because he was actually at the launch in Kourou. He had left after the launch and flown directly back to Cardiff (via Paris). Our other representatives will return over this weekend, and things will start to get back to normal.

Matt told me that he was so impressed with the professionalism of Arianespace, that he wasn’t at all nervous about the launch. Matt’s instrument, SPIRE, will switch on during 22 May and testing will start. I’m sure that Matt and his team will be more than a little nervous about that!

Assuming both Planck and Herschel work satisfactorily, the next problem we will have to face is the deluge of data that will shortly be upon us. The astronomers at Cardiff University have submitted an application for rolling grant support from STFC (not Swindon Town Football Club) to enable us to extract scientific results from new data especially from Herschel. Unfortunately, though, the coffers are pretty bare and it seems very unlikely that we will get the substantial uplift in funding we need to carry out the work on a reasonable timescale.

A rolling grant is intended to support an ongoing research programme. Typically the grants cover 5 years’ funding, enabling the group to offer longer term contracts to staff than is allowed by the 3-year standard grant format. After 3 years of the rolling period, the group has to bid again for another 5 year period but the timing means there is always two years’ grace, meaning that if renewal is not recommended the group still has two years’ funding so the plug isn’t pulled immediately. If an extension is offered but at a reduced level of funding, a group might decide to refuse the new grant and carry on with its existing two years, perhaps to apply in the following round.

The problem with the current financial situation is that STFC barely has the funds needed to continue its existing rolling grants. In other words if all the groups applying for rolling support declined their new contracts and rolled on their existing grants, STFC would only just be able to pay them. In such a situation there would be no new grants or any kind of increase in existing rollers. The implications for successful exploitation of Herschel and Planck appear to be grim and there could well be a lot of difficult decisions within the department to be made if we have to operate within a much reduced budget.

It would be ridiculous if a billion-dollar mission like Herschel ends up stymied because of the relatively small sums needed to exploit the data, but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen. Football teams aren’t the only organizations to suffer from bad management.

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Unravelling CERN

Posted in Science Politics, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , on May 13, 2009 by telescoper

A disturbing piece of news passed me by last week. One of the founder members, Austria, has decided to pull out of CERN, the home of the much-vaunted Large Hadron Collider. The announcement was made on 8th May 2009, but I missed it at the time owing to my trip to Berlin.

Austria, a founder member of CERN, has been a member of the 20-nation body since 1959, but its justification for leaving, according to Austria’s Minister for Science Johannes Hahn, is that the CERN subscription ties up about 70% of the nation’s budget for international research. To quote him

“In the meantime there have been diverse research projects in the European Union which offer a very large number of different scientists’ perspectives..”

Austria only contributes 2.2 percent of CERN’s budget, but it will be the first country to leave the organization since Spain’s departure in 1969. Spain rejoined in 1983. According to a statement,

“CERN would be sorry to lose Austria as one of its member states and sincerely believes that it would be in Austria’s best interests to remain a member..”

The immediate consequence of this will be a (small) increase in the subscriptions payable by other member nations in order to plug the funding gap left by Austria’s departure. However, particle physicists will probably see this as a very worrying precedent that might signal to other funding bodies that they could think the previously unthinkable and follow Austria’s example.

The CERN subscription payable by the United Kingdom comes from the budget of the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC). Although it amounts to about £82 million, this is about 16% of the STFC budget, which is a much smaller fraction than in the case of Austria. However, the consequences of one of the larger contributors like the UK pulling out of CERN would be extremely serious, because of the large increases in remaining subscriptions that would be needed to fill the gap that would be created.

All this puts even more pressure on the Large Hadron Collider to produce the goods and it also reinforces the view I expressed in one of my first ever blog posts that we may be nearing the time when nations decide that Big Science is just too expensive and  too esoteric to be worth investing in…

STOP PRESS:  New just in from Thomas (below) reveals that the Austrians have done a U-bahn U-turn and are not, after all, going to pull out of CERN.

For more information, see the story in Physics World.

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Good News, Bad News

Posted in Science Politics with tags , , on May 1, 2009 by telescoper

Further to my gloomy prognosis about the implications of the Budget for astronomy research, I’ve managed to glean the following interpretation of the outcome for the Science & Technology Facilities Council (STFC).

Just to remind you that the situation before the budget settlement was announced last week was truly dire, with  falling exchange rates leading to rises in the cost of subscriptions putting pressure on an already overstretched STFC budget. In fact, STFC actually underspent last year but was not allowed to carry the underspend forward into the tax year beginning this April so that has done nothing to help the imminent financial meltdown. The overall  shortfall for 2009-10 was estimated pre-budget to be about £80 million, meaning that £80 million of current commitments would have to be ditched if nothing was done.

First, the good news. After the budget it has emerged that the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS)  has taken steps to “lend” STFC money to plug the shortfall arising from exchange rate fluctuations. This means the actual shortfall is not going to be as large as the previous estimate.

