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Particles and interactions

Particles and interactions

The £80m black hole

03 Jan 2008

UK physics could be irreparably damaged by an £80m funding shortfall

“Total disaster”; “crazy”; “catastrophic”; “scientific vandalism”; “savage”; and “bombshell”. These were some of the words used by physicists and astronomers last month to describe the potential impact of an £80m funding shortfall in the budget of the UK’s Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC). Rumours of a deficit had been circulating for several months, and researchers’ worst fears were confirmed when the government announced how much it will spend on science over the next three years (see p7, print edition only).

On the face of it, the science budget is not at all disappointing — it will rise by an average of just under 6% a year from £3.38bn in 2007/08 to £3.97bn in 2010/11. But the lion’s share of the increases will go to the Medical Research Council, while the STFC will have to make do with an average rise of just 4.5% a year during that period. That is an above-inflation increase, but the STFC not only has to allocate research grants in particle physics and astronomy, but also has to pay for subscriptions to international labs like CERN as well as build and maintain large facilities.

Given the damaging shortfall, the STFC has decided to give priority to exploiting new facilities, while — seemingly with little consultation — choosing to pull the country out of cutting-edge projects like the International Linear Collider (ILC) and the Gemini telescopes, and axing support for certain fields like high-energy gamma-ray astronomy. It is also being forced to slash research grants in particle physics and astronomy by up to 25%, which will hit university departments that carry out significant research in those areas. Job losses are almost certain.

Quite why a shortfall has arisen is unclear. The STFC told Physics World that its programmes have been cut partly to pay for the operating costs of the new Diamond synchrotron near Oxford. Indeed, the House of Commons publicaccounts select committee recently reported that Diamond’s running costs are expected to overrun by 89%. However, Diamond bosses dispute this figure, saying its costs “have been known for a long time and have not changed”.

It sounds like a mess that the STFC should — and could — have avoided when negotiating its budget with the government and civil servants. The president of the Royal Society has referred diplomatically to “sub-optimal planning”; the rest of us would call it a cock-up. Physicists are particularly perplexed because the UK government has given generous increases to science over the last 10 years — and now, for the want of just £80m, the STFC is forcing researchers to pull out of key projects.

Scientists are also angry because former science minister Malcolm Wicks assured them that they would not be affected when the STFC was created last year from a merger between the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council and the Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils. The withdrawal from the ILC is particularly embarrassing internationally: in November the research councils had only just identified the ILC as “the highest priority for a major new accelerator”, while several high-profile researchers had also been attracted to the UK to help plan it. The cuts also send out the wrong signals to young people who are considering studying physics at university.

Ministers have promised a review of physics funding. Unfortunately, it is expected to take six to nine months, while the STFC wants to make savings now. Unless the cuts are reversed immediately, UK physics could be irreparably damaged.

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