Not with a Bang but a Whimper

Well, there was I, popcorn in hand, ready to watch it all kick off after the EPSRC's announcement of the latest runners and riders in the 'Shaping Capability' sweepstakes. Imagine my disappointment at the muted response from the sector. What, no angry letters to The Times? No resignations? Surely some mistake?

The response could, of course, be because the EPSRC has effectively dodged the bullet by (a) only looking at a relatively small number of areas, (b) saying that only two of these will be cut. They had learnt, I think, from their experience with the first tranche of disciplines, when there was a strong backlash against the Council's actions. This time both Research Fortnight and The Times Higher were struggling to find dissidents to rail against the EPSRC. Prof Neal Skipper from UCL suggested that one of the areas to be cut, Hydrogen Storage, was not at a mature stage of development, as the EPSRC Chief David 'Derek Smalls' Delpy seemed to suggest. But that was pretty much it.

The rest seemed to shrug and move on. Even Twitter, the medium of choice for hysterics, was relatively subdued about it. Which is all very disappointing. I'll put my popcorn away until the main feature later in the year, when a decision on the remaining 51 areas (out of a total 111) will be made. There's sure to be fireworks then.

There's a Battle Outside and It's Raging

There's a fascinating storm raging at the moment around the walls of the EPSRC citadel. Some of you outside the Engineering and Physical Sciences might not be aware of it, but it has the potential to affect all of your disciplines, because what EPSRC does first, the other Research Councils tend to follow.

This time the EPSRC is 'engineering' their sector. Or, as they would have it, 'shaping our portfolio.' Basically, through their 'Shaping Capability' agenda, they've had a good look at the disciplines within their remit and have decided which should be backed, and which should be quietly shelved.
Now in some ways you can see the logic of this. In strained financial times it may be better to prioritise the important, high quality work that has the potential to make a difference to science globally, as well as nationally bolstering the UK's competitiveness.
However, as you can imagine, those who are adversely affected by this prioritisation are angry about what they see as the fairly arbitrary algorithm by which it has been decided. Have a look at the sub-GCSE graph above. This is known as the 'Bourne Graph'. It is a visual representation of how EPSRC see the relative value of subjects within its remit.
But how were these relative positions decided? What scale is being used along the X and Y axes? Hmm. It's not clear, and EPSRC's reticence on this is not helping. People are thinking the worst. As a York-based organic chemist comments on his blog, 'if one didn't know better you may be forgiven for thinking it had been thought up on the back of a fag packet over a pint in the pub after work.'
Helpfully, he provides a similarly inane graph for his relationship with fruit and vegetables, as follows:

I think the methodology's clear, don't you?
Prof Timothy Gower, another blogger, has tried to work out where they're coming from by deconstructing the newspeak pronouncements to come out of EPSRC.
More seriously, the sector's disquiet has resulted in letters from the chemists, statements from the mathematicians, and articles from the physicists, as well as a call from, well, everybody (in the shape of the Royal Society) to 'pause' the strategy. David 'Smalls' Delpy responded, specifically to the chemists, saying that he felt their pain, but ultimately it was their own fault for getting too much of the budget recently. Or words to that effect. Elsewhere he's poured oil on the troubled waters by saying that the complaints were an 'overreaction', backed up by 'relatively little' evidence.
The storm has been rumbling on since July, and there's no sign of it abating any time soon. If anything, it's growing in strength, and there's hope that, as Dylan said, 'the loser now will be later to win.' Whilst I have sympathy for EPSRC, and believe it acted in good faith, I think this kind of engineering is dangerous and ultimately fruitless.
Remember Robert Edwards, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine this time last year? He had developed in vitro fertilisation, which has led, since 1978, to millions of 'test tube babies.' Well, when he turned to his sector's funder, the MRC, in 1971 they turned him down. At the time his discipline wasn't of interest, as the politics of the day suggested the world was heading for malthusian destruction. If there hadn't been a private funder on hand his research may well have withered on the vine.
His is a cautionary tale. The allocation of research funding shouldn't be left up to politicians and apparatchiks (like me): it should be up to peers and contemporaries to decide what should be prioritised. Only then will the best, bravest and brightest have an equal chance - from whatever discipline.

EPSRC Success Rate Rises to 36%

Paul 'shriek' Jump is once again questioning the Research Councils in the Times Higher. After his 'off with their heads' piece last week on the ESRC, he turns his ire on the EPSRC this week and questions its steadily rising success rate. From a low of 26% in 2008-09, the Council's success rate has risen to 36% in 2010-11.

Good news, you would think. EPSRC put it down to the success of their blacklisting policy (although they don't call it that: to them it will forever be the 'Policy for Repeatedly Unsuccessful Applicants'). This limits those who have had three or more rejections, or have been in the bottom half of the prioritisation list, in a two year period and have a personal success rate of less than 25%, to only submitting one application in the subsequent year. With me so far?

However, Jump quotes two academics who suggest that the success of the policy is debatable: Ian Walmsley suggested that applications are down across the research councils (although this seems to run counter to Jump's piece on the ESRC), and David Price claimed that the policy was deterring weak and strong applications alike.

Whilst it's clear that Jump is a glass-half-empty kind of a guy, I agree that EPSRC's news should be greeted with caution. The Council has recently been in the headlines about it's - ahem - 'consultation', which suggested cutting funding to a number of disciplines within its remit. This has been met by horror in the sector, and has left David 'Derek Smalls' Delpy crying into his beer and saying that it wasn't really a consultation anyway.

Cutting both the number of disciplines and the number of eligible individuals within the remaining disciplines will, eventually, lead to a success rate of 100% for the Council. Hurray! Their work will be complete. Or certainly will be until this plummets back to 0% as there'll be no-one eligible left to apply.