Further to the lengthy discussion above, I’ve recently been a member of an NSF peer review panel (for the first time). This has helped me better interpret your comments on Criterion 2. It was very clear during the panel meeting and in reviewing grant proposals that NSF and, equally importantly, the US academic community interpret “broader impact” in terms of societal impact. There is a strong distinction between short term economic impact and broader societal impact (outreach, interaction with high school teachers and students, underrepresented minorities etc…). This distinction has been wilfully blurred in the UK by the influential Warry report: the research councils, working from the Warry definition, consider the term “economic impact” as encompassing broader societal impact.

It was very refreshing to read all of the NSF grant proposals and not come across the terms “intellectual property”, “technology transfer”, “spin-off”, “commercialisation”, or “patent” at any point. This is certainly not the case in the UK where the research councils and, of course, university research offices are very much focussed on IP/patent/spin-off opportunities. If this focus were restricted to grant proposals involving near-market R&D (a la the NSF’s SBIR or STTR programmes) then this, arguably, would be reasonable. (One could, however, quibble about whether the research councils, as opposed to another government department, should be supporting near market research in the first place. Let’s put that point aside for now.). The UK research councils are, however, imposing the economic impact summary on *all* proposals, whether basic, applied, short-term, or long-term.

So, I think we actually agree on many points. Should academics be concerned with the broader societal impact of their work? Yes, of course. Should they aim to involve, for example, elementary and high school students/teachers and the general public in their work (where possible and appropriate)? Certainly. But this is very different from attempting to predict the overall economic impact of a basic research proposal. It is also very different from pushing academics towards short term “economy-focussed” research where the goal in many cases is that the university scientist effectively becomes a contract researcher for industry.

The bottom line is that there is a world of difference between NSF’s Criterion 2 and the impact plan UK research councils are imposing on academics.

Best wishes,

Philip

Am I right, sirs? (I’m addressing to our dear specialists in field of policy of science).

First, thanks again for taking the time to provide considered responses to my questions in Comment #31 above. I address your comments below but, before I do, I’ll provide some background both on my research interests and on the funding situation in the UK.

I am a physicist working in the area of nanoscience at the University of Nottingham. I receive the bulk of my funding from two sources: the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), one of the seven research councils that comprise Research Councils UK (RCUK), and the European Framework Programmes (the Marie Curie Research Training Networks programme in particular). My research focusses on the basic physics and chemistry of matter at the nanometre level. It is blues skies/basic research in the sense that I have no desire to apply this work to the development of a device/sensor nor to commercialise our findings.

I see no conflict between this stance and my “social contract” as a publicly-funded researcher. Perhaps you disagree. RCUK certainly sees my lack of entrepreneurial spirit as effectively a wasted resource. Indeed, from a closer-to-home perspective, the University of Nottingham has stated that it plans to embed an entrepreneurial culture across the entire university (and is immensely proud of winning a recent award for Entrepreneurial University of the Year). So let me state, for the record: I am a scientist. Not an engineer. Not a technologist. Not an entrepreneur.

I have been increasingly concerned by the steps RCUK and, in particular, EPSRC has taken to align its funding programmes with the recommendations of a number of influential government reports produced in the past five years or so. These reports have each focussed on how to extract more “economic impact” from the research that the research councils fund. A useful synopsis/overview of RCUK’s strategies can be found in a report entitled Increasing the Economic Impact of the Research Councils , released in mid-2006.

Note the focus on knowledge transfer throughout the report, a subject to which I’ll return below. Moreover, the report recommends, on p. 18, compulsory business/enterprise training for all PhD students . It is also worth noting that the new Science Minister, Paul Drayson, does not have a background in science but is lauded for his talents as a businessman and entrepreneur.

As I’ve discussed in Comment #42 above, RCUK carried out what they termed a consultation with all UK universities in mid-2007 on the subject of modifying the peer review process. A key element of this consultation was the proposal to introduce economic impact criteria in peer review. Criticism of this proposal from UK universities was, in many cases, stinging. However, as RCUK had committed itself to implementing government policy on economic impact it chose to ignore the feedback from the academic community.

