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 By the time this article goes to press, Britain may well have closed or withdrawn from several important facilities, including the Gemini observatory, which contains two of the largest telescopes in the world, in Hawaii and Chile.
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