Science cuts 'hit UK reputation'

Finally it seems that someone has seen sense and spoken out about the outrageous depletion of funds to the UK astronomy and science community. This BBC news article says it all. A committee of MP's usually the ones undertaking the cuts, have announced that the UK has been left looking 'unreliable' and 'incompetent' within the scientific community after the cuts in spending and then the knee-jerk reaction of reapplying funding to several projects as I reported here and here previously on this blog.

The MPs on the Commons innovation, universities, science and skills committee have directly criticized the head of the STFC, Keith Mason, stating that "We are at a loss to understand how Professor Mason could think that secretive reviews would have anything other than a divisive effect on the community and undermine confidence in any of his future decisions." This was in reference to the peer review process in which each project requiring funding was reviewed to inform the decision to allocate funding. It has emerged that a number of reviews were instigated but the results never published to the wider scientific population.

The committee concluded that the process possesses "weaknesses" and that it was "inadequate" and that "We are at a loss to understand how Professor Mason could think that secretive reviews would have anything other than a divisive effect on the community and undermine confidence in any of his future decisions." These comments have been interpreted as a slight on professor Mason's ability leading to the MPs issuing a thinly veiled statement asking for professor Mason's resignation; "This raises serious questions about the role and performance of the chief executive, especially his ability to retain the confidence of the scientific community as well as to carry through the necessary changes". Professor Mason has replied stating that "A number of issues highlighted by the report have already been recognised by STFC, and I have taken decisive actions to address them over the past few months".

Time will tell whether the STFC will change its mind or funding policy but for now, even with all its bluster, the committee still stands behind the cut in funding with John Denham, the secretary of state at the Department for Innovation Universities and Skills commenting that  "There is a recognition that some things could have been done differently and that the programme could have been communicated differently to the scientific community. I think the issue now is actually moving on from that and the STFC showing over the next couple of months it has the ability to address the issues raised in the report".