The centrepiece of Paul’s post was the following graph which shows the distribution of two different bibliometric measures for the UK astronomical community. There is the h-index (which is the number h such that the author has h papers cited at least h times) and a normalised version of h in which each paper’s citations are divided by the number of authors of that paper before the index is formed; I call this index hnorm. The results are shown below:
Generally speaking the two indices track each other fairly well, but there are clearly some individuals for whom they diverge. These correspond to researchers whose main mode of productivity is through large consortia and for whom h is correspondingly much larger than hnorm.
The “outliers” are more easily identified by forming the ratio
which is plotted in the graph below kindly provided by Paul Crowther.
Notice that the “lurker index” is constructed to normalise out any general trend with h and the data do seem consistent with a constant mean across the ranked list. There is, however, a huge spread even among the top performers.
If this were particle physics rather than astronomy the results wouldn’t be presented in terms of a ratio like but as a mixing angle like the Weinberg angle or the Cabibbo angle. In this scheme we envisage each researcher’s output publication list as involving a mixture of “solo” and “collaborator” basis states, i.e.
|output>=cos(θ) |solo>+sin(θ) |collaborator>
The angle θ gives a quantitative indication of an author’s inclination to lurk in other people’s publication lists. If θ=0 then the individual’s papers are going to be all single-author affairs with no question marks over attribution of impact. If θ=90° then the individual does primarily collaborative research – perhaps he/she is a good mixer? Most researchers lie somewhere between these two extremes.
I therefore suggest that we should measure bibliometric productivity and impact not just through one “amplitude”, say h, but by the addition of a mixing angle, i.e. the whole output should be summarised as (h,θ). One could estimate the relevant angle fairly straightforwardly as
,
but alternative definitions are possible and a more complete understanding of the underlying process is needed to make this more rigorous.
Stephen Hawking has a particularly small mixing angle (~5.7°); many members of the astronomical Premiership have much larger values of this parameter. The value of θ corresponding to the average value of is about 23.5° and my own angle is about 8.6°.
And here, courtesy of the ever-reliable Paul Crowther, is a graph of mixing angle versus raw h-index for the whole crowd shown in the above diagram.
P.S. If you thinking this application of mixing angle is daft, then you should read this post.
We’ve now reached the half-way point of the Spring Semester, which means that my teaching load has just doubled; I do the “Particle” bit of a third-year module on “Nuclear and Particle Physics”, which means I have 11 lectures from now until the end of the Semester to tell the students everything I know about particle physics. More than enough time.
Anyway, the first lecture today, as it was last year, was all about Natural Units. I always find it fun doing this, partly because the students stare at me as if I’ve taken leave of my senses. Come to think of it, they do that anyway.
The other night I was having a drink with some colleagues after work. Various topics came up, but we spent a bit of time talking about teaching. It appears that I’m in a small minority of my physics colleagues in that I actually like teaching. In fact, the older I’ve got the more I enjoy it. There’s always a limit, of course, and I wouldn’t like to do so much teaching that I couldn’t do other things, especially research, but I wouldn’t like to be in a job that didn’t involve teaching at all. I think most of my colleagues would jump at the chance to abandon teaching altogether. I can’t understand that attitude, mainly because I find it so rewarding myself, but I’m in a minority of one about so many things nowadays that I’ve ceased worrying about it.
I do sometimes wonder why I find teaching so rewarding. Perhaps it’s because I’m already middle-aged and don’t have any kids of my own. Teaching at least gives me a chance to play some sort of a role in someone else’s development as a person. I can’t guarantee that it’s necessarily a positive role, but there you are. Another thing is that sometimes when I travel about at conferences and whatnot I get to meet people I taught years ago. It means a lot when they say they remember the lectures, especially if they’ve now embarked on scientific careers of their own.
One of the problems of the government’s push for greater concentration of research funds and the simultaneous slashing of teaching budgets is that the quality of University teaching is bound to suffer. If research funding is allocated only to self-styled research “superstars” then Universities will obviously spare them from other duties. Teaching loads for ordinary foot soldiers will increase, with obvious consequences in decreasing enthusiasm among lecturing staff.
