SUPPORTING SCIENCE?

12/19/2007 8:29:00 AM

The Times; 19 December

The Government’s new Science and Technology Facilities Council can do more harm than goodSir, There has been much noise recently from astronomers and particle physicists on the bungled formation of the Government’s new Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), whose first “delivery plan” was announced last week. We would like to share with your readers the impact on the award-winning work in solar-terrestrial physics at the University of Leicester, a perhaps less glamorous but societally significant research discipline concerned with the impact of solar storms on the Earth’s environment and on technologies such as military radars, communications and navigation systems and applications satellites. The strategy statement of the STFC is fourfold: first, to “provide access to world class facilities” — last week the STFC announced that it would cease all support for our world-class facilities; secondly, to “support a healthy and vibrant university community” — we are faced with swingeing cuts and the destruction of our technological base, wasting millions of public pounds previously invested; thirdly, to “engage with European and global partners” — the STFC also announced its premature withdrawal from the main international organisation in this discipline (the European Incoherent Scatter Scientific Association) one year into an agreed five-year programme, further wasting public resources; and fourthly, to “contribute to increased economic impact” — we will be unable to provide further advice to the MoD, sell no more environmental radars to the Japanese, nor work again with the oil industry to develop new exploration techniques. Well done, STFC; off to a cracking start.

Professor Stan Cowley

Professor Tudor Jones

Professor Mark Lester

Professor Terry Robinson

Professor Tim Yeoman

Department of Physics & Astronomy University of Leicester

FE/HE/ Skills