Volume 1

Setting priorities for publicly funded research : 3rd report of session 2009-10. / Science and Technology Committee.

  • Great Britain. Parliament. House of Lords. Science and Technology Committee.
Date:
2010
Catalogue details

Licence: Open Government Licence

Credit: Setting priorities for publicly funded research : 3rd report of session 2009-10. / Science and Technology Committee. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    (QQ 362, 375, 394, 456, 460, 472). The CST report A Vision for UK Research, published in March 2010, stated that the Government need to develop consistent, focused long-term industrial strategies, backing novel key technologies with global market potential to provide a framework for research investment by the private sector, research councils and the TSB.”’ A number of witnesses made suggestions to help achieve this, including expanding the role and increasing the resources of the TSB, and developing a system of large research centres (pp 194, 200, 441, QQ 362, 407, 460, 471). We await with interest the publication of Herman Hauser’s review of how the UK might maximise its research potential, and the Government’s response to both that review and the CST’s recent report. Increasing concentration of research resources We recognise that for some research activity, such as that based on large experimental facilities, or for more applied research projects responding to major policy challenges, concentrating relevant skills and financial resources in particular locations may be necessary in order to achieve the necessary scale of effort and facilitate knowledge transfer. However, the implications of concentrating research resources within particular institutions are poorly understood, and it was suggested to us that the evidence base to support further concentration remains weak (Q 448). Again, we await with interest the publication of Herman Hauser’s review, which we anticipate will cover the role of concentration of research resources in realising the full potential of UK research. Impact In recent years “impact” has been increasingly used as a criterion both retrospectively, in research council delivery plans and evaluations, and prospectively, in individual grant applications to research councils. It is a concept that encompasses more than economic impact. Professor Alan Thorpe, Chair of the Research Councils UK Executive Group and Chief Executive of the Natural Environment Research Council, for example, said that “we do not regard impact as narrowly as ... economic benefit ... it is a very broad concept” (Q 271). Professor Dame Janet Finch, co-Chair of the Council for Science and Technology, observed that “any assessment of impact needs to take into account that breadth” (Q 477). Measuring “impact” presents difficulties. Professor Leszek Borysiewicz, Chief Executive of the Medical Research Council (MRC), for example, admitted that the MRC was “struggling” to measure societal impact (Q 272). Professor Sir Martin Taylor, Chair of the Royal Society’s Fruits of Curiosity project, said that scientists were often very poor judges of the likely impact of their research (Q 478). Witnesses also expressed anxiety about the timescale involved in measuring research impact (pp 345, 360, 497, 506, Q 478). As Professor Beddington, said, “almost by definition, the impact of research comes after some variable time-lag, depending on the research ... whether one could have actually had that degree of foresight to say that some particular development would actually prove to be enormously important some decades later ... is difficult” (Q 509).