Boffins slashed in big-science budget blunder bloodbath

Boffins slashed in big-science budget blunder bloodbath

It's rather a shame you had to include "slashed" in that sentence, it's quite ruined the fun. After all, a little literary alliteration allows a large allegation...

Small change

Let's get this straight - £21m to continue world-leading, boundary-breaking science is just too expensive but £10b (500 times as much) is fine for ID cards which have absolutely no proven merit and are actively opposed on principle by large sections of the populace.

Makes one frikkin sick, does it not?

Why to UK Physicists always get screwed?

The number of people studying Physics at A-level and at University has been dropping off for the last 10-15years and things are just getting worst.

Early to middle of the last century, all of the Worlds top physists were hanging out in the UK: Rutherford, Bohr, Chadwick, and now we've just given up on everything either to the US or Europe.

It's all bloody embarrassing. With the extreme lack of investment, I really do wonder where this once great nation will be in another 50-years from now.

Sack the politicians not the boffins!!

If the bent bureaucrats butcher the boffins it'll make my blood boil!

Nu Lab politicians are up to their necks in corruption and are spending hundreds of millions creating jobs for the boys in order to buy votes. Scrap the lot of them and don't skimp on UK science!

If we cut back on research spending now we will be putting the country on an inexorable path to being a backwater economy overshadowed by nations with more vision.

Gordo! Gordo! Gordo! Out! Out! Out!

Confused

Riiight... so the jobs of boffins across the country are at risk because the Gum'mint don't want the older facilities shut down incase it upsets the poor Mancunian support workers? Sounds sensible... </sarcasm>

Although the Government's point of view I guess it makes sense - dis-satisfied boffins spread across the country has a minor affect on voting figures, hence a group of dis-satisfied support workers *all in one constituency* is more of a threat to their position... which is, of course, all most politicians really care about.

@Jason Togneri - I agree - perhaps "bashed" would have been better? Or "bludgeoned"?

Is it me or....?

Could I be forgiven for thinking that a certain mobile phone airtime provider sponsors that particular piece of science boffinry?

Regards

Neil

Support staff are also boffins

The 'support staff' oop nooorth are not call-centre workers, you know. They're the ones doing the same thing on the SRS (the northern facility) as on DIAMOND (the southern facility). And the ones up north (me included) are the ones that thought up DIAMOND in the first place, so it's a bit rich sacking the ones with the good ideas, isn't it! Calling us 'support staff' is like calling the ones down south 'builders', 'cos what they did is build DIAMOND....

Bruce Banner..

no no, Bruce Banner was caught in the blast of the experimental gamma bomb that he'd designed for the US Army, when he went back to rescue teenager Rick Jones who'd driven onto the test range in a jeep!

You're thinking of Hank Pym/Giant Man.

Budget debacle brain drain...

I have friends, proper boffins, whom have fled the UK for greener pastures on the continent. There's something fundamentally wrong with spending all that money and effort on the schools facilities that produce top scientists, only to have them leave and do science for other countries because there's no work at home.

In Soviet Britain....

Doughnuts eat boffins...

Missing the point

The Diamond synchrotron is mostly going to be used by biological and materials science researchers, not physicists or astronomers -- but those are the specialities whose budget is being dipped into to pay for the project. Ditto the other "big science" cost overruns.

What this means is: the physics/astro budget is being used to cross-subsidize other fields, in a manner that will result in 25% funding cuts to physics and astronomy over 3 years, at a time when physics in the UK is *already* in big trouble.

If this isn't fixed, then an entire generation of high energy physics specialists are going to be out of a job -- and once lost, it's very hard to rebuild that kind of academy. (Look at what happened in the USA after the Superconducting Supercollider got axed in the early 1990s ... then consider that the USA still had a whole bunch of other high-energy physics projects and didn't have a major problem recruiting and educating new physicists.)

The downward spiral continues

It's precisely this kind of thing that lead me and many other fellow Ph.D graduates to quit academia and head to the city where our talents are actually appreciated and rewarded.

So what do they really need now?

Are they looking for some kind of DIUS ex machina to bail them out then?

Seems fitting somehow

Labour ministers won't properly fund science that can investigate the spin states of many materials....

Relocate already !!

I worked for the boffins, (as an engineer), for three years in the late ninties and there was the same problem with the Manchester Lab then as there is now. I believe they have a very under powered version of the Diamond synchrotron light source there and it was kept open then due to fears of "local" job losses in the science fields, (I think they also had some ancient super computers). Seems to me that the northerners would be more than happy to move down to pretty Didcot/Chilton.

ah but remember...

Nu Lab dont want a clever population... they want to stay in power - just look at the dumbing down of everything... so

1) We will have the best telephone call centre staff in the world, cos its the only thing we will be able to do.

2) Last one out please turn off the lights....

One of the many casualties...

One of the many casualties of the funding crisis in UK science is identified all too clearly in the Delivery Plan just released by STFC, available at http://www.scitech.ac.uk/resources/pdf/delplan_07.pdf.

To quote: “We will cease investment in the International Linear Collider. We do not see a practicable path towards the realisation of this facility as currently conceived on a reasonable timescale.”

The UK’s scientists and engineers have made significant contributions to the design of this machine, and have been welcome partners in the international drive to develop the new technologies required.

STFC’s views are not shared across the wider international community. Institutions worldwide are conducting research, guided by the recent Reference Design Report released by the ILC Global Design Effort, with a view to building the accelerator. World-class institutes such as Fermilab in the US have been preparing bids to host the machine.

Large collaborations such as this have a wealth of benefits beyond their primary goal of advancing basic science. They strengthen international cooperation, drive technological development and, through ties with industry, help economies. They serve to enthuse the next generation of potential scientists and engineers.

Many ties with foreign institutions will be lost as a result of this decision. UK researchers, many of whom have great experience, will be forced to move abroad if they wish to continue their work. None of these facts bode well for the future of the UK science.

I have focused on the ILC, but you can expect to hear similar stories from across the scientific disciplines.

Yes, Minister

o

Next up:

Beleaguered boffins beg Big Brother for bonus bucks before budget blowout blindsides boson breakthrough?

More lay offs may be comming soon....

...because some other boffins in Scotland figured out how to create a table-top synchrotron for the bargain prize of only a few million (!) dollars for a high powered laser.

See this newscientist.com article:

http://technology.newscientist.com/article/dn13032-desktop-synchrotron-aims-to-freeze-molecular-action.html

Give and take?

I'm getting confused.

At one end we are starting to have a big push in science education on schools.

At the other end we are seeing scientists - sorry - boffins getting told they aren't wanted.

Why should any child want to excel in science if there's no prospect of a proper boffin job after years of study?

They're in the wrong science class.

Why don't they just become climate scientists and promote more global warming catastrophes. There's no need to do any scientific work. Just apply the following:

Oh my god! A hot summer = global warming.

Oh my god! A rainy summer = global warming.

Oh my god! More rain today than there was this time last year = global warming.

Oh my god! Less rain today than there was this time last year = global warming.

etc,.

Then write a computer program to show the ice melting over the next 20 years, et voila! Money for nothing and another excuse to tax us until we're dead.

PS. It's now a religion so that's why god is so involved.

Well I'm screwed

I am currently doing my mPhys project on the International Linear Collider, which has just got the chop... Feels kind of pointless continuing working now...

Since the UK has no real export commodities apart from knowledge, it seems pretty stupid to cut (and in real terms it is being cut, not increased) science funding.

I just feel sorry for everyone who has already invested so much time and effort into these important and valuable projects. What a waste.

I really shouldn't

read these types of articles when writing up its bad enough trying to remain disciplined to get it finished, take away job prospects and what the point :(.

The Call Centre Genius Alliance

"Nu Lab dont want a clever population... they want to stay in power - just look at the dumbing down of everything... so

1) We will have the best telephone call centre staff in the world, cos its the only thing we will be able to do."

Well, my team at a national telco ISP is

2* MEng Mechanical engineers

2* MEng Civil Engineers

A EngD- Electrical Engineer

A MSc Chemsitry (me)

4* BSc Biochemistry

A BSc in Computer Science (who's not "allowed" to use his knowledge as it breaks the rules set by the above ISP)

And a fully trained Doctor (of medicine)

As the Loonies in charge say we need Scientists/ Engineers/ Doctors.but this is the only jobs we can get.

NZ here I come...

yes it confuses me as well

We're going to end up with facilities and few users. If you read the STFC "delivery plan" which is code for cuts and redundancies, then it looks like the cuts in university grants will be 25-30%. the reality is that its going to be alot worse than that:

1) grant cycle is 3 years, therefore at this time 2/3 of the grant purse is already committed - you dont have to be a boffin to work out what that means to grants just submitted into the system this year.

2) given the lack of funding the council has a list of strategic priorities (actually in astronomy they only listed galaxy formation and large scale structure), presumably if you are working in something else (eg exoplanet detection) you might as well jump on a plane to the USA. This will def. have an affect on undergraduate student recruitment.

Its also clear from the plan that there is MUCH worse to come.

Pen pushers slaughter UK boffins.... Our facities will be shrines to a time when we had people to use them. Its a sad day for UK physics and especially UK astronomy.

http://europa.eu/epso/index_en.htm

this is where UK scientists and engineers can sign-up for the epso (european personnel selection office) open tests/competitions and qualify for a Reserve List from whence nearly all scientific posts are recruited. Salary is approximately between £50k to £150k pa depending on experience. I have a HNC in Telecomms Engineering and I'm currently on about £72,000 net-of-all-taxes salary, (is that about £120k gross?)

Why are maths and physics studies decreasing in the UK?, the rewards - if you look to the 500million people EU market rather than quaint old blighty - are better than being a BigBrother contestant, and there's a slightly higher chance of success!

plus most of our UK workers - who joined in the 1970's - are starting to retire so there is regular, if bursty and stealthy, recruitment.

What's the problem? Just offshore it.

Short of money? There's a simple answer, just relocate all the boffinry to another country where boffins are cheaper.

This strategy has already saved a fortune and worked brilliantly in the IT industry, where legions of satisfied customers are enjoying even more customer service than ever before - at a fraction of the price.

Am I allowed to claim credit for coining the new verb "to offshore"? If not, never mind, one genius idea per day is quite enough.

Bruce Banner

I think he was mixing up