A little summary of key UK science funding stats!
1 minute guide to science research in the UK
Only have a minute to spare? Perfect!
Author: Fathima Simjee
Should we stay or should we go? Scientists argue against leaving the EU
Tweets about the impact that leaving the UK would have on science and science funding
Let the people speak! What science should government fund?
We’re big fans here at Mo’money of hearing what you think about science funding issues. Caught up in the post-election fervour and in the spirit of democracy, we decided to find out what people on the street think the most important area of science research is for governments to fund, and if we should be spending more money on science research. Watch the video here!
The people have spoken! It seems (according to these lovely people who agreed to chat to us) that health and medical, as well as climate change in a close second should be the biggest priorities for government funded research. Also, they all said that more money should be spent on research funding.
Do you agree?
Liveblog: What’s the Wellcome Trust funding?
The Wellcome Trust is a name that pops up often in the world of science research funding. Established in 1939 with money from the estate of pharmaceutical magnate Sir Henry Wellcome, it has an endowment of £16.6 billion which is used to fund scientific research and public engagement projects across the world aimed at improving human and animal health and the public understanding of science. In the UK, it is the largest non-government funder of scientific research, and is the second largest in the world after the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. So basically they are the bees-knees of science funding!
In addition to providing funding to scientists for their research, they own and run the Wellcome Collection, a science museum in London. It’s worth a visit! They regularly host events that bring scientists and people with curious minds together. One of these is ‘Packed Lunch’, a monthly hour long chat with a Wellcome funded scientist about their research. Today’s Packed Lunch is with Dr David Osrin from University College London, who does research in maternal and child health in Mumbai. I’ll be attending and liveblogging the event so stay tuned.
12:55: Very slick operation by the Wellcome Collection. The venue feels like a spring picnic! Soundtrack of tweeting birds in the background, fake grass and FREE APPLES! Woop!
Wellcome Collection ‘Packed Lunch’ event featuring David Osrin, University College London
Wellcome Collection ‘Packed Lunch’ event
12:58 On the menu today: Dr David Osrin, University College London
1:02 We only have an hour so straight into it! He’s lived and worked in Mumbai for 10 years doing his research and public engagement.
1:05 Works with an NGO called SNEHA in Mumbai. Society for Nutrition, Education & Health Action. They are focussed on maternal and child health in informal settlements. Sneha also means “love” in Hindi ❤
1:08 Sounds like he wears two hats: researcher and physician. SNEHA actually implements health interventions and then this is recorded and forms part of research.
1:11 Interesting point made about the double burden of disease in low income parts of urban areas. Not only high risk of infectious diseases like TB because of living conditions, but also lifestyle related non-communicable diseases from urban living.
1:13 Global mass killers of children in poor communities like diarrhea and pneumonia have reduced, but other issues are on the rise, for example mental health.
1:15 “If you want to work in the community then you have to work with people in the community. There is a long term process for entering into communities that requires you to develop strong relationships with people. The longer you do this for, the more help you can provide.”
1:17 Wait, what? He just said something about using art as part of health interventions. Didn’t expect him to say that! #curveball. “Integrate art centered action with traditional health interventions.” What does this mean?
1:19 He’s put his researcher hat on. They are doing a clustered randomized control trail where they are measuring the effects of certain interventions on the health of women and children. The interventions are happening in certain places and not happening in others. I feel sad for the control group that doesn’t get to access the interventions, but I guess this is how scientific research works.
1:23 The debate is: can you measure the outcomes of complicated social interventions? Interesting question. Some outcomes can be measured he says. Things like, how many women can give birth in hospitals, are there fewer children dying and quite literally, the children can be measured to check for growth and health etc.
1:27 He describes the discipline he works in as urban health care. The world became 50% urban in 2010. “Urban health care as a discipline is in its infancy. We don’t know how to do this”.
1:32 Asked about a project he was excited about. 11 000 people attended a 3 week exhibition held in the slum. Is that back to art again? I’m confused! Tell me more about the art!
1:36 Some things are hard to measure. Interventions to prevent violence against women. How do you find out if what you did worked to reduce something from happening that you don’t know about?
