Proposals for the 2001
Manifesto
The government must be congratulated on making made very significant progress in repairing the fabric of our science and technology infrastructure. Nevertheless, much remains to be done and in this paper we point out some of the areas which need to be addressed and which, in our opinion, would be worthy of specific pledges in the manifesto.
Proposal 1 Improve the status of university science teaching and facilitate the creation of Centres of Teaching Excellence in Science.
The university system is under severe strain as a result of the drive to increase efficiency following the government’s (very welcome) commitment to increase participation in higher and further education. One of the byproducts of this situation is to exacerbate the conflict between teaching and research. It goes without saying that the quality of UK research ultimately depends on the effectiveness of science teaching but in universities current science policies are directed at research rather than teaching. This is creating a situation where teaching is to be avoided if at all possible - especially by young scientists who are under pressure to devote their time and energies to research in order to ensure that their careers progress. If any teaching has to be done it is thus regarded as a low priority at best. In addition a large amount of life science is now funded by the Wellcome Trust and cancer charities. This is excellent for research, but these organisations fund research-only posts, with the result that young scientists are attracted to such jobs and away from conventional university lecturing positions. The result is that students will never see many of the best researchers, and those they do see are often wishing they were somewhere else. To address this the following could be considered:
a) A career structure within universities for trained specialist teachers with advancement based on teaching excellence rather than research. Such teachers could reduce the teaching load on researchers, especially for the early years of courses.
b) Extra funding for a small number of centres of teaching excellence to provide teaching material for other universities. The internet provides an ideal means of disseminating high quality reading lists, slides, movies, practical designs and research updates etc which would be invaluable to busy scientists planning their own teaching.
Proposal 2 Improve the public understanding of science by creating specific posts within institutions and by promoting other means of public debate such as Citizens’ Juries.
The Public Understanding of Science is clearly of critical import in an age where scientific advances ,in many cases, are well ahead of public opinion. The government and the Wellcome Trust have already devoted some money to this concern but we believe that much more needs to be done in a pro-active manner. We would propose that more resources should be devoted to encouraging specific appointments within institutions to help break down the barriers between science and society. Such appointments could well be of a part time nature and facilitate, for instance, the employment of women who wish to return to science after raising a family. These posts could be linked to the Centres described above where materials and best practices could be disseminated.
We are also of the opinion that much greater efforts need to be made to explore the use of other opportunities for public debate such as the Citizen’s Juries used successfully in Denmark
Proposal 3 The government must be more pro-active in dealing with the concerns of both the scientists and the public in dealing with animal experimentation. More funding for alternatives to animal testing and more pressure should be employed in rationalising regulations world-wide.
At the last election the Labour Party made a commitment to reduce animal experimentation (part of the "three R's" approach to "reduce the numbers of animal experiments, refine the experiments that do take place so that they cause less distress and to replace animal experiments with other methods wherever possible."). The problem with this strategy is that it involves a lot of things which are outside the Government’s direct control, and so it has been hard to deliver - in fact the total number of experiments has increased, although non-rodent experiments have gone down. The Government must rethink this commitment to reduce animal experimentation as it is not a practical one to give for the reasons given below:
a) The Government (and the charities) have increased spending on biological sciences and so there will be an increase in work in this area.
b) The sequencing of the human (and soon the mouse) genome has opened up a whole range of possibilities to use transgenic mice to study human diseases. As scientists respond to this enormous amount of new information it seems very likely it will increase the amount of research using mice at least in the short term.
c) Scientists in the UK are already working under the strictest regulations in the world, and yet must compete at an international level. In particular UK scientists have to compete with the vast and lavishly funded US science system where animal legislation is much less strict. (In particular mice and rats are not even covered by the US "Animal Welfare Act", and so use of mouse model systems for human disease is already much easier for US scientists). Any attempt to make use of animals even harder in the UK will simply drive scientists abroad and ensure that the US gains all of the scientific and financial benefit that comes from the sequencing of the human genome.
There are a number of ways to deal with this situation e.g.
a) Ensure that the public have a much better understanding of the rationale for working with animals-particularly the difference between animal testing and the need to use animals to understand basic physiology and immunology -see proposal 2 above
b)Fund more research into alternatives for animal-testing. The availability of the human genome sequence and "gene-chips" could will provide ,in the longer term ,new means to investigate toxicity of chemicals in cell culture rather then whole animals.
c)Press for internationally agreed standards for animal experimentation, perhaps through the World Trade Organisation (WTO) as in many ways this is an issue of competition. It would do a lot more good for animals if the rest of the world were to follow the existing UK legislation, than to try to further alter the regulations here.
Proposal 4 More pressure will need to be applied by the UK government to ensure that an international patent system is created that facilitates rather than restricts scientific and technological innovation.
In an era of technology-based commerce and with the availability of the human genome sequence, a global standardisation of patent regulations would seem an essential prerequisite for free trade. Currently the US system allows for much greater commercial control over the development of discoveries. It is essential that the UK and the EU be much more vigorous in pressing the WTO to ensure that the US moves its patent system to coincide more closely with the European one.
Proposal 5 Government should make much greater use of the expertise that lies in the academies and professional bodies.
