The discoveries that have had the biggest impact on industry were all products of basic research. Photograph: G.K. & Vikki Hart/Getty Images
As Margaret Thatcher famously once said: "Although basic research can have colossal economic rewards, they are largely unpredictable. And therefore the rewards cannot be judged by immediate results. Nevertheless, the value of Faraday's works today must be higher than the capitalisation of all the shares on the Stock Exchange."
In his first speech as minister for universities and science, David Willetts seemed to agree: "I'm all in favour of curiosity-driven research whose applications may take time to emerge, if at all … Too often, politicians have taken the economic value which flows from much academic research and then treated it as the only possible motive for the research. I am not going to make that mistake … I have doubts about the impact agenda."
Most practising scientists hold these truths to be self-evident. The discoveries and innovations that have had the biggest impact on industry – quantum mechanics, the structure of DNA, or the world wide web, for example – were all products of basic research. Nanotechnology, one of the government's favourite activities, was the brainchild of theoretical particle physicist Richard Feynman.
Most of these commercial applications were completely unpredictable. Serendipity is the norm not the exception in great discovery and sacrificing basic science on the altar of commerce is killing the goose that lays the golden egg.
So we are all agreed, then? Er, actually, no. Britain's Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) has rejected academic excellence as the sole criterion in science funding and adopted just this kind of "impact" agenda, requiring grant proposals "to clearly identify the national importance of the proposed research project over a 10- to 50-year timeframe".
"Our 2010 Strategic Plan, endorsed by leading members of our research and business communities, is driving and accelerating our change agenda as we take a more proactive role in shaping research and training to meet national need.''
According to its chairman, Sir John Armitt, the purpose of the EPSRC is " … to make sure that we are supporting those things that industry says it needs but which industry itself is not willing to fund".
Leaving aside his apparent disagreement with David Willetts on the nature of scientific enquiry, does Sir John believe that Tim Berners-Lee invented the world wide web because industry told him they needed it (but didn't want to pay)? Surely, the mark of a truly groundbreaking discovery is that no one knew beforehand how useful it would be?
This EPSRC policy, called Shaping Capability, stands in sharp contrast to that of the European Research Council, whose president Helga Nowotny said in a recent speech:
"One answer is to target resources … to look to strategic sectors, to put science to work on the most pressing problems. It all looks so easy, so obvious," she said. "But frontier science does not work like this. We cannot programme scientific breakthroughs or order them from a menu … We can't foresee the consequences of what we discover."
Since the historical evidence suggests that the UK economy and society in general would benefit most by investing in the brightest scientific minds and letting their imaginations wander, and since the S in their name stands for science, I asked the EPSRC whether its claim to the contrary was part of evidence-based policy or policy-based evidence. They replied:
"The evidence for the appropriateness of the strategy comes from the collective input, discussion and decisions of EPSRC council and the council's advisory bodies. The individuals on these bodies all have significant experience and have been appointed for their ability to take make strategic judgements.''
One of these EPSRC council members and "Impact Champion" is TV personality Lord Robert Winston, professor of science and society at my own university, Imperial College London. He recently wrote an article in the Observer on the marvels of Einstein's general theory of relativity. After all, this is not merely one of the greatest intellectual achievements of the 20th century, it is used daily in GPS technology.
What a pity then that bureaucrats at EPSRC headquarters in Swindon are rejecting, without peer review, grant proposals in this area of theoretical physics because it is not in the national interest. Last year, in fact, they disregarded the panel recommendations of their ownInternational Review on Mathematical Sciences and eliminated mathematical physics completely from their portfolio without any consultation with the community.
After much protest, it was restored on the EPSRC webpage but without its previous definition as "theoretical physics with a significant mathematical content". When I asked about this change of policy, I was told there had been no change of policy: mathematical sciences never did fund theoretical physics! As in the former Soviet Union, the past in Swindon is very unpredictable.
The "shaping capability" policy of having non-scientists trying to pick winners and constraining researchers with the straitjacket of "impact" and "national interests" is neither good science nor good economics. New Scientist recently ran a cover story on the practical impact of theoretical physics called "Seven equations that rule your world''. By my reckoning, under its current policies, the non-scientists at the EPSRC would have prevented six of them from ever reaching peer review.
This just in (28 March): EPSRC has announced it is maintaining funding for 10 out the 11 subthemes in the mathematical sciences and reducing it for the other one. Of these 11, only one, mathematical physics, was rated "excellent" for international profile/standing by EPSRC in 2009. This is the one they cut.
Professor Michael Duff is a theoretical physicist at Imperial College London
The Honourable Schoolboy
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