Bishop Hill Circular funding
May 27, 2011 Education Times Higher Ed reports the raising of university eyebrows at the decision by Imperial College to stop paying subscriptions to CASE - the Campaign for Science and Engineering.
Times Higher Education understands that Imperial College London previously paid an annual subscription of about £3,000 to the lobby group, which was widely credited with helping to secure a ring-fenced, flat-cash research budget in last October's Comprehensive Spending Review.
However, Imperial announced last autumn that it would not be renewing its subscription, and it has now confirmed that decision.
A spokesman said the university regularly reviews its subscriptions to membership organisations to "ensure they complement and add value to the college's activities".
The report relays the concerns of lots of the other universities and their praise for CASE's work in extracting money from the government.
So, if I understand things correctly the taxpayer has money extracted with menaces by the government. The government gives some of this to the universities and who pass some on to CASE. CASE then use their cut to lobby the government for more public funds to be given to them.
This doesn't seem entirely right, does it?
Reader Comments (10)
Cabs for Hire?: Fixing the Revolving Door between Government and Business - a new report by Transparency International UK.
"The report emphasises that disclosure and monitoring are important parts of any revolving door regulation. It states research suggests that disclosure is most effective in reducing perceived corruption when disclosures are made available to the public.
The report concludes that either actual scrutiny by the media and the public – or the threat of that scrutiny – is most effective in constraining unethical, corrupt, or illegal behaviour."
http://blog.whoslobbying.com/ (link to report on page)
I've had this link since about 1999 http://www.lobbyingtransparency.org/ seems not much happens in the transparent-lobbying lobby
Bishop, I enjoy your occasional posts on the perverse incentives in science funding as a diversion from more tightly climate-science related ones (and I'm aware your blog started as a broader-based one, which this interest reflects). I think you're absolutely right: science funding is stuffed full of weird, non-market, arrangements. As a scientist working as a lecturer in a university, I guess I get roughly half of my salary, effectively, for doing research, with by far the biggest part of that coming effectively from the taxpayer. So I'm bound to view this slightly differently from you :-). But I do often wonder if I provide value for money. I also find your implied point, that there should be no lobbying for science funding, and perhaps that funding for science should be market-based only, intriguing. Not necessarily wrong: it is a nice counterpoint to the views expressed in the Times Higher article from CASE and the universities.
But I wonder if you'd like one day to make a post outlining what you think should happen? The way I see it, there is value in the government investing in science for two reasons. One, because a bit like with Arts or elite sports funding, it is perceived to be good for the country in prestige and other terms to have a strong science research base. Each British Nobel prize, if you like, is celebrated in some small way like each British football world cup victory (oh, wait a minute). The second reason is a bit like funding to support small business: basic science funding has a track record of providing good returns in financial terms, but usually on such long timescales, and with such hit-and-miss success rates for individual projects, that private investors are not all that attracted. So here's my analogy: arts institutions do a hell of a lot of lobbying (think of the Royal Opera House or museums), and so does the business sector. That's a bit perverse also, isn't it?
J said: "I also find your implied point, that there should be no lobbying for science funding, and perhaps that funding for science should be market-based only, intriguing."
I took the implication to be taxpayer funded lobbying for more taxpayer funding was a bit of a rum do, no more. It doesn't look clever in good times and it looks very silly in 'austerity' Britain.
J said: "basic science funding has a track record of providing good returns in financial terms, but usually on such long timescales, and with such hit-and-miss success rates for individual projects, that private investors are not all that attracted."
Taxpayer funding distorts the market for science projects and has filled it with topics and research that private money would not choose to support (or would not support for long) because there is little use in it and/or the scientists are not prepared to put their name to a discrete conclusion. The latter is far more damaging to the case for public funding of science than the former.
If there is track record of good returns taxpayer funding *would* be replaced by private investment if the taxpayer funding was removed. The market would slim down and fewer instances of poorly conceived research would be undertaken as those scientists who cannot produce a concrete result would not get repeat work. It would be taken by the market as a signal that you did not design your experiment well enough or were too far into the realms of speculation as you have been unable to support your hypothesis or disprove it.* Scientists who continue to take the piss then would find themselves unable to attract further funding.
While the taxpayer can seemingly forever be tapped up for a blank cheque private investment would be more hard headed and prepared to say no.
* It should be reaching a conclusion that is important rather than being correct. A result still informs the market and informs science even if it is that you were wrong. My impression of science is that too many scientists fear being wrong more than they fear doing bad science.
The population elects its leaders who then listen to the lobbyists and ignore the population.
And lobbyists feed off grants.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/may/26/bravo-for-the-nimbys-wind-power
May 27, 2011 at 6:38 AM | lapogus
leads to this comment
The British Wind Energy Association (now euphemised as RenewableUK) has 550 corporate members who shared £1bn in subsidy last year. The press treats it as a research source, when it is a lobbyist.
Gareth, I take many of your points and those that the Bishop has made (implicitly in this post, more explicitly elsewhere).