Now the bad news. There is no new money for STFC,  and there is consequently still a serious gap in the finances. There will have to be about £20 million savings this financial year (against current commitment) and about £30 million next year. Not as bad as £80 million, but still very tough.

At this moment the powers that be are dusting off the Programmatic Review which involved the prioritisation of missions and facilities within the STFC remit. There is also yet another review of ground-based astronomy which is meant to be a long-term thing, but will presumably inform the decision-making process in the short term too.

A line had previously drawn as far down the  list of priorities as funding would permit. Now the available funds are less the line will have to rise and some astronomical projects that thought they were safe will have to be ditched after all. This also depends on whether STFC saves money in other ways,  such as from the grants line or by internal savings within its own administration.

It will be a nervous wait for many of us to see where and the axe will fall next…

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The Shape of Things to Come..

Posted in Science Politics with tags , , on April 24, 2009 by telescoper

The implications of this week’s budget for astronomy are gradually becoming clearer although a full picture is yet to emerge.

The following statement appeared on the webpages of the Science and Technology Facilities Council:

STFC’s budget of £491 million for 2009-10 is evidence of the Government’s commitment to investing in science in a period of severe national and global economic uncertainty.

STFC’s Chief Executive Officer, Professor Keith Mason, said: “Our budget represents a major investment in science at a time of increasing pressure on public spending, and will allow us to fund a wide array of world leading science delivering significant impact for the UK.”

“The budget confirms the Government’s commitment to, and acknowledgement of, investment in curiosity driven and application led research as essential elements to support the country’s economic growth in the short, medium and longer term.”

Professor Mason said the near cash* budget of £491 million was more than the Council’s allocation in the Comprehensice Spending Review (CSR07), thanks to assistance from the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS) in the form of a loan and compensation for foreign exchange exposure. This outcome follows extensive consultation between DIUS and the Research Councils to ameliorate the effect of the fall of the pound. However, it will unfortunately not allow STFC to fund the full science programme planned under its Programmatic Review.

Professor Mason said STFC would now consult on reprioritising its programme across the remainder of the CSR period. This consultation will cover both the short-term items required for 2009-10, and a longer term process to ensure stable platform for planning in the medium to longer term. Council will discuss options for 2009-10 at its meeting on the 28th April.

“For its part STFC has already imposed a series of internal savings, including on travel and severe restrictions on external recruitment. We will seek to identify further savings in order to concentrate resources on funding our core research programme,” Professor Mason said.

It appears, then, that there is to be short-term assistance from the effects of currency fluctuations but this will be in the form of a loan that will eventually have to be paid back from savings found within the programme. I suppose something’s better than nothing, despite the bland language, it is quite clear that we are heading for big cuts in the STFC programme and astronomy will not be immune.

The Times Higher has also covered the budget settlement for science and higher education generally in very downbeat terms. Echoing what I put in my previous post:

Although the Budget maintains an existing commitment to ring-fence the science budget, DIUS had reportedly sought a £1 billion increase in funding for scientific research as part of a stimulus package designed to use science to boost the economy.

Instead of this, research councils will be required to make £106 million in savings, which will then be reinvested elsewhere intheir portfolio “to support key areas of economic potential”.

We await details of where these “savings” will be made. My current understanding is that the STFC needs to find about £10 million immediately although whether this is on top of or including its share of the overall “efficiency savings”, I don’t know. In any case it is clear that this money will be taken from pure science programmes and spent instead on areas deemed to have “economic potential”. It looks like we’re all going to have to hone our bullshitting skills over the next few years.

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Economic Impact

Posted in Science Politics with tags , , on April 22, 2009 by telescoper

Like many of my colleagues I’ve been looking nervously through the lengthy documents  produced by HM Treasury to fill in the details of the Chancellor’s Budget speech. I was hoping to find some evidence of a boost for science that might filter down as a rescue package for STFC and might dispel the rumours of savage cuts in the Astronomy programme. Unfortunately I didn’t find any.

No real details about the science programme are given in the lengthy budget report, at least not that I could find this afternoon. There are, however, a couple of worrying pointers that things might be going from bad to worse.

The Chancellor has decided to cut public spending overall by about £15 billion (largely by “efficiency savings”) in order to control the UK’s ballooning public debt. The Department of Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS) which sits above the Research Councils in the hierarchy of research management is mentioned twice in the document, in the following passages talking about savings:

£118 million through increasing the effectiveness of research activities funded by the Research Councils by reducing administration costs and refocusing spend on new research priorities;

and

An additional £106 million of savings delivered by the Research Councils within the science and research budget to be re-invested within that budget to support key areas of economic potential.

Both of these look to me like indications that money will be diverted from pure science into technology-driven areas. Far from there being a boost for astronomy, it looks like we face the opposite with money being squeezed from us and re-allocated to areas that can make a stronger case for economic potential.