Why am I so opposed to the introduction of economic impact criteria in peer review and to RCUK’s “industry-facing” agenda? The answers lie with my (and your) responses to the questions I posed in Comment #31 above. For me, the key issues are:

1. Ryan, you argue that identifying basic scientific research as a public good does not address the problem of how to allocate resources. Let’s leave the question of resource allocation to one side for a moment and focus on the issue of science as a public good. This, as you are aware, is the core economic rationale for state funding of science.

What I am opposed to is the use of public funds to support near-market R&D at the expense of far-from-market basic science. Near-market R&D does not suffer from the same market failure as basic research. Why then should the taxpayer subsidise the research programmes of, to name but a few, Procter & Gamble, Glaxo SmithKline, BAE Systems, and Phillips to develop, for example, “scale up” of their products? See, for example, this call document which focuses on the study of nanofluids (an area of research which our group at Nottingham is heavily into), and I quote, “design systems that provide a noticeable boost in product performance and/or acceptance to the consumer”. . (Each one of the companies I’ve listed is involved or has been involved in a strategic partnership with one of the research councils).

Ryan, David: Do you think that this is an appropriate use of public funds? If so, could you explain why? Perhaps I’m missing some fundamental economic point. (It’s perhaps also worth noting that many of these companies have rather interesting approaches to paying tax in the first place .)

2. The ethos of academia should involve open and free dissemination of research results. This ethos is being eroded by the ever-increasing focus of universities (and their associated technology transfer offices) on IPR and IP protection. What is remarkable is that RCUK seems entirely committed to repeating the mistakes of the US in this area. A considerable number of technology transfer offices do not make a profit in the US and, indeed, a significant number make heavy losses.

3. There’s an excellent recent (Sept. 2008) paper/strategy document by Geoffrey Boulton and Colin Lucas entitled “What are universities for?” which I think you’ll find fascinating. At the risk of making an already verbose and overlong comment even longer, I’m going to quote verbatim two particularly important paragraphs:

Universities can and do contribute to the innovation process, but not as its drivers. Innovation is dominantly a process of business engagement with markets, in which universities can only play a minor active role. They do however contribute to the fertility of the environment that innovation needs if it is to flourish. University commercialisation activities themselves, the creation of spin-out and start-up companies and licensing of intellectual property, do not, even in the USA, where university commercialisation is best developed, directly contribute significantly to GNP.

Why RCUK and, indeed, the Treasury and the Department of Innovation, Universities, and Skills, cannot grasp this distinction between “university push” and market/industry “pull”, I really don’t know.

The second important point (among very many) that Boulton and Lucas make is the following:

The ideas, thoughts and technologies that tomorrow will need or that will forge tomorrow, are hid from us, and foresight exercises have had a lamentable record of success in attempting to predict them. Just as the breathtaking pace of scientific, technological and societal innovation has changed and is changing the way we live, in an unpredictable way, so will it in the future.

The universities in their creative, freethinking mode are a vital resource for
that future and an insurance against it. The policies being increasingly pressed upon them implicitly assume a knowable future or a static societal or economic frame. As Drew Faust has said, in her inaugural address as President of Harvard: “A university is not about results in the next quarter; it is not even about who a student has become by graduation. It is about learning that moulds a lifetime; learning that transmits the heritage of millennia; learning that shapes the future”.

Isn’t that quote from Faust beautiful? Let’s translate it for RCUK: The key contribution of a university to the “innovation ecosystem” is “human capital”. As a publicly-funded scientist, a key component of my social contract is to educate (not simply train) students in the scientific method, to the best of my ability. Those students then provide an extremely important mechanism of knowledge transfer between industry and academia. Moreover, how do you go about quantifying the total economic impact of that “human capital”?

4. A very important mechanism of knowledge transfer between universities and industry, which RCUK seem committed to ignoring, is publication in the open literature. As Jennfier Washburn stated back in 2003 with regard to the situation in the US:

In a survey published in 2002 by Wesley Cohen and Richard Nelson, industry technology professionals were asked what are the most important mechanisms by which you get information from academia? To an overwhelming extent, industry said that open channels like publication and consulting were the most important channels. Patenting and licensing ranked way at the bottom across nearly all industries, except pharmaceuticals.

