It seems a bit graceless to complain about government funding of science, because since 1997 Labour has been generous to scientists, including astronomers like myself, whose research has no obvious economic benefit. This government seems to realise the importance of scientific research, but a few of its recent decisions suggest it is still uneasy about supporting "blue-skies" research.
A single line in Gordon Brown's 2006 budget threw British astronomers into a collective tizzy. Brown announced
the government's intention to merge the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC), responsible for funding research in astronomy and particle physics, with the Council for the Central Laboratories of the Research Councils (CCLRC), which ran an assortment of government research laboratories, into a new combined grants council, the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC). Astronomers liked the PPARC. When first set up, it was the only grants council without any obligation to pursue research that directly benefited Britain plc, and to astronomers it generally seemed efficient and responsive to the changing fashions of research. Under the aegis of PPARC, British astronomers had done well; by any quantitative measure of research quality, British astronomers are second only to those in the US. The much larger CCLRC, on the other hand, had the reputation for being big, bloated and bureaucratic. The new body, the STFC, has a much stronger obligation to consider the interests of British business.
The optimistic attitude to this change is that by creating a much larger organisation, the government wanted to give British scientists the opportunity to do even better on the world stage. The pessimistic view is that the key to this reorganisation is the third word in the title of the new council, "technology," and that the government thinks the only real point of research in astronomy and particle physics is the technology on which it is based. At the moment, the pessimists are in the ascendant, because the new council is already in a financial mess. By the time this article goes to press, Britain may well have closed or withdrawn from several important facilities, including the Gemini observatory, which contains two of the largest telescopes in the world, in Hawaii and Chile.
But why should British taxpayers pay for astronomers to do research? The annual budget for astronomy research is £160m, which includes our subscription to the European Space Agency, and is roughly equivalent to one McDonald's Happy Meal for every person in the country. Yet one problem with justifying spending even this amount is that most of the arguments for government funding of science do not stand up to close inspection.
Since the fall of the Berlin wall, the main arguments for funding research have been based on the economic benefit to Britain. Even fundamental blue-skies research, it is argued, may have no obvious commercial value at the moment, but may be a money-spinner in future. The flaw in this argument—and this applies to almost all taxpayer-funded science—is that most research is published in open-access journals, and so any discovery by a British scientist is unlikely to give Britain any special advantage. For example, the invention of the worldwide web by Tim Berners-Lee, a British particle physicist, has been worth many zillions to the global economy, but it is hard to see how it has benefited Britain in particular.
The second common economic argument is that scientific research produces trained personnel who may eventually contribute to the national economy. Many PhD students in astronomy, for example, end up working in the city where their modelling skills are highly valued. This argument does have some worth, as I will show below, but not in these narrow economic terms—it would surely be cheaper to spend the money directly on luring foreign scientists to work in the City.
Economic arguments for astronomy are not, ultimately, very appealing. The true reason for a programme of fundamental research into the nature of the universe is that this is a great human adventure and it would be a spiritually impoverished country that did not want to be part of it—just as it would be a philistine country that did not provide some public money for the arts.
But if you do want a broad economic argument for paying for some telescopes, here is one. It is true that creative people are the most important capital of a country like Britain that no longer has much manufacturing industry. A goal of government, therefore, should be to provide the milieu in which these people can flourish, one that attracts the best talents to Britain and inspires our children to emulate them. To achieve this, it is not necessary for the government to be too generous in funding the arts, because artists are usually stuck in the culture on which their art is based. Scientists, though, are highly mobile and not particularly patriotic. The best magnet for scientists is money for pure research, and the increase in money for this since 1997 has attracted many excellent foreign scientists—seven in my department alone—and stopped many British scientists, including myself, from leaving. It is true that we do not produce anything directly for the economy, but in my experience the best researchers really do make the best teachers, and we teach thousands of undergraduates a year, who may end up designing computer games, inventing models of financial markets, designing nuclear reactors or even becoming teachers themselves.
A healthy level for the science budget, according to my logic, is one in which the number of foreign scientists working in British universities is increasing, which is something that would be easy to monitor. Carving up the budget would be even simpler, because it should be based entirely on what is the most exciting science. Of course, the last people one should ask about what is the most exciting science are scientists, because we are all after your money. Politicians are probably not the best people to ask either. Given the importance of science as a bridge to the future, perhaps the representatives of the grants councils should present their cases to a panel of clever 16 year olds.
