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The chairman of Britain’s biggest research council said last week that
science needs an extra £230 million a year from the government, and
warned that the long-term survival of ‘quality research’ is seriously at
risk. Mark Richmond, head of the Science and Engineering Research Council,
said the money was needed to revive the spirits of Britain’s demoralised
and demotivated university scientists.

Richmond voiced for the first time his personal frustration at the low
priority given to science by the government. He said the £4125 a year
being paid to graduate students embarking on work for a PhD was ‘a national
disgrace’. Underfunding was ‘starving university research out of existence’,
he said.

Britain’s problems could be eased by extra money and a reorganisation
of science funding. Some £130 million was needed to raise the pay
of young researchers to match salaries in other careers. A further £100
million would allow research councils and universities to start increasing
the amount of research they support. The aim, he said, was to restore a
sense of opportunity to British science. The extra £230 million would
increase state research funding through universities and the research councils
by about 15 per cent.

Richmond proposed a radical change to the administration of research,
suggesting that the Universities Funding Council be split into separate
bodies for teaching and research. This would accelerate the formation of
a two-tier system of universities, with some specialising in research and
others concentrating on teaching. Richmond said he hoped US-style graduate
schools, solely for PhD students, would grow up in the research universities.

The SERC chairman was speaking at a meeting called to discuss a ‘Manifesto
for British Science’ published by Nature last week. In it the journal calls
for payments to PhD students to be doubled; a 50 per cent increase in the
number of PhD students; the merging of the five research councils; and a
cabinet minister to oversee all research support. The journal’s editor,
John Maddox, said: ‘It is high time somebody put science on the political
agenda. It is not an issue and it should be.’

Two of the three main political parties declined to send a representative
to the meeting. The one who went, Labour’s Jeremy Bray, backed Richmond’s
suggestion for American-style graduate schools. But he said that merging
research councils offered only questionable gains.

The plight of young researchers was highlighted by Laurence Smaje, a
director of the Wellcome Trust. Although the charity pays its research students
£8000 a year, almost double the going rate, at the end of three years
students leave feeling pessimistic about the future. The main problem was
the lack of a proper career structure. Part of the blame for this must lie
with senior academics, Smaje said. ‘Less than half the students had discussions
with their supervisors about their future before they left.’

Jean-Patrick Connerade, speaking for the pressure group Save British
Science, said that researchers were furious with the government. ‘British
scientists are not demoralised, but angry,’ he told Richmond.

‘Anger is difficult to sustain over a long period,’ Richmond replied.
‘Demorali-sation is not.’