Comments on: “45% of grants were not of excellent standard”

By: Science is Vital (and “impact”) « Our Clouded Hills

Science is Vital (and “impact”) « Our Clouded Hills — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 19:57:27 +0000

[...] Recent comments by Vince Cable (Business Secretary) imply that cuts might be hard and based on a poor interpretation of the state of UK research, which is actually in pretty good health and very [...]

By: Science is Vital – a letter from my MP. « Anomalous Distraction

Science is Vital – a letter from my MP. « Anomalous Distraction — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 10:50:54 +0000

[...] depends upon what the government’s definition of “excellent” is – is it Vince Cable’s 54% for example? In which case – much of UK research is for the high jump. He does make the point [...]

By: Vince Cable’s wrong connection | Stephen Curry and Evan Harris – EdConnect

Fri, 10 Sep 2010 12:16:35 +0000

[...] measures the quality of the research done in UK universities, as pointed out by Peter Coles and David Briggs (both worth reading in [...]

By: xtaldave

xtaldave — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 08:00:50 +0000

Couldn’t agree more – smaller, new unis are going to be reliant on the cash they get from any 2* HEFCE handouts – they’ll perish if that money dries up.

By: Neuroskeptic

Neuroskeptic — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 09:52:08 +0000

There are a number of problems with this…

1. 4* research is disproportionately concentrated in the older “research universities”. If he’s proposing cutting everything else, he is proposing massive cuts to newer unis while leaving the older ones intact.

Now maybe that’s his intention, but if so, he should be clear about it.

2. No-one starts out doing 4* research, they start out doing small stuff and then get better. Saying you’re only going to fund the “best” grants means in effect that you’re only going to fund established labs who already have a good track record, rather than up-and-coming researchers.

By: xtaldave

xtaldave — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 09:05:38 +0000

Maybe a little strong – but it seems he (or someone who works for him) is finding/juggling figures to support a pre-conceived conclusion – it is no different from hacking up datasets to fiddle a smidge of statistical significance.

I suspect they are already well aware – I feel a letter to my MP coming on.

By: hapsci

hapsci — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 08:53:07 +0000

I think the comparison between him an homeopaths is a little strong. However, he is cherry picking in order to justify his budget cuts, which is a shame.

Good work on pointing this out! I must admit when I read his speech I did wonder about that point but I don’t know enough about the system to get my head around it. I would suggest you write this as a letter to the gov to make them aware of their oversight…

By: andyrussell

andyrussell — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 08:43:26 +0000

Sorry if I threw you off course! Didn’t think Vince would be so wrong – getting confused between papers and grants.

In reality, far less than 100% of “excellent” (a5 and a4) grant proposals get funded.

Hate to say it, but Vince Cable seems a bit out of his depth.

By: xtaldave

xtaldave — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 19:51:15 +0000

Little edit for those following this post – It turns out I was pretty much right – it was a play on the RAE 2008 – http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/news/100908

Woo yay!.

By: Kieron Flanagan » Blog Archive » Vince Cable on science cuts

Kieron Flanagan » Blog Archive » Vince Cable on science cuts — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 18:57:06 +0000

[...] 45% figure quoted by Cable on R4 this morning might have come from. @xtaldave has an interesting blog post about how the figure might come from (a misunderstanding of) the outcome (and workings) of the [...]