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| UK Economy-focused Research Policy Requires More Evidence |
| Author：Science and Technology Division, UK Position：Science and Technology Division, UK |
| Article Source：Times Higher Education No. 1913, September 10-16, 2009 |
| Publish Date：2009.12.16 |
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A report by the Campaign for Science and Engineering (CaSE) showed that the economy-focused research policy driven by the UK government has been implemented in a "piecemeal" way. It is considered as an arbitrary decision to ask the academia to increase the economic impact of research without supporting strategy or evidence base. Suggesting that the policy options for the economic-impact agenda must be better articulated and more fully debated, the report calls for the appointment of a chief scientific adviser at the Treasury.
As an example of a government policy decided without careful exploration, Hilary Leevers, author of the report, pointed to the debate initiated by Lord Drayson, the Science Minister, at the start of this year to focus academic research in areas aligned with the UK's industrial strengths. It later on resulted in the research councils reinvesting 106 million pounds in areas supporting "key areas of economic potential". She stressed that this is one of the examples where the Government came up with an idea but did not explore how it worked in the past and whether it could work in the future. Moreover, the risks of the policy have not been weighed properly against possible gains. She therefore suggested an analytic approach to determining any science policy as policies or initiatives with no evidence or communication are unlikely to gain the support and confidence of the research community.
On the other hand, the economy-focused research policy itself is rather problematic. Firstly, there are difficulties in measuring economic impact of a research, from timescales to intangible gains; secondly, driving economic growth is only one of the many roles the research base plays. Putting so much weight on this single aspect is likely to compromise its other important roles, such as training the future workforce, answering questions and providing the capacity to solve the problems that will come in the future; thirdly, the economy-focused research policy places much of the burden on researchers to increase economic impact of research, but the truth is that they only have "limited opportunity" to influence the impact of their work.
For more information, please go to the CaSE website for the original report "Impacts of Investment in the Science and Engineering Research Base": http://www.sciencecampaign.org.uk.
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