Critics sceptical that EPSRC will act on review findings

Funereal atmosphere: discontent with council strategy fed into last year’s proclamation of ‘the death of British science’

Critics of recent policy shifts at the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council remain sceptical about whether recommendations in a high-profile review will lead to significant changes.

The review into how the EPSRC obtains and uses advice in its decision-making, led by the former president of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Suzanne Fortier, has called for the structure to become more “transparent and inclusive”.

Published on 12 July, it recommends that in making major strategic decisions, the council’s consultation and communication plans should be “inclusive, involving two-way engagement both before and after decision making with the broader communities of researchers and institutions – universities, learned societies [and] industry”.

It adds that members of the council’s strategic advisory teams and networks should be appointed in a transparent way, with minutes of both groups published online and members able to see how their advice has been presented to council.

The report is one of two initiated by EPSRC chairman Paul Golby in the wake of stern criticism of the council’s “shaping capabilities” programme, which sought to align the council’s funding portfolio according to “national importance” and led the council to cut project studentships on research grants.

Anthony Barrett, Glaxo professor of organic chemistry at Imperial College London, said the report laid out in more political language what many critics had claimed – that there had not been sufficient consultation with the community over changes.

Professor Barrett, who organised the Science for the Future campaign that famously paraded a coffin and hearse to Downing Street proclaiming “the death of British science”, said he felt that Dr Golby’s appointment in April last year had been a “step in the right direction”.

However the group would await the response of the council and “take prompt action” if the recommendations were watered down, he said.

Michael Duff, Abdus Salam chair of theoretical physics at Imperial College London, said a real test would be whether decisions already made would be reversed.

“The committee found flaws in the way decisions were taken, which inevitably means poor decisions were taken. The test of Golby’s sincerity will be whether he reverses the bad decisions,” he said.

The EPSRC said that it welcomed the review’s recommendations and would publish a detailed response in the autumn.

Dr Golby said that the council valued the “additional insight” that the review brought and that he was confident that “building on the recommendations we can further improve our engagement with the community as we strive to keep the UK at the heart of global research and innovation”.

Sir Harry Kroto, Nobel laureate and Francis Eppes professor of chemistry at Florida State University, told Times Higher Education that he did not believe the review would change anything.

“The people involved [at the council] are far out from the sort of attitudes that were there in the 1960s, when I was able to carry out research almost completely freely,” he said.

He added that the research that led to his Nobel Prize in Chemistry would at the time have been “of no strategic significance at all”.

elizabeth.gibney@tsleducation.com