Another indication of this phase change, which has been in the air for some time, appeared yesterday on the STFC website.  The whole item can be found here, but the salient points are included in the following excerpt

Applicants for STFC rolling and standard grants will now be required to produce an impact plan, identifying the potential economic impacts of their proposal. The change takes effect from 21 April 2009 and will affect grants rounds from autumn 2009 onward.

The change follows a 2006 Research Councils UK project, and subsequent Excellence with Impact report, into the efficiency and value for money of Research Council peer review processes. The report recommended the Research Councils improve guidance to applicants and peer reviewers to ensure a shared understanding about the value of identifying the potential economic impact of research, and that the new requirements be supported in electronic application systems and guidelines.

More details of the spending priorities of DIUS within its overall budget will no doubt emerge in due course and they may yet reveal a tonic of some sort for STFC. What seems more likely, however, is that any such funds will be aimed at space gadgetry rather than at science. I have a feeling that the impact of the economic downturn on UK Astronomy is going to turn out to be dire.

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Budget Boost?

Posted in Science Politics with tags , , , , on April 19, 2009 by telescoper

This Wednesday (22nd April 2009) the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, will deliver the UK government’s budget for this year. The background is of course the economic recession and the consequent collapse of our public finances. The government will have to borrow an estimated £175 billion over the next year, and it likely that taxes will eventually have to rise considerably to balance the books in the longer term.

Rumours are abounding about what will be in the budget and what won’t. According to today’s Observer, the centrepiece is likely to be a £50 billion scheme to revitalize the housing market.  If this is the case then I think it’s a mistake. Our economy has been run for too long on the basis of money raised from inflated property valuations, and we need to take this opportunity to change to a more sustainable way of running the country. Other schemes that may emerge include a £2 billion scheme to help unemployed young people which is a better idea, but much of it would probably be wasted in bureaucracy rather than doing real good.

My own attention will be focussed on whether there is anything in Alistair Darling’s speech that indicates some help for science, particularly fundamental science like physics and astronomy. In yesterday’s Guardian the Astronomer Royal and President of the Royal Society, Lord Martin Rees argued  for an injection of cash to stimulate science and innovation. About a month ago the BBC reported on efforts by Ministers to convince the treasury of the benefit of a £1 billion stimulus package for science along these lines. However, even if the powers that be listen to this argument (which is, in my view, unlikely), any increase in science funding would not necessarily be directed towards fundamental physics. I think if there isn’t anything for those of us working in astronomy in this budget, then we’re completely screwed.

I believe the funding crisis at the Science & Technology Facilities Council (STFC) was precipitated by a conscious government decision to move funds away from blue skies research and into more applied, technology driven areas.  The 2007 Comprehensive Spending Review was extremely tough on STFC but quite generous to some other agencies.  Moreover, within STFC itself there seems to be a shift from science-driven to technology-driven projects,  signalled by the cancellation of projects such as Clover to save a couple of million, and the allocation of funds to projects such as Moonlite which is devoid of any scientific interest and which could end up costing as much as £150 million over the next five years or so.

The true depth of the ongoing STFC crisis is only gradually becoming apparent. It was bad enough to start with, but has been exacerbated by the fall in value of sterling against the euro since 2007 which has meant that the cost of subscriptions to CERN, ESA and ESO have risen dramatically (by about 40%). These form such a large part of STFC’s expenditure – the CERN subscription alone is £70m out of a total budget of around £800m – that it cannot absorb the increased cost and it is now looking to make swingeing cuts on top of the 25% cut in research grants already implemented.

News emerged last week that STFC has abandoned plans to fund any R&D grants for ESA’s Cosmic Vision programme, and there are dark rumours circulating that it is considering cancelling all astronomy grants this year as well as clawing back money already given to universities in previous rounds. I hope these are not true, but I fear the worst.

Cuts on this scale would be devastating, demoralising, and I honestly think would destroy the United Kingdom as a place to do astronomy. They would also signal a complete breakdown of trust between scientists and the research council that is supposed to support them, if that hadn’t happened already.

Incidentally it is noticeable that STFC hasn’t bothered to report any of these matters publically through its website. Instead, the lead story on the STFC news page is about a visit by Prince Andrew to the Rutherford Appleton Lab. No sign yet, then, of the promised improvement in communication between the STFC Executive and its community.

The way I see it, the urgent issue is not whether we get a stimulus package , but whether we even get the bit of sticking plaster that is needed to  saves physics and astronomy from utter ruin. The cost would be a small fraction of the billions lavished on profligate bankers, but I’m not at all sure that the government either appreciates or cares about the scale of the problem.

Anyway, coincidentally, next week sees the Royal Astronomical Society’s National Astronomy Meeting (NAM), which is this year held jointly with the European Astronomical Society’s JENAM at the University of Hertfordshire. I won’t be going because it has unfortunately been organized in term time apparently because European astronomers refuse to attend meetings in the vacations, at least if they’re in places like Hatfield.  STFC representatives  have been invited; it remains to be seen what, if anything, they will have to say.

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