| Vince Cable's wrong connection After what is being labelled "45%-gate", Stephen Curry and Evan Harris figure out how excellent British science is – or isn'tOn Wednesday morning on the Today Programme business secretary Vince Cable said: "Something like 45% of the research grants that were going through were to research that was not of excellent standard so we are going to have to set the bar higher."Some listeners might have been left with the impression that almost half of the money that the UK taxpayer spends on grants to support scientific research fails to provide value for money or is wasted on work that is below par. It this were correct, listeners would be right to feel outraged at such profligacy.But that is a false impression.The business secretary was extrapolating from his speech where he misused an arbitrary reading of the results of the most recent Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), which measures the quality of the research done in UK universities, as pointed out by Peter Coles and David Briggs (both worth reading in detail). The RAE for 2008 concluded that 54% of the research activity is composed of: 17% at 4* ("world-leading") and 37% at 3* ("internationally excellent"). The 45% that Mr Cable referred to is the rest. But crucially, the RAE in 2008 went on to say that a further 33% of research submitted was rated at 2*, which is "of a quality that is recognised internationally in terms of originality, significance and rigour". Mr Cable has seemingly plucked out the top two grades and has dismissed work that is still of an international standard. To complete the picture, a further 11% of the work submitted at RAE 2008 was rated 1*, which means it was "recognised nationally in terms of originality, significance and rigour".The 2008 RAE assessments are publicly available (the results for Imperial College can be found here). These figures are impressive and come as no surprise to any working scientist familiar with the intensely competitive process of winning grant funding from research councils in the UK. It is gruelling and difficult: success rates for applicants in the life sciences are in the region of 19% (Medical Research Council) to 23% (Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council). At the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) one grant awarder Alex Murphy has explained in a blog comment that his grants committee received 16 applications, 14 of which were ranked as excellent by rival scientists (in an imperfect-but-better-than-any-other- way-of-doing-it system called peer review) but that they only had the resources to fund a solitary one. That heavy filtering ensures that only the best applications are selected and goes some way to explaining the high impact of UK scientists, who punch well above their weight on the international stage and are a cadre of workers of which this country can be justifiably proud.There is no question as to the quality of the outputs, but Mr Cable is now asking researchers to do "more with less". A fair question in these straitened times would be to ask scientists to do the same with less, but even then the system is already creaking. The application process is a huge drain on scientists' time, both in preparing and judging applications. Currently three-quarters of that time is wasted on applications that will not be funded. In fact in his speech the business secretary recognised the inefficiency of a grant allocation process with such low success rates. Now he needs to explain how making scientists chase even harder for a diminished pot is going to lead to any productivity improvements.Universities also get money from the higher education funding councils for research and this is portioned out based on the results of the RAE, with highest-rated departments getting the most cash. According to James Wilsdon of the Royal Society:In the last Research Assessment Exercise, 54% of the work that was submitted for assessment was classed as 3* or 4*, which means it is, by definition, world class. This research receives £980m from Hefce. Research that is 2* (which Hefce still regards as 'internationally recognised') gets £115 million and 1* research gets nothing. So Hefce allocates the vast majority – nearly 90% – of its funding to world class research."In other words, while 54% of work in universities is assessed as 3* or 4*, much more than 54% of the funding is already directed to the departments that host that work. So it is not the case that 46% (or 45%!) of that funding can be re-allocated to 3* or 4* projects, which was the implication of Mr Cable's exemplar. Lest that figure of 45% should stick in the mind of the public, as it is presently stuck in the craw of the scientific community, what's needed first is a proper acknowledgement from the business secretary of the true assessment of the quality of British science. It is important for Mr Cable to put the record straight.Co-author Stephen Curry is a professor of structural biology at Imperial College and writes a regular blog at Reciprocal SpaceScience policyVince CableHigher educationUniversity fundingResearch fundingResearchEducation policyEvan Harrisguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
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