David Osrin speaks about maternal and child health in informal settlements in Mumbai
1:41 Really interesting comments about how research like this impacts policymakers and funders. We like to believe that research is done, evidence shows that certain actions have a particular impact and this influences policymakers to implement similar actions. Rarely happens like that. Regardless of the pitfalls though, he says he is still committed to evidence generation because we don’t want our governments to invest in big scale interventions that don’t work. Also mentions that some of his research has influenced certain WHO guidelines, which could be used by health ministers and impact on policy development around the world.
1:45 Talks about a programme focused on violence against women that they are running called Little Sister. Crowd-sourcing reports of gender based violence. If you hear about something that is happening to anyone, you can report it to them and their counsellors will contact you. This forms part of research (data is recorded) and allows for interventions to happen.
1:49 What will the effect of your measurement/research be on a population. Really interesting point! Just by regularly measuring or recording something you are making an intervention in a sense. If a community health worker comes to your house once a week to measure your baby to record data for research, you are also able to receive messages and info about health care regularly.
1:53 Collecting too much data can be a problem. Not necessarily the case that the more data recorded the better. Keep it lean, but ensure there is enough. Need to strike a balance.
1:58 Final point: “Urban health is rudderless. It needs direction and leadership.” Speaks about needing urban planners, architects, doctors and nurses, people who are experts in cultural and social studies to come together.
2:00 Next Packed Lunch, 17 June: Dr Fiona Burns. An expert in sexual health and HIV in migrant communities within the UK. This was an awesome way to spend a lunch hour, so I’d highly recommend coming through sometime!
2:03 Definitely taking another free apple on my way out…
Have your say! Where should your money go?
Is crowd sourced sci-tech funding the future?
Kickstarter has seen the birth of thousands of crowd sourced projects around the world. From novels to music albums, dance theatre to humble potato salad, strangers can pitch in and help provide the capital to turn your idea into a reality in return for rewards. Project creators set a funding goal and deadline and if people like a project, they can pledge money to it. Funding on Kickstarter is based on a principle of “all-or-nothing”. Projects must reach or exceed their funding goals to receive any money. Since it’s launch in 2009, 84 000 projects have been funded by 8.6 million people who together pledged around a £1 billion, and science and technology has accounted for a slice of this very large pie.
Robert Schumacher is a pHD student at City University, London who together with a group of colleagues has developed a notification wristband called Nudge. The aim of the device is to stop you from having to constantly check your phone, thanks to the wristband that will let you know when you’ve received something important that needs your attention. They turned to Kickstarter to help fund their project.
Sadly their Kickstarter campaign didn’t reach its goal, with only £22 885 pledged towards their hefty £35 000 goal. However the team are confident that with the exposure they’ve gained and skills they’ve learnt, they’ll be able to go forward with their idea.
In terms of science funding, whilst Kickstarter seems to lend itself better towards technological developments, websites such as Experiment and Petridish.org have set up similar platforms to allow for research scientists to also appeal for crowdsourced funding.
Research funding: A journalist’s perspective
Adam Smith from Research Fortnight on covering science funding in the UK.
It underpins many of the things we place importance on in the world around us; health care, education, energy and our environment, for a start. It’s hard to disagree that science is vital, but yet the topic of science funding often falls by the way side.
Adam Smith is a senior reporter at Research Fortnight, a UK publication dedicated to covering research funding and policymaking. Whilst he works for a specialist publication focused on audiences who are already interested in this topic, he believes that the wider audiences of mainstream media sometimes don’t see the bigger picture of why science funding is important, but understandably so.
“The people whose jobs are on the line are middle class scientists. They are educated and have a lot of cultural and social capital. They are very privileged in many ways. So its not like we are taking money away from people who are severely disadvantaged in society, so that may be one of the reasons why it doesn’t get as much public attention”.