But let me take you up on one thing: you write "If there is track record of good returns taxpayer funding *would* be replaced by private investment if the taxpayer funding was removed." Are you sure? Many research projects don't lead to useful outputs, that's the nature of research. You may be right that in some cases "you did not design your experiment well enough or were too far into the realms of speculation as you have been unable to support your hypothesis or disprove it", but the nature of research is that you don't know what you're going to find until you've found it (or not). So I chose my words carefully when I claimed that "basic science funding has a track record of providing good returns in financial terms, but usually on [...] long timescales, and with [...] hit-and-miss success rates for individual projects". If 100 research projects each cost the taxpayer £100,000, and 90% of them yield nothing of financial value, but nine of them yield £1,000,000 in taxes, and one of them yields £20,000,000 in taxes, then the taxpayer has a net gain of £10,900,000. People might then want to say that you should not have funded the 90 'bad' ones. But that's not how science works: most often, you don't know which are the 90, which are the 9, and which is the one. Or, worse, when you try to make that guess, you do it wrong. And also, maybe the yield of £20,000,000 only kicks in 20 years after the research was funded (let's assume I have included inflation adjusting in my notional figures). If a particular private funder only has money to spend on 10 projects, are you sure they'd be happy to do it on this basis?
J,
I would argue that government funding blocks private investment. After all, if the government is providing N billions per year, it would be impolite for a project with good commercial prospects to seek commercial funding.
It's a bit like the relative absence of good independent left-wing blogs: the BBC occupies that space.
In the American model, tax rates are lower, and the difference between UK and US rates tend to be donated to charities. Some of these charites are fake: they provide sinecures to the kids and avoid inheritence tax, but a bunch of this money is donated to Universities, which can then fund their own projects, providing the equivalent of "base-load" funding.
I suspect that 'Alice in Wonderland' could only have been written by an English university Don. I know the Rev Dodson was writing a subtle commentary on mathematics, but my personal experience of financial mangement in schools has a strong similarity to 'Alice'.
A number of years ago I was appointed as a Head of Department in a large provincial college teaching a year 7 to 13 programme; the college had enjoyed so many permutations and identities over the years that no-one on the staff seemed quite sure what the school actually was.
When I took up my appointment I discovered the previous incumbent had spent my department's entire budget allocation a year ahead of time. Then I discovered, as the school year progressed, that funds would not be allocated to departments on a per student basis, but that Heads of Departments would have to 'bid' for funding, which seemed to ensure that 'mateship' with the Head Teacher was a prerequisite for obtaining funding. Because of being initially locked out of the information loop on the basis that 'I should have known', I resorted to funding my department from my own pocket, which I knew was unsustainable but seemed the only short-term solution available that would not disadvantage my students. All of the management and financial practices in the school seemed to be 'made up as we went along', rather different from my long experience in New Zealand schools where the NZ Min of Ed issues tight and easily-followed management manuals, subject to upgrades and ammendment from time to time and issued to all schools.
I have worked in four similar schools in the UK and the management of each school swears that they are doing exactly as the regulatory authorities insist upon, but each school employs wildly differing management practices, which suggests to me that no-one in posititions of ultimate authority actually has any idea of how individual schools are or should be managed.
In a system where the various regulatory authorities and the universites and school seem to flounder about in a sea of confusion, I am unsurprised that an enterprising and well-connected group have spotted a rort - charging a 'subscription' to lobby the government to allocate funds to government entities, when funds should be allocated sensibly and rationally as a matter of course.
Dead Dog, that is a plausible argument, and fits in with our government's picture of the Big Society. As well as competing to run schools and libraries, people could club together to fund scientific research. Or venture capitalists could do it. Or people could fund it via charities as you suggest. Some of that happens: we have research-funding charities here in the UK, and it also happens in the US through universities and their endowments. But there's a lot of government-funded research in the US (more than here), and a lot of ugly lobbying, including for public research money, in the US - and that has been true for years. Every call on taxpayer's money has to make its case and that's what leads to the existence of lobbyists.
There's a chicken-and-egg problem also: if you did cut government funding for research very drastically, it might take years for a culture of funding research by the private sector, and in the meantime you might kill off research in the UK. Some people here might think it would be a good thing if you could cut off things like CRU... but we're talking more generally on this thread.
"The taxpayer has money extracted with menaces by the government. The government gives some of this to the universities and who pass some on to CASE. CASE then use their cut to lobby the government for more public funds to be given to them."
This is just a special case of a ubiquitous phenomenon. In the case of the EU, many -- perhaps most -- relevant lobby groups are funded by the EU in order to allow them to lobby the EU (see a zillion posts by Richard North at EUreferendum on this). Amazingly, these bought and paid-for lobbyists then lobby for things the EU bureaucrats want to do anyway. Cue Captain Renault ..
What's amusing about this particular case is that Imperial is opting for free rider status. Whatever HMG does, Imperial will continue to get generously funded. So why should they waste even a few thousand on CaSE. For UEA, by contrast, the money is doubtless well spent.
@Gareth et al
Without government funding, big science experiments like the LHC would never get funding.
Only countries working together can pay for science at this scale.
And it will pay for itself someday in all of the spin-offs.
Other such projects include the CLOUD experiment. What private company would pay for that ?
Sure, on more engineering-like research where there is a monetizable product in sight I would agree that the private sector should lead the funding.