Although there has been considerable consultation by the OST on this topic there is no doubt that there is public suspicion of government scientists per se. To counter this view, we believe that much greater efforts should be made by all government departments to recognise the independent expertise that resides in the academies and professional bodies,
Proposal 6 A healthy economy must ensure that basic research, regardless of its immediate relevance to commercial exploitation, should be supported.
While there has, understandably and rightly, been great emphasis placed on the resourcing of life and IT sciences we believe that other sciences should not be neglected. e.g. there has been relatively little support for ecological and environmental research over the last twenty years and it is only now ,with the public concerns over GM crops and global warming that the importance of these disciplines has become evident.
Proposal 7 Much greater emphasis should be given to the implementation of clean technology.
Although there have been some programmes by the Research Councils encouraging the development of clean technologies this has not ,as yet, become a major plank in dealing with the problems of industrial pollution. In addition, the application of biotechnology and GM approaches in this area might be of great value in demonstrating to the public the positive advantages of these new techniques.
Proposal 8 Further efforts are needed to make a scientific career more attractive to women.
While the government have pioneered a number of initiatives to improve the situation of women scientists ,many of them still find it extremely difficult to juggle family and career. In many cases the lack of adequate childcare facilities is inhibitory and we would urge that such facilities should be provided (preferably on a partly-subsidised basis) in all Research Council and HE institutions as part of their normal infrastructure. A greater use of ‘job-share’ posts might also be of value to many women scientists,
Proposal 9 Scientific career structures need to be improved significantly if we are to ensure that we recruit and maintain our scientific personnel. We propose the establishment of a Research Careers Fund to improve the conditions of those on short term contracts.
We believe that career structures is one of the most important problems that must be tackled. We are aware that this topic is a complex one ,involving salary structures and conditions and moreover is cross departmental but we believe that it should be dealt with vigorously. Of particular concern is the plight of the those scientists on short term contracts and we have attached an Appendix offering one route to ameliorating this situation.
Appendix: Career Structures
The strength and vitality of our scientific base is entirely dependant on the quality and enthusiasm of our scientists. This is particularly true of those who function under the aegis of government funded bodies since their endeavours not only buttress our basic infrastructure but also power the engine which drives commercial innovation.
For many years it has become apparent that there has been a decline in the quality of graduates opting for a career in science and technology. There are many reasons for this, not least the greater financial rewards to be gained in the commercial and banking sectors. Another ,more recent, development has been the anti-science sentiments being propogated by some sections of the media persuading prospective entrants that science is no longer a worthy pursuit.
However, if those who are already working at the bench are asked how this situation can be improved the answer is almost always "improve the career structure". Although recent improvement in salaries for ‘high-fliers’ and for postgraduate students are very welcome the problem of unattractive salaries for the majority of scientists remains. Notwithstanding this, the main criticism of the present situation is levied at the increase in short term contracts at all levels of the staffing structures. This has been compounded by pressures on the university system to provide more flexibility in coping with changing demands in teaching ,research and development and consequently they have resorted more and more to limited term appointments for teaching as well as at the technician and research officer level. Thus, there appears to be about 30,000 contract research staff (CRS) in the UK at present and they provide the bedrock for most of our science and technology.
To a large extent ,the short term nature of these appointments is a function of the very successful strategy of pursuing research via three to five year project and programme grants. At the post doctoral level it can be argued that this system provides a "proving ground" for selecting those scientists who have the appropriate intellectual and personal skills to pursue a research career. This argument does not necessarily hold for the many more very competent scientists who provide the back up at the research officer and technician level. A greater use of 3-5 year "rolling contracts", where possible, could provide some improvement but this would not be universally applicable
One solution, which would be popular with the present CRS ,would obviously be to increase significantly the number of permanent positions. This could be attractive in the short term but ,given the nature of the current grant schemes (which, on the whole, seem to be working well) the problem would recur within the next few years. There is also a school of thought which believes that permanent appointments will inevitably lead to atrophy and complacency.
Given these conflicting viewpoints, there is a need for some reconsideration of the status of CRS and the following proposals are put forward as a framework for consideration:
1) There is a need to provide CRS with some means of influencing their own career development. This becomes more important if they are employed in multiple contracts and it is suggested that for each contract there could be "a gap salary" available at the end, which, at the discretion of the CRS, could be used either to retrain or to facilitate another contract (even perhaps a permanent appointment). The salary would be a function of the length of the contract (e.g. 2/3 months for every year) and would be additive if there are successive contracts.
2) As CRS become older there is inevitably some inhibitions on funding more experienced staff since they add considerably to the total cost of a grant. One device to facilitate the continuous employment of older staff would be to have a standard salary for the purposes of a grant but to supplement it from an external source for age-related increments.
Both of the above suggestions would require the creation of a separate resource ,perhaps called a "Research Careers Fund". This fund could be financed either directly by OST and/or proportionally by the Research Councils and ,if possible, by other granting bodies. Other sources (such as the European Patents Fund) could also be tapped and there may even be a case for persuading industry to play a part. The cost of administration need not be great and given that such a strategy could substantially improve the status of CRS we consider that it would be well worth exploring.
Some of these ideas were put forward in an article in "Chemistry and Industry’ of 6 Nov 2000 pps 693-724.
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