It’s already the case that teaching is grossly undervalued, and it’s probably worse in physics departments than anywhere else because, without research funding, most would simply go bust. Teaching funding is nowhere near sufficient to cover the real cost of a physics degree and in any case we can’t deliver advanced physics training without access to the research labs.
On top of this there’s the way teaching is entirely disregarded in promotion cases. On paper, promotion to Professor requires demonstrated commitment to teaching. In reality, all that committees care about is how much research income the candidate brings in. Excellence in teaching counts very little, if anything at all, in the assessment of a promotion case. I think this situation must change, especially with tuition fees set to rise to unprecedented levels, but all the forces currently at play are acting in precisely the wrong direction.
If we concentrate physics research funding any further then we’ll have a small number of rich institutions stuffed full of research professors whom the undergraduates never see. The less successful academics in these departments will be put on teaching-only contracts, not because they like teaching but because their alternative is Her Majesty’s Dole. Meanwhile, less favoured research labs – i.e. those who don’t get lucky in the REF – won’t be able to sustain world-class research or teaching activities and will be forced to shut up shop. Further research concentration is bad news all round for the higher education system.
But I digress.
One of the other things we talked about in the pub was the National Lottery. As regular readers of this blog might know, I put the princely sum of £1 on the lottery every Saturday. Some think this is strange, but I see it partly as one of those little rituals we all invent for ourselves and partly as a small price to pay for a little frisson of excitement when the numbers are drawn.
But I do sometimes wonder what on Earth I would do if I won a multi-million pound jackpot prize. Would I quit my job? Would I quit teaching? Actually, I’m not sure I would do either of those. If I could ditch the admin stuff, I would of course do so. I don’t have a car and have no interest in getting one, especially a fancy one. I don’t need a bigger house, or a yacht. In fact, frankly, there’s nothing that I would really want to buy that I couldn’t buy already. It’s not that I have a huge salary, just that I’m not exactly very materialistic.
So even if I were rich I’d probably carry on doing pretty much what I do now. And that thought brings home just how lucky we are, those of us working in academia. For all the frustrations, the fact remains that we are fortunate to be getting paid for things that we enjoy doing.
Here, courtesy of Abstruse Goose, is an illustration of what Biology would be like if it were done by particle physicists. I hasten to add that no actual frogs were harmed in the making of this post.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I expected to wake up this morning with the blues all round my bed, about the results of the Comprehensive Spending Review about to be announced today, but news appearing in the Guardian and the BBC websites last night suggested that the UK Science budget may, repeat may, be spared the worst of the cuts.
This news has been greeted with euphoria in the science community, as we were expecting much worse than the settlement suggested by the news. The RCUK budget, it seems, will be fixed in cash terms around £3.5 billion per annum for four years, as will the approximately £1bn distributed for research through HEFCE’s QR mechanism. This translates into a real terms cut that depends on what figure you pick for inflation over this period. The Treasury suggests it will corresponding to a 10% reduction figured that way, but inflation has defied predictions and remained higher than expected over the past three years so things could be different. Also important to note is that this budget (amounting to around £4.6 billion) is to be ring-fenced within RCUK.
So why the apparent change of heart? Well, I don’t know for sure, but I think the Science is Vital campaign played a very big part in this. Huge congratulations are due to Jenny Rohn and the rest of the team for doing such a fantastic job. The Guardian makes this clear, stating that science is usually a non-issue for the Treasury, but this time it was
high on the political radar because strong representations have been made by the scientific community about what they have described as “long term and irreversible” damage to the UK economy if there are deep cuts to research funding.
That means everyone who wrote to their MP or lobbied or went on the demo really did make a difference. Give yourselves a collective pat on the back!
BUT (and it’s a very big BUT) we’re by no means out of the woods yet, at least not those of us who work in astronomy and particle physics. As the BBC article makes clear, the level cash settlement for RCUK comes with an instruction that “wealth creation” be prioritised. The budget for RCUK covers all the research councils, who will now have to make their pitch to RCUK for a share of the pie. It’s unlikely that it will be flat cash for everyone. There will be winners and losers, and there’s no prize for guessing who the likely losers are.
