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Terence Kealey, the bete noir of groups such as Save British Science
which have charted a decline in British science in the 1980s, will give
a seminar this week on ‘How Mrs Thatcher saved British science’. Not content
with taking on the science establishment at long-range, Kealey has decided
to give the seminar at the Science Policy Research Unit of Sussex University.
SPRU’s reports have been the chief ammunition for the past decade’s criticism
of government science policy.

Kealey, a follower of the 18th-century economist Adam Smith, was disappointed
by the Prime Minister’s desertion of monetarism in 1985. Nevertheless, he
will tell SPRU that scientific research does not generate economic growth.
Rather, the opposite applies. ‘Academic science is a by-product of growth,’
he says. And Thatcher, by rescuing Britain’s economy has rescued its science.

In the audience will be Ben Martin, one of the authors of the SPRU papers
which argued that goverment science spending was falling relative to that
of Britain’s competitors and that Britain’s research was similarly falling
behind. ‘I do not think one can argue that this (government policy) has
been good for British science,’ he said last week. ‘Things are still pretty
grim for basic science.’

Both men insist on being polite. ‘They are men of decency,’ say Kealey,
of the team at SPRU. ‘We will try to hold the seminar in a constructive
manner rather than an abusive way,’ echoed Martin. But sharp differences
remain.

Kealey is critical of Martin’s assessment of Britain’s science output,
based on analysis of the number of articles published in scientific journals.
In a forthcoming article in Scientometrics he says that Martin’s own information
‘points to a considerably expansion in British science’. He argues that
Britain published 30 per cent to 40 per cent more papers in 1982 than in
1973, a sign of ‘health growth’.

Kealey argues that while government funding for science may have fallen,
funding from private sources has risen. Citing an increase in the number
of researchers, he argues that science grew as fast as ever in the 1980s.
Martin overlooked the expansion because it was funded privately.

Kealey looks at absolute measures of scientific performance, Martin
at relative measures. But Kealey does concede one of Martin’s points, that
in relative terms Britain has lost ground to its nearest competitors, France
and Germany. ‘At the time of Martin’s analysis British science was declining
more rapidly, because our economic growth was slower,’ he said.