Reductions in science funding obviously effects innovation, but audiences might sometimes see it in terms of the people it affects in the job market. In this case, it’s the academic elite. Adam argues that the times that science research funding does make it to the main stream media is if there is a strong headline that people can easily relate to as important, for example, cuts in cancer research funding. It might be harder to easily explain why we should publicly fund scientists who are researching the acid from the guts of certain worms, because this could help us learn more about how to decompose plastics, which would intern be important for the environment and for us. The former is quite obviously catchier.
Adam began covering research funding three years ago, when he was a Science Journalism MA student at City University, and has continued to do so since.
“Science interests me and politics interest me and so science funding is those two things combined. Where the politics comes in, is once you’re using public money to fund that, then it becomes a political conversation because you have to weigh it up against other political priorities, like the NHS or the school system”.
How does UK science funding compare to other countries?
The UK government spends around 1.7% of its GDP a year on science research and development, which is fairly low compared to other EU countries, as well as other developed nations outside of the EU. Adam doesn’t believe that this necessarily means the UK is not spending enough. After all, what is enough?
“We are pretty much the best in the world in terms of productivity and bang for the buck. There was a report published in 2013 that was done by Elsevier and it basically found that the UK, considering its population and percentage of GDP spent on research and development, produces an incredibly large amount of research. So we are very productive and efficient with the funding we use,” he argues.
The report in question, published by the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills found that while the UK represents just 0.9% of the global population, 3.2% of R&D expenditure, and 4.1% of researchers, it accounts for 9.5% of downloads, 11.6% of citations and 15.9% of the world’s most highly-cited articles and has overtaken the United States to rank 1st by field-weighted citation impact (an indicator of research quality).
Does #ge2015 have an impact on funding?
In the run up to the upcoming UK elections, whilst “innovation” is touted often as something candidates and parties support, research funding doesn’t feature as a hot button issue, and this is possibly a reflection of the lack of importance voters place on it. Despite working in the field and specialising as a journalist covering research funding, Adam isn’t offended by the lack of interest. He believes there is a much larger problem that extends beyond the topic of science funding.
“I’m not upset that the general public don’t take a big interest in science funding. I do think that there are more fundamental and basic needs in society that people aren’t taking an interest in either, and if I’d want people to take an interest in something it would be those things. Science funding is really important, but there are more urgent issues and I think there is just too much political apathy in general.”
For more insights into research funding from science journalists, check out this Mo’money post.
The Budget Speech Round-up
#budget2015
Last month Chancellor George Osborne delivered his budget speech outlining the UK’s economic plan for the coming year. Not to worry if you missed it, have a look at our live blog of the announcement to catch yourself up on what went down or watch the entire speech here. These are the bits of the speech that interested us the most Adam Smith is a senior reporter at Research Fortnight, a UK publication that focuses on covering science research funding and policymaking. He shared with us his thoughts on Chancellor Osborne’s announcements. Adam mentions the “eight great technologies”. In 2012 the UK government announced, as part of its industrial strategy, eight key fields of science, which were identified as being particularly important to the UK’s growth as a world leader. This announcement in many ways shapes what scientific research is prioritised for public funding. They include robotics, energy and regenerative medicine. 
It’s all about the money
How much money does the UK government spent on science research and development?
In the run up to George Osborne’s much anticipated Budget address to Parliament on 18 March, here’s a little infographic to recap the UK government’s investment in science research and development.
Infographic showing UK government spend on science research and development
(The data used in this infographic can be found here)
Need research funding? Here are 5 links to top tips!
With so much competition for research grants, it couldn’t hurt to have a little help. I scoured twitter for some of the best tips for applying for science funding.
1. Ingrid Eisenstadter is director of grants for The Eppley Foundation for Research in New York. She has, in her 25 years on the job, seen thousands of grant proposals and has penned a few key tips in this blog post.
2. More and more researchers are turning to crowd funding for their projects. Here are some tips to setting up a platform to do that.
3. The Guardian put together these 10 tips for applying for research funding.
4. Dr Claire McNulty is the Director of Science and Research at the British Council and provides some advice on applying to funding schemes
5. and finally for a bit of light reading when you’re taking a break from your grant application. This might just give you some out-of-the-box ideas for securing that Moola.
Mo' Money Mo' Science 