The performance of the STFC Executive during the last CSR should also be born in mind. STFC did very poorly then at a time when the overall funding allocation for science was relatively generous, and precipitated a financial crisis that STFC’s management still hasn’t properly come to grips with. The track-record doesn’t inspire me with confidence. Moreover, at a town meeting in London in December 2007 at which the Chief Executive of STFC presented a so-called delivery plan to deal with the crisis he led his organisation into, he confidently predicted a similarly poor settlement in the next CSR. Talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy. Let’s hope they get their act together better this time.
Taking all this together it remains by no means improbable that the STFC budget could be squeezed until the pips squeak in order to liberate funds to spend elsewhere within RCUK on things that look more likely to generate profits quickly. The nightmare scenario I mentioned a few days ago is still on the cards.
As we all know, STFC’s budget is dominated by large fixed items so its science programme is especially vulnerable. As the BBC puts it
So any cut in [STFC’s] budget will be greatly magnified and it is expected that it will have to withdraw from a major programme. Alternatively, it would have to cutback or close one of its research institutes.
We could have to wait until December to find out the STFC budget, so the anxiety is by no means over. However, the ring-fencing of RCUK’s budget within BIS may bring that forward a bit as it would appear to suggest one level of negotations could be skipped. We might learn our fate sooner than we thought.
Overall, this is a good result in the circumstances. Although it’s a sad state of affairs when a >10% real terms cut is presented as a success, it’s far less bad than many of us had expected. But I think STFC science remains in grave danger. It’s not an escape, just a stay of execution.
But there is one important lesson to be learned from this. When the STFC crisis broke three years ago, reaction amongst scientists was muted. Fearful of rocking the boat, we sat on our hands as the crisis worsened. I hope that the success of the Science is Vital campaign has convinced you that keeping quiet and not making a fuss is exactly the wrong thing to do.
Just a quick post to point out that the Science and Technology Facilities Council have released a reasonably complete breakdown of their current budget. I’m sure many readers working in astronomy and particle physics will find it interesting reading, though others will probably find it incredibly boring.
Here it is, for easy reference, in bits, generated by a clumsy cut-and-paste-technique wholly unbefitting the hi-tech nature of STFC, starting with the PPAN Programme:
and now the rest
For those of you not up with the accounting lingo, “near cash” means assets investments and other things that could in principle be exchanged for cash in a relatively short period of time.
These are, of course, the figures before the impending cuts take place….
There’s a much more legible version of the whole thing here.
The Incredible Shrinking Man is a science fiction film made in 1957. If you haven’t seen it before its title will probably make you think it’s a downmarket B-movie, but it’s far from that. In fact it was very well received by film critics when it was first released and in 2009 was added to the Library of Congress list of films considered to be culturally, historically or aesthetically significant. The special effects used to portray the main character reducing in size were remarkable in its day, but for me the film is worth it for the wonderful ending shown in the clip:
I first saw this film on TV when I was at school and the final monologue made such an impression on me that it keeps popping into my mind, as it just did. The field of astroparticle physics encompasses cosmology, the study of the Universe on the largest scales accessible to observation (many billions of light years) as well as the smallest dimensions we can probe using the techniques of particle physics. As the Incredible Shrinking Man realises, these are just two aspects of the same underlying unity. There’s nothing specifically new about this line of reasoning, however; I posted a poem a while ago that dates from 1675 which has a similar theme.
I decided to put the clip up now for two reasons. One is that the phrase “there is no zero” (which has passed me by on previous occasions I’ve watched the clip) reminds of some stuff I wrote recently for a book that I’m struggling to finish, about how there’s no such thing as nothing in physics. Space is much more than the absence of matter and even empty space isn’t the same thing as nothing at all. Zero is also just the flip side of infinity and I don’t think infinity exists in nature either. When infinity appears in our theories it’s just a flag to tell us we don’t know what we’re doing. Many others have thought this thought: both Gauss and, later, Hilbert argued against the possibility of there being realised infinities in nature. My old friend and erstwhile collaborator George Ellis adheres to this view too.
The other reason for posting it is that, in these days of the Incredible Shrinking Science Budget, it’s important that we recognize and nurture the deep connections between things by supporting science in all its forms. Once we start trying to unpick its strands, the web of knowledge will all too quickly unravel.
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In the Dark 