Comments on: Wakeham Up

By: andyxl

andyxl — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 21:04:17 +0000

MM and K17 : you might detect me bending over backwards to be as fair as possible to STFC. (Bending over forwards would be different.) As a panel member, I have limited direct power. However, the panel chairmen, while they don’t speak to God, do speak to Moses, and I can tell you that there is a persistent campaign to increase the available information; and I can also tell you that the resistance to such full disclosure does not appear to come from the office.

By: KOMbat17

KOMbat17 — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 19:56:15 +0000

You said it, Professor Merrifield. Hardly rocket science. You’d have thought your argument might have dawned on our esteemed host – a panel member, no less – but perhaps he would argue that the ad hoc panels have been given no Terms of Reference (surely a first, even for STFC) and thus he couldn’t be expected to differentiate ar*es and elbows.

By: Michael Merrifield

Michael Merrifield — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 18:18:45 +0000

I don’t think anyone is asking that the contributions of individual members of Science Board and PPAN should be published in an attributed fashion, Andy. However, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to ask for the final average scores that each facility received, and the strategic evidence used to justify adjusting those scores.

Apart from anything else, in amongst the conflicting information that the ad hoc panels received from STFC, they were told that they should not go over the same ground as the original programmatic review, but should concentrate on any aspects that the review had failed to consider. Surely you will agree that this is a rather tricky task if the panels are not given the information that went into the original decisions.

By: andyxl

andyxl — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 16:12:12 +0000

To KOMbat17 : I think you are being a little unfair to members of PPAN and Science Board. I agree that the STFC process should have been more open; but people serving on committees will have done so on a particular understanding of the rules of the game. You can’t tell people everything is confidential and then later on say “actually we are going to make everything you said public now”.

By: Phil Uttley

Phil Uttley — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 12:25:20 +0000

Here at Southampton, we have the pleasure of having Bill Wakeham as our very-own VC. A few weeks ago he came to our departmental away-day to give us an overview of the review, its remit, what he wanted to find out and what his own ‘hypothesis’ was. He stressed that he wanted to go and get as much data and submissions from various bodies as possible and test various ‘hypotheses’ that people had suggested (presumably his, the other panellists, and maybe anything they gleaned from the questionnaires to departments). So he was especially keen to point out that the review was trying to be open minded and would do things in a rigorous way.

Anyways, he told us that his own ‘hypothesis’ was that the *funding* balance in many departments was too heavily skewed towards one or two sources, particularly STFC, so that some departments are hugely vulnerable to a crisis like this. He thinks that part of the problem is that many areas of applied physics start out as blue-skies physics and then spin off and eventually become engineering, and so by definition physics departments in the current system will always be tilted to just a few blue-skies areas because their successful applied research will eventually leave the departments. The examples of that in Southampton are our Electronics department (one of the top 5 in the world, so I’m told), Optoelectronics, Sound & Vibration Research and surely at some point in the future Nanotech will go the same way. So he thinks that there are lots of different bits of physics done on university campuses, not just in physics departments, and he is wondering if there is a way to bring them together to help stabilise the (as he sees it) blue-skies-heavy physics departments.

So he didn’t necessarily say that there are too many Astronomers and Particle Physicists, just that the funding balance is unhealthily dependent on just a few sources of funding, and that this partly stems from our very success at producing applications for our applied physics research.

How to remedy this is another matter…. and also how could this sound to government, would it be read simply as ‘physics departments are unbalanced’ or as ‘physics departments are a victim of their own success in applied research and should be given more support’?

By: Russell Smith

Russell Smith — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 19:26:04 +0000

Wake up, I meant to write.

By: Russell Smith

Russell Smith — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 19:25:32 +0000

Maybe we’ll all up a little when the select committee report comes out next week.

By: Michael Merrifield

Michael Merrifield — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 18:38:01 +0000

What would you like SCAP to do? We could demand more accountability yet again, but it is a little hard to motivate people when, no matter how loud the howls of protest, STFC just keeps rolling its merry way. And, as you say, nothing much is happening at the moment for us to object to: the ad hoc panels have yet to make their reports to STFC, and STFC have yet to ignore them. When they do, we will have something substantive to get our teeth into, but until then there is really little to be gained by going around and around on the same issues.

By: Harald

Harald — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 18:32:03 +0000

What if it is option C: The government has nurtured us after the war as strategic reserve and now expects us to jump into the breaches that are opening up? Or at least give up some of the money to let others do the jumping, er, flying … to mars. The consistent message that STFC is handing down seems to be this: We haven’t brought our message across and are not high on the priority list. I think we better start looking for arguments. What’s wrong with “bums on seats”? The government wants to push science and engineering. Mark Lancaster has shown at the IOP that it’s in large parts PP and astronomy that’s attracting students into physics departments. Can we make clear that they’re destroying their own base by cutting these areas?

By: KOMbat17

KOMbat17 — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 18:11:27 +0000

B is already happening. Following NAM, when the head honchos at STFC appeared tp promise more openess and accountability if we would just quieten down and accept our fate, everyone has gone to sleep. It surely can’t have escaped people’s attention that the long-promised openess and accountability has failed to materialise. Where are the grades, the weights, the reasons why LT beats UKIRT? Indeed, instead of a thorough, open and scientific assessment, it appears that the ad hoc panel Chairs are having to be given an oral account of the decisions… nothing written down; no-one accountable. Are the leaders of our astronomy community really such a waste of space that they’ll take this lying down? What exactly is SCAP doing? Anything?? Is there a more senior group and, if so, what are they doing? Watching their own backs by the look of it.