Updated daily at www.ResearchResearch.com Founded by William Cullerne Bown 28 May 2014 Last orders at the Royal Institution’s bar – p4 Practical policy UCL department on providing friendly competition – p5 Longitude Room for social science? – p23 TSB does get research, insists chief But agency still has some way to go on creative industries ELATIONS BETWEEN the research councils and the R by Adam Smith [email protected] Technology Strategy Board may have been “slightly bizarre” in the past but are now very strong, the TSB’s for 2011-15 has no financial target but does mention a chief executive has said. desire for greater engagement with TSB programmes. In an interview with Research Fortnight, Iain Gray, The TSB’s delivery plan for the financial year 2014-15 whose 7-year term ends on 31 October, said there had is yet to be published. been a “definite change in the relationship”, with far The TSB is understood to be talking to the AHRC more cooperation now than in the TSB’s first few years. about becoming involved in the next round of the Senior research council figures agree. Chris AHRC’s Knowledge Exchange Hubs for the Creative Watkins, director of translational research and indus- Economy. These hubs, in Bristol, Dundee, Lancaster try at the Medical Research Council, says the TSB took and London, are funded with £16m from the AHRC some time to work out what it needed to do with the until 2015-16. They are seen as an obvious chance for research councils, but that the parties now “have a closer collaboration between the council and the TSB. much greater degree of discussion”. “The hubs would have had more money and sup- Celia Caulcott, executive director for innova- port from businesses had the TSB been involved,” says tion and skills at the Biotechnology and Biological Frank Boyd, director of the TSB’s Knowledge Transfer Sciences Research Council, agrees. She says the coun- Network for creative industries. He is working with the cil had to convince the TSB to work with bioscientists. TSB, research councils and the innovation agency Nesta “We were concerned that if we could not get the TSB to on an innovation roadmap for the creative industries. get to grips with biology then we might not have ful- The idea of the TSB being involved in the hubs filled our obligations,” she says, adding that TSB staff is similar to how the Catapult centres work, a model had to be shown the potential applications of biology. under review by technology entrepreneur Hermann “If you are an automotive engineer, you don’t neces- Hauser. Gray expects Hauser’s review, which is due this sarily see biology as a technology.” autumn, to support the public-private collaboration Caulcott joined the BBSRC just one year after the that underpins the catapults. Hauser is also said to be TSB was set up in 2007. She says the research councils considering expanding the types of body that work “were expected to commit a certain amount of their with the catapults to include, for example, research budget to working with the TSB”. The BBSRC com- and technology organisations. “That makes a lot of mitted to spending at least £50 million of its 2011-15 sense,” says David Bembo, who chairs the Association budget on this, and the MRC’s delivery plan for 2011- for University Research and Industry Links. 15 earmarks £133m for it. But Bembo suggests there is still work to be done “We’re not driven by artificial financial targets to convince some universities of the value of being now,” Gray says. “About 5 or 6 years ago, it was a involved. “There are some institutions that don’t think slightly bizarre relationship driven by targets.” they’re in the frame,” he says, adding that the TSB’s Gray says he would like the creative industries, and programmes are not always easily especially their senior business figures, to get more accessible to academics. “That’s a Every new opportunity involved with the TSB. And some people, including lesson the TSB could learn from the for research funding David Willetts, minister for universities and science, research councils.” from every sponsor in want the agency to work more closely with the Arts Caulcott, however, disagrees: the UK, EU, US & beyond and Humanities Research Council. “That view treats the TSB as a Every discipline The AHRC had a target of spending £3m on working research council, but it’s not a Every fortnight with the TSB in 2008-11. The council’s delivery plan research council.” Issue No. 435 2 editorial Research Fortnight, 28 May 2014 Edited by Ehsan Masood [email protected] Tel: 020 7216 6500 Fax: 020 7216 6501 Unit 111, 134-146 Curtain Road, London EC2A 3AR elsewhere “We’re quite astonished that The Times Staying put has taken the decision to put such a non-story on its front page.” Nicola Gulley, editorial director at the Institute of Physics, insists a climate change GO Science is better off outside the Cabinet Office paper was rejected from the IoP journal Environmental Research Letters because it failed to pass peer review, not because of MPs on the House of Commons Science and Technology Select Committee political concerns. Nature, 16/5/14. have long wanted the Government Office for Science to be transferred “Everything that I believe about out of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and into the democracy tells me that you cannot and Cabinet Office in the heart of the Whitehall machine. The committee’s should not have an entirely unelected part of a legislative process. On the other hand, report on its inquiry into government horizon scanning, published earlier it works. And it works extremely well.” this month, gave added urgency to this ambition. The departing chairman of the Environment The MPs fear that GO Science has become isolated in its two decades at Agency, Chris Smith, finds himself warming to the House of Lords. Politics Home, 15/5/14. BIS. Chief scientific adviser Mark Walport and his team do excellent work, they say, but then comes the sting: quoting cabinet secretary Jeremy “There has been a growing sense of Heywood, they claim the office’s “impeccable” work has “not always frustration and anger among black British academics over how our commu- translated into actual policy changes”. nities have been treated by the British As Whitehall speak goes, that is some indictment. To paraphrase the fic- university system.” tional Sir Humphrey Appleby: “These science chaps might be top-drawer, William Ackah, a lecturer in community and voluntary-sector studies at Birkbeck, but unless we can see them they haven’t a hope in hell of being heard.” University of London, calls for black studies So, should GO Science move down the road to become more visible? to be an option in UK higher education. The Certainly, the Cabinet Office is the place for cross-government Guardian, 14/5/14. policy. Its joint heads, Francis Maude and Oliver Letwin, are powerful “This is going to make an ‘us and them’ Conservative modernisers who have the prime minister’s ear. situation: the medical researchers will be One motivation for moving GO Science to BIS was to keep Whitehall laughing and the enabling scientists in maths, chemistry, physics and so forth science advice and the running of the research councils under one roof. will be suffering.” That carries less weight today, as the network of chief scientists and the Biologist Gustav Nossal thinks the research councils’ remit have both expanded beyond their 1994 borders. Australian government is dividing sci- ence by promising $20 billion for medical Walport himself has said that science funding is not his business. research while cutting funding in other But for the marriage to work, the Cabinet Office has to want GO Science areas. The Australian, 15/5/14. too—and there is little sign of mutual attraction (see Analysis, page 6). “We want to avoid a situation where we When Heywood created a cross-government facility for horizon scan- have two communities that don’t speak to ning last July, he chose the Cabinet Office even though the Foresight each other. We don’t want a ‘Google bus’ office at GO Science is a world leader in analysing the future. Going back type of scenario.” Jess Tyrrell, communications consultant for further, the Behavioural Insights Team, which pioneered the idea of the Centre for London think tank, explains testing policies before rolling them out, was also created in the Cabinet the idea behind a planned website that Office. This is not a party-political issue, as the original nudge unit was will help young people living in the Tech City area to benefit from education and job the last Labour government’s idea. opportunities. Wired, 14/5/14. Clearly, successive governments have opted to run fresh, more innova- tive policy-making initiatives away from BIS. That might seem like an argument for getting Walport’s team out of there, but grafting it onto the decade Cabinet Office is unlikely to make it more influential. Indeed, geographic location is rarely the main determinant in the pursuit of influence. There “It is simply fantasy that are other factors that Whitehall’s power brokers believe GO Science lacks. UK ministers are going to Jon Day, chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, summed up one control appointments to such factor in his evidence to the Commons inquiry. Horizon scanning, he said, needed “a senior champion” with cross-departmental influence. research ethics committees.” On balance, GO Science is better off where it is.