| Science funding: Experimental thinking | Editorial The government talks a good game on scientific research – then reveals its true colours with funding cutsVincent Cable gave a good speech this week on the importance of scientific research, and then ruined the effect by confirming that funding for research is to be reduced. Yesterday David Willetts repeated the trick. He praised British universities, before declaring that they do too much research. Both are intelligent men, instinctively sympathetic to academia. They must be aware of the contradictions in the policy they now defend.The government spends around £6bn a year supporting science – almost three times the Foreign Office budget. Scientists would of course like that figure to increase. They can point, as Mr Cable did, to rising science funding in Asia and the United States. It is commonplace to assert that developed countries need to get cleverer in order to compete, and that since science is one of those areas in which this country is still world-class, the government ought to be doing all it can to support it. Hence the disappointment at Mr Cable's immediate surrender to cuts. One pro-science blog yesterday contrasted the business secretary's search for economies with promises of greater funding for science from leaders in France, Germany, India and America. Indeed, the US president was promising more money for innovation this week as a route out of recession, even as Britain prepares to cut it.Yet it is simplistic to hope that all existing spending can be sustained. Ministers have inherited Labour plans for massive unidentified cuts. Those cuts have been made much bigger by the coalition, but there was never any prospect of avoiding them altogether. Scientists should also think twice before seeking refuge in the claim that all their research is beneficial to economic output. The truth is that while much of it is, some of the best scientists work in fields that will never produce commercial spin-offs, but which still deserve funding as a public good.The long-term threat to British scientific excellence lies as much in an obsessive government concentration on work that appears to ministers to be economically valuable as in a short-term cut in the amount spent on it."There is no justification for taxpayers' money being used to support research which is neither commercially useful nor theoretically outstanding," Mr Cable said this week. That may be true; but who is to decide which work qualifies as excellent, or useful? By its nature, the outcome of research is unpredictable and any benefits long-term. Picking commercial winners is hard to do. Scientists must mount a defence of pure research and fight the crude idea that the best science is done in pursuit of profit.BudgetVince CableResearch fundingHigher educationResearchguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
US-born panda gives birth to her 8th cub in China By 2010-09-19T06:47:11ZBEIJING (AP) -- An American-born panda gave birth to her eighth cub in southwest China, a rare accomplishment for the endangered species known for being poor breeders.... hosted.ap.org |
Research not jeopardised by staffing numbers A senior CSIRO manager says researchers at regional laboratories are doing administrative duties - but that is not neccessarily a bad thing. abc.net.au |
Coral bleaching event 'worst since 1998' International marine scientists say the worst coral bleaching in more than a decade has struck reefs across the South-East Asian and Indian oceans in recent months. abc.net.au |
The Epilim case shows the flaws in the legal aid regime | Jon Robins Families who claim the epilepsy drug was linked to birth defects have few options left after the LSC withdrew fundingEarlier this month a legal action involving 100 families seeking compensation for their children collapsed within weeks of the court hearing after a six-year fight. The families in question are suing over a range of claims for birth defects such as spina bifida, heart damage, cleft palates, deformed hands and feet – some claims are in the region of £6m – which they argue are the result of the children's mothers having taken an anti-epilepsy drug when pregnant.The Legal Services Commission (LSC), which runs the legal aid scheme in England and Wales, says of its decision to withdraw funding that it "can only spend taxpayers' money where we believe there is a reasonable prospect of success". Taxpayers can make up their own minds as to whether spending £3.25m over the past six years supporting the litigation only to pull the plug within weeks of the case going to court represents good value for money.I spoke to Emma Friedman, mother of 12-year-old Andy, this week. She took Epilim, manufactured by Sanofi-Aventis, when pregnant to prevent epileptic fits. "Andy is 12 years old now with a mental age of a three year old," she tells me. Her son is at secondary school in a special autistic unit and will need life-long care.What does Emma make of the LSC's decision to pull the plug? "This sounds cold. But after paying £3.25m so far it doesn't even make good business sense to quit before the taxpayer gets the opportunity for a return on their investment. The taxpayer will pay for my son until the day he dies." She worries this is her son's last chance for justice because of the limitation bar on bringing cases. So where do the families go now? They are looking at judicially reviewing the LSC's decision. But as Emma puts it: "I feel intimidated by the prospect of challenging the LSC, government and the fourth largest drug company in the world."Sir Menzies Campbell MP, the former Liberal Democrat leader, recently accused the LSC of playing "judge and jury". It's a good point. We are seeing brutal cuts to legal aid – £325m out of £2.1bn. One reason why the LSC was created separate from government was to allow it to make funding decisions without the accusation of being treasury-led or politically-driven. Now the LSC is about to be flung on to the quango bonfire, and its role subsumed into the Ministry of Justice.Suing a drug company in the UK courts for a case such as Epilim appears to be nigh on impossible. It joins a truly dismal roll call of failed group actions: the 2002 oral contraception pill litigation (fell apart following 44 days of legal argument), the MMR litigation (collapsed in 2003 having cost £15m), and the notorious benzodiazepine tranquilliser cases, which swallowed up £30m of taxpayers' money without even seeing the inside of a courtroom.It is this "bitter experience" – the LSC's words – that led to the funding regime we now have: there is only £3m available a year for major multiparty actions and any litigation is subject to an annual affordability review.Increasingly, legal aid isn't there for such complex cases. The expectation from this month's green paper on legal aid is that the private sector steps in and lawyers run these cases on "no win, no fee" backed by after-the-event insurance. The reality is that insurers don't back families fighting multinational drug companies.Consider the plight of the Vioxx litigants. In November 2007 the manufacturer Merck paid more than $4.85bn to Americans who claim to have suffered heart attacks and strokes as a result of the anti-arthritis drug. By contrast, the UK legal action never really got off the ground. The claimants couldn't get legal aid nor could they find an insurer to back their case. They were left taking their cases to New Jersey where the judge ruled against them on the grounds that their home country had "a perfectly appropriate judicial system". The problem is they could not get their case into court at all.David Body, the partner at Irwin Mitchell representing the Epilim families, is sceptical about the prospects of funding the case privately. "It's late in the day and there is likely to be an enormous insurance premium to deal with the potential cost for a trial against a multinational drugs company." And as he puts it: "That is why legal aid is there. It is designed to enable people of modest means to get through the courtroom door." Quite; the problem is it's not working.Jon Robins is a freelance journalist and director of the research company JuresLegal aidPharmaceuticals industryEpilepsyDrugsJon Robinsguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |