Tomorrow’s world under threat

At first sight MRI and X-ray medical imaging, lasers, satnav, television, the worldwide web, microwave ovens, mobile phones and computers have very little in common, other than they are now indispensable components of our highly technological society and it is almost impossible to imagine a world without them.
However, what they also have in common is really quite remarkable — their very existence is a direct consequence of scientific research which was carried out, sometimes many decades ago, with the sole aim of discovering the fundamental and underlying laws of nature which govern the workings of our Universe.

For example, satellite navigation could not operate if it were not for our understanding of the General Theory of Relativity, proposed by Einstein in 1915; MRI would not be possible without superconductivity, discovered by Kamerlingh Onnes in 1911, and every electronic device we use embodies the counterintuitive principles of quantum mechanics developed by Planck, Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg and others during the first few decades of the 20th century.

Even the worldwide web was developed at CERN, The European Organization for Nuclear Research, as part of that most esoteric of all sciences — particle physics.

The incredible technologies and multibillion pound industries that would ultimately grow from these, and many other, scientific discoveries were unimaginable at the time that the related “blue-skies” or “curiosity-driven” research was being funded and performed.

Moreover, there is no indication that this languid flow of knowledge from fundamental science to applied science and technology is ever likely to change — however much we might wish to speed up the process.

It is a general rule, perhaps even a law of nature, that yesterday’s science becomes today’s technology, and today’s science will be the source of tomorrow’s technology and wealth creation.

This cycle of research and subsequent development has served the UK and the rest of the world extremely well over the past century.

Its importance to a nation’s financial well being is also well recognised. So, we find that despite, or indeed because of, the present financial crisis, major economies such as those of the United States, Germany, Sweden and France, are actually investing more rather than less in their scientific research programmes and infrastructures.

It is their way of securing future financial stability.

It is therefore hard to fathom why our own Government should decide to take the precisely opposite perspective.

Business Secretary Vince Cable has already announced a strategy for severely cutting UK science funding, ahead of the 2010 comprehensive review.

Financial straits

But why should science be immune from such cuts? Surely scientists have to tighten their belts and face up to the fact that we will all have to suffer the consequences of the dire financial straits left by the excesses of an irresponsible banking industry.

Well, for one thing, the Government’s direct funding of science already accounts for less than 1 per cent of the UK’s Gross Domestic Product and, for another, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development department’s evidence has clearly shown that cutting back investment in innovation will, in the OECD’s own words, ”damage the foundations of long-term growth”.

Additionally, the increased spending on science in the US and Europe will undoubtedly create a market for good scientists and the UK’s best young researchers will be snapped up.

It seems inevitable that the brain-drain of 50 years ago will be unblocked and our scientific talent will soon start to flow out of the UK.

But this is not the only problem currently faced by UK scientific research.

Our politicians are also suggesting that, in future, only “commercially significant” or “theoretically excellent” research should be funded. At first sight this may seem sensible. However, as the last century has so clearly shown, the commercial significance or theoretical excellence of any scientific research can, in most cases, only be determined retrospectively, and often only decades after it has been carried out.

How is it possible to make such an assessment in advance, and is it even desirable or necessary to try?

It is not difficult to imagine that if such constraints had been applied to research in the early years of the last century then the groundbreaking, world-changing work of Einstein, Planck, Heisenberg and others would never have been funded and our world, our economies and our lives would be much the worse for it.

In a technological world we cut and constrain scientific research at our peril.

We, and our politicians and paymasters, must recognise that if we do not support science today there will be no new technology to shape our tomorrow.


Professor Cywinski is Dean of Applied Sciences, University of Huddersfield