Confusion, Damned Confusion and ESRC Statistics

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I recently received a little gift from the Economic and Social Research Council’s chief executive, Paul Boyle.

“I am pleased to attach a report,” he wrote, “which summarises the general progress that has been made under the council’s demand management strategy, along with a digest of statistics for your own institution, which I hope you will find useful.”

For me, a data-fixated research manager, this was a very welcome present. Here, I hoped, was evidence of the value of our internal peer-review system. Here were hard facts. Here, I hoped, was something to crow about.

Unfortunately, the data presented by the ESRC obfuscated as much as they illuminated.

Notes from ESRC Regional Meeting, April 2013

Prof Paul Boyle

The ESRC held a Regional Meeting at the LSE on Tuesday.

Introduction 

 Prof Paul Boyle (CEO, ESRC) started by giving a ‘state of the union’ summary of the position of the ESRC. It currently gave out £200m in funding, of which £180m came from BIS, and £20m from cofunding. It was distributed as follows:

• Training & Skills £53m (26%) 
• Strategic/Collaborative £51m (22%) 
• Responsive Mode £45m (22%) 
• Methods & Infrastructure £33m (16%) 
• Other £23m (11%) 

Following publication of its Delivery Plan (2009-15), it had cut Small Grants, but still provided small scale funding (such as for the Secondary Data Analysis initiative). It firmly believed in international collaboration (providing up to 30% funding for overseas Co-Is), and was embedded in all six of RCUK’s cross-council programmes (global food security; energy; global uncertainties; lifelong health and wellbeing; digital economy; living with environmental change). It saw engagement with the private sector as a key priority for the future, particularly in financial services, green business and retail (see Strategic Priorities, below). It had also acted quickly on ad hoc priorities recently, such as initiatives on the Future of UK and Scotland, and Transformative Research.

Strategic Priorities 

ESRC had recently reviewed its three strategic priorities (economic performance and sustainable growth; influencing behaviour and informing interventions; vibrant and fair society), but had decided not to change them. However, they had recognised that there were gaps within these, and that further ‘urgent but predictable scientific opportunities’ had arisen since the priorities were first formed. Moreover, looking at the funding trend towards 2016/17, there was ‘investment headroom’ as current grants tailed off. Thus, the ESRC would be looking to provide more funding, or facilitate further networks, frameworks and events, in the following areas:

Evidence:

• ‘Big data’ 
• ‘What Works’ (in which the ESRC aims to embed the use of evidence in policy and practice. Whilst on a different scale, Boyle likened this to NICE – i.e. to synthesise evidence robustly, recommend interventions and monitor their success) 
• Macroeconomics 

Economic Performance:

• Business innovation 
• Financial markets 
• Cities (ESRC had looked at what sister social science funders globally were focusing on, and recognised cities as a major area of interest. Will possibly hold a town hall meeting about this) 
• Green economy 

Influencing Behaviour:

• Epigenetics and educational neuroscience (Boyle described this as ‘frontier science’. It’s a small but growing area looking at how genes can be influenced by environment) 
• Innovation in health and social care (ESRC would look to cofund with other health sponsors) 
• Higher education (there’s a sense that, despite the recent big upheavals, there hasn’t been enough work done on HE recently. Might also cofund with DFID on primary/secondary education in developing countries) 

Fair & Vibrant Society:

• Civil society and social innovation 
• Social media 
• Work (such as the impact of recession. There might be a new call around this, but would examine what work had already been done in this area first). 

Demand Management 

The ESRC had consulted the sector a couple of years ago following a 33% increase in applications with no rise in funding between 2006-11. Following this, it had cut the Small Grants scheme, and had encouraged universities to implement internal peer review. As a result there had been a 37% decrease in application volume, and success rates had risen from 17% to 24% across its schemes. The decrease in volume had also led to a 20% decrease in peer review activity. Boyle encouraged individual institutions to mirror the kind of activity that the ESRC undertook: for example, using anonymous reviews, as it had done for the Transformative Research scheme.

Was he still considering introducing tougher measures for demand management? It was still under review, he said, and he had the options ‘in his back pocket’ if needed. However, he thought that any measures would be more nuanced. If a university was not considered to be ‘playing the game’ there may be specific sanctions that would not affect the rest of the sector. He suggested that universities should test the effectiveness of an internal peer review system by questioning how many projects had actually been rejected as a result of it. This was not black and white, however: he clarified that by ‘rejected’ he meant ‘rejected in its current state’, i.e. that they had been encouraged to reframe and redraft their application following feedback.

Doctoral Training Centres 

ESRC was currently assessing the lessons to be learnt from the DTC programme. They had used data from RAE to help in the assessment of it; as similar data from the REF would not be available when the current programme came to an end the ESRC would probably delay a new round by a year. They wanted to encourage:

• A good balance between 3+ and 3+1 , and didn’t like universities trying to get more for less by only advertising for 3+. 
• Cofunding with external partners. 

There was a move to harmonise DTCs across the Research Councils, and ESRC was considering whether it should expand or contract its DTC provision. However, it would always want to fund excellence, and would therefore wish to avoid quotas.

What Are the ESRC Strategic Priorities for?

In the thick of the back-slapping love-in that was the ESRC Open Meeting last night, I felt a little like Banquo's ghost. I'm not saying that Paul Boyle's murdered anyone recently to be Thane of Swindon, or anything, it's just that I felt a little out of place. Don't get me wrong: I love the ESRC and admire all who sail in her, and I was made to feel very welcome, but I was taken aback by how uncritical the audience seemed to be. The questions were, generally, along the lines of, 'Paul, could I just agree with the previous questioner by saying how brilliant you are?' The toughest questions were saved for government departments (Boo! Hiss!) which, it was generally agreed, weren't pulling their weight in (a) using ESRC-sponsored research, and (b) telling the world how brilliant the ESRC was.

So, like the oik that I am, I waded in with an everso, everso slightly critical question. Feeling a little like a naughty schoolboy before the headmaster, I asked, - em – what did the panel think of Sir Paul Nurse's comments last week, when he took a side swipe at the EPSRC by attacking the concept of funders as 'sponsors'? After all, the ESRC's three 'strategic priorities' seemed to be a move in this direction.

Paul Boyle chortled like an indulgent Dumbledore, 'I certainly wouldn't want to comment on a sister research council,' he began, before explaining how the ESRC was cleverly treading the tightrope between shepherding the sector and giving them the space to do whatever they wanted via their responsive mode schemes.

Well, yes and no. You see, my problem with the ESRC priority areas is that I just don't get the point. For all its faults, the EPSRC is at least putting its money where its mouth is. You may disagree with the policy of 'shaping' its remit, but it's obviously decided what is important, and is now steaming ahead with putting into practice the changes necessary. Their priority areas do, at least, have some value – for better or worse.

The ESRC, on the other hand, has consulted widely, and has produced a 'bottom up' list that is so broad as to be almost meaningless:

• economic performance and sustainable growth;
• influencing behaviour and informing interventions;
• a vibrant and fair society.

Well, that's pretty much the ESRC's remit covered, then.

But what are social scientists meant to make of – or do with – this list? It was made clear that the priorities wouldn’t play a part in responsive mode funding; indeed, at the ESRC Study Day in September Michelle Dodson said that the ESRC would ‘only exceptionally’ provide ‘new investments’ in these areas.

So they don’t want to railroad the sector with the priorities, nor do they want to provide much funding for them. What's left? What are they for, and what will they do? Dodson did say that the priorities would be fulfilled by ‘enhancing impact from existing investments’ and ‘encouraging investments to work together.’

Make of that what you will. Of course, if you don’t like them, you needn’t worry, because there might well be a new set along in due course. Whilst they don’t want to revise them each year they might be (ahem) ‘refreshed annually.’

Okay, so I may joke about these priorities, but I do think there is an important point to make here. There’s been a lot of light and heat generated by these: as Boyle suggested, there was a long consultation process, involving 'taskforces', 'frameworks', 'discussions', and 'comment', to arrive at these fairly anodyne aspirations. The ESRC should now either back the priorities by committing wholeheartedly to them [*shudder*], or, more preferably, drop the pretence at being directive and allow the sector to decide for itself – through the peer review and funding of excellent research – what its priorities are.

Finally! Europe Gets What It Deserves

Great news today from Europe. Our best beloved King of the Social Sciences, ESRC chief Paul Boyle, has been elected President of Science Europe.

Thank heavens for Science Europe. Some may question the worth of a European supranational quango with a complex organisational structure, a vague and aspirational mission statement and a vision statement, and no identifiable powers. But not us.

For us, we can only thank the powers that be that they have finally recognised that the continent that brought us the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, Democracy and the Industrial Revolution, Shakespeare, Einstein, Newton, Galileo, Planck, Darwin and Mozart, that discovered heliocentrism, penicillin and the circulation of blood, needs some help in developing its potential.

Yes, this is a great step forward. What European research needs is more committees, more policy statements and more plans of action. My only worry is that Boyle, who is already ESRC CEO and RCUK International Champion, will be stretched too thin. Surely something will have to give if Science Europe is to fulfil its mission statement and genuinely deliver 'a broad based forum...to inform discussions on ERA and related policy matters.'?