Our duty as publicly-funded researchers is to disseminate , not protect, knowledge stemming from our work. For me, the term “intellectual property” should be an oxymoron in the context of academic research.

5. And finally, there is increasing evidence from the US that the patenting/IP protection culture that UK universities are so desperate to inculcate, not only slows down knowledge transfer to industry (what a surprise!) but it actively dissuades companies from interacting with universities (see Physics Today, May 2008).

That’s more than enough for now. I realise that I haven’t addressed all of your comments but I hope that I’ve clarified my position to some extent!

Best wishes and thanks once again for engaging with me on this topic,

Philip

Philip

Briefly for now (as I plan to get back to you shortly on your and Ryan’s other comprehensive responses to my questions above), the key thing with regard to the discussion I pointed to is this:

RCUK consulted with the UK academic community re. the appropriateness of introducing economic impact measures into the peer review process. Practically every UK university pointed out that this was an ill-conceived and ill-informed strategy to adopt. RCUK ignored that feedback and introduced the economic impact criteria in any case. Perhaps they did this with academe’s best interests at heart. Nonetheless, the result is that RCUK, which should represent the interests of the academic community and remain “at arms’ length” from government, ignored expert feedback and chose to implement policies that were clearly designed to align with strategies outlined in a number of Government/Treasury reviews and reports. This rankles for a number of reason but at least in part because the New Labour government similarly has a history of requesting advice/feedback, going to great pains to argue that they are “consulting” with the “community”, and then promptly ignoring that advice.

The research councils in the UK are not another government department – this is a crucial point – and they should act in the best long-term interests of publicly-funded academe/science. In setting up the Medical Research Council in the early 20th century, Haldane recognised the key difficulties with having science policy directly controlled by government: he foresaw (predicted) the narrow, short-term bias that would necessarily result. Thus, you’ll see the Haldane Principle referred to in countless discussion of science policy in the UK. (As you may already know?). RCUK will argue that well, it does not get take orders directly from the government so the Haldane principle is preserved. This entirely dodges the issue (and rather patronises UK academics) because, in aligning their funding strategy with flawed, ill-informed, and damaging government policy, they implictly violate the Haldane principle.

So, yes, I see the arrogant rejection of feedback/advice from the majority of UK universities (and an international review panel and the Royal Society ) on the imposition of economic impact criteria in peer review as inherently dishonest.

Second point: You ask why the impact plan RCUK is introducing is “ethos shifting”? Up to this point the research council argument has always been that grants will be awarded on the basis of scientific quality. Introducing judgements based on economic impact – when not one of the reviewers will be fully qualified to make this judgement (unless, like the UK’s Science Minister, they have a well-developed sixth sense ) – will clearly disadvantage research that doesn’t have identifiable impact. Philip Esler, Professor of Biblical Criticism at St. Andrews and RCUK’s economic impact champion, makes the following argument:

Excellent research without obvious or immediate impact will continue to be funded by the Research Councils and will not be disadvantaged within the assessment process.

As my colleague at Nottingham, Prof. Mike Merrifield, points out this is a nonsensical statement.

Finally, there are very many important reasons why RCUK’s approach to attempting to impose short-term economic impact criteria is economically flawed. Some of these are touched upon in Jennifer Washburn’s “University Inc.: The Corporate Corruption of Higher Education” and in Daniel S. Greenberg’s “Science for Sale” . Nelson, Pavitt, Narin et al, Fabrizio et al. have made similar important observations along these lines. More on this later, I’ve really got to get on with the day job!

Best wishes,

Philip

P.S. OK, so maybe this comment wasn’t so brief…

It would help me to better understand your concerns if I could see what exactly would be required with this economic impact plan. The requirements for responding to the closest thing the U.S. has – the broader impact criteria – involve adding additional discussion to the grant application. It’s more work, but (and I have participated in grant applications with this criteria) not ethos-shifting. Now it’s possible my ethos was pre-shifted, but without seeing precisely what UK researchers would need to do, I can’t be sure.

Reviewing the discussion you pointed to, it seems that the differences between the UK and US responses may be small. I am curious as to why what I see as a speculative exercise you consider dishonest. Or were you commenting more on the inherent compromise of applying for outside funding – bending to the whims of the funding organization?

