Select committee report
I’ve now worked my way through the DIUS select committee report (not with a fine toothcomb, though), and there are some extremely interesting conclusions. You can find the whole thing here, or just trust my reading of it.
The meat starts on p20, which discusses the budget left to STFC from the two councils which preceded it, CCLRC (large facilities) and PPARC (particle physics and astronomy). It is true that neither council had a budget deficit when the merger happened, but the committee remind us that
STFC has been left with a bill for the operating costs of Diamond and ISIS that is £75 million … above the sum that was allocated in its budget following the merger.
Diamond and ISIS are large facilities at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire, which are used by scientists from almost all disciplines (but have very little relevance to astronomy). Where to find the money to pay for these operating costs? Back to the committee
it is the former PPARC programmes that have been cut rather than the former CCLRC programmes. In other words, the former PPARC community is being penalised by the merger with CCLRC. This is a situation that the Government had promised would not come about.
But wait, why didn’t anyone notice? Oh…
This was noted by the National Audit Office in January 2007, and therefore the Government should have known and should have acted upon it. The fact that it did not has had unfortunate consequences. We believe that the Government should ensure that its original commitment to leave no legacy funding issues from the previous Councils is honoured.
Moving on, past headline stuff including a description of the Gemini confusion, we come to the part that resonated most with me. Over to the report again:
Given the anxiety that grant cuts are causing to the physics and astronomy community, we are dismayed that STFC has been attempting to play down the effects of the cuts on the grounds that reductions in future grants are not problematic. We consider cuts to grants that had already been promised a major problem. We urge STFC to take immediate steps to communicate clearly and comprehensively to its research community the impact of its grant cuts.
which echoes what I’ve said before. Those of us in the UK astronomical community are big enough and, god knows, ugly enough to deal with the situation as is if only someone would tell us what was going on.
I wrote earlier about the issue of waiting until the government’s Wakeham review of physics was published in September. The committee were told this was pointless but
We recommend that STFC wait for the results of the Wakeham review before implementing the cuts proposed in the Delivery Plan and that it use this time to consult with its stakeholders.
And that’s it; the conclusion is nasty - calling for substantial changes in the way the STFC is run, and questioning Keith Mason’s ability to carry out these changes. I know that others will jump on these, and who knows, they may be right to do so. It’s a difficult call from my position, but to be honest I don’t care who is in charge. If we can just hang on until the Wakeham review, then the report would have done a great deal of good.
In theory, I’m pleased with the report. It says clearly a lot of things that needed saying, and should help make the picture clearer. But I’m also an hour or so away from the start of my last night on a telescope on Kitt Peak, an observatory I’ve wanted to visit since a trip here helped inspire me to chose an astronomical career, doing excellent science based on the participation of the Galaxy Zoo volunteers. So you’ll forgive me if I stop letting this distract me and get back to what I want to be doing - it is, afterall, what any of us involved in the argument want to be doing.
(Science available at the Galaxy Zoo blog.)
on April 30th, 2008 at 11:00 am
> but to be honest I don’t care who is in charge.
You really should be, Chris. Having lived through the tenure of three PPARC/STFC chief executives (although the last isn’t quite dead yet), I have seen the differences in atmosphere and even scientific direction that seem to mirror the individuals at the top quite closely.
So, ask yourself what will the Government do if Keith does go. It would be hard for them to appoint another academic to the role, given the question mark that now hangs over them as managers. The obvious solution is someone with more senior management experience in a large relevant organization. RAL, for example. Just as our colleagues in the Government labs were nervous about being led by someone from a university background, I am deeply worried by the idea of coming under the leadership of someone with a Government lab mentality.
on April 30th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
> I am deeply worried by the idea of coming under the leadership of someone with a
> Government lab mentality.
I’d be interested to know what your perceive to be a “Government lab mentality”, Michael.
on May 2nd, 2008 at 9:12 am
Well Jonathan, at its crudest level a Government lab mentality is that Government labs are a good thing. With certain creditable exceptions, that is not the view of my university-based physics colleagues. More personally, I have found many middle and senior managers at government facilities to be far more wrapped up in empire building for its own sake than their equivalents in the university sector. They are extremely efficient operators, but not great scientists. Perhaps I have just been unlucky with the ones I have met. Perhaps we need that kind of political nous to squeeze more money out of Government. But it isn’t the kind of organization I would want to be working for.