It is elementary to distinguish the things such as “an annoyance” and “boycotting”. If scientists grumble a bit and at last agree to write these two pages, it will be “an annoyance”. And if they refuse to write these two pages and make bureaucrats to abolish these requirements, it will be “boycotting”.

“Nelson is making the argument that we need to preserve “open science,” but that we need to think about it differently. The old way of thinking is inaccurate, and it is no longer serving as an effective argument against privatization.”

Uh-uh! This is a speech of people, who plunged the world into crisis already with their tricks such as “privatization”, but they don’t want still to stop. Sirs, have a compassion though on your own children. Just they will live in the world, which you crush with your ill-considered activity.

You state:

Personally, I see this as more of an annoyance than anything worth boycotting.

It’s extremely important to realise that the economic impact summary plan Research Councils UK (RCUK) is imposing is very much more than just “an annoyance” . It represents nothing less than a sea change in the ethos of academic research funding in the UK.

Before imposing economic impact criteria on the peer review process, RCUK carried out a “consultation” with all UK universities. The feedback was extremely negative – see this post for a brief discussion and synopsis. RCUK nevertheless ignored the collective opinion of the vast majority of UK universities and introduced its “impact plan” nonsense into peer review.

This is much, much more than a skirmish over increased bureaucracy.

Philip

P.S. Thanks to you and Ryan for the detailed feedback on my questions. I’ll respond as soon as I can. I thought it important, however, to address your “annoyance” comment asap!

The most unfortunate aspect of debates such as this one is that there appear to be only two sides – “science for science’s sake,” and “science for economic benefit.” This perception leads each side to dig in, as scientists feel their only recourse is to argue for the (in reality false) linear model of innovation, in which the benefits are automatic, but unpredictable.

This is a main point of Nelson’s paper as well (p. 456):

The case for open scientific knowledge clearly needs to be reconstructed recognizing explicitly that much of scientific research in fact is oriented towards providing knowledge useful for the solution of practical problems, that the applications of new scientific findings often are broadly predictable, and that this
is why control over scientific findings in some cases is financially valuable property. I think there is a case for keeping basic scientific knowledge open, even under these conditions. To privatize basic knowledge is a danger both for the advance of science, and for the advance of technology.

Nelson is making the argument that we need to preserve “open science,” but that we need to think about it differently. The old way of thinking is inaccurate, and it is no longer serving as an effective argument against privatization.

To the questions you posed, I offer the following answers:

1. Why should the taxpayer fund scientific research in universities?

Taxpayer support for university-based scientific research is justified to help support the educational mission of the university. By supporting faculty research taxpayer funds can also provide research opportunities for students who can apply that knowledge and experience in whatever post-school path they pursue. Strong support of university research should attract quality faculty who can in turn attract quality students, many of who will stick around the region of the university. Support of faculty teaching and the associated benefits to students may or may not be separable from taxpayer support of university based scientific research.

Taxpayer support for scientific research in universities is also a good idea for the spillover effects on the surrounding community. By supporting the faculty and staff positions associated with the research, there is a job base and economic input that will support other jobs. Companies created to commercialize university research benefit from this taxpayer support through the provision of a knowledge base and trained researchers. University-industry partnerships (formal and informal, contracts, extension services, etc.) help spread the knowledge created through scientific research and that knowledge can provide other community benefits as well.

2. What is the fundamental economic rationale for state support of university research?

Aside from what I described in the last paragraph of my previous response, there are a few places where there lacks sufficient incentive for private entities to conduct research in areas where they could ultimately benefit. Maybe it’s difficult for a private entity to prevent other entities from benefiting from that research. Maybe the private entity can’t bear the necessary expense (due to a longer term payoff than they can afford, or the simple scale of the project is beyond their capacity). Research consortia sometimes arise to assist in these endeavors, but often an outside party, like a government or university, can help bring people together.

Whether or not my answers match with Philip’s (or Ryan’s), I’m not sure it’s a bad thing if they don’t. It could certainly explain some of the resistance and frustration over the U.K. proposal, or the lack of interest in the U.S. broader impact criteria. That researchers and their patrons have different objectives in mind can’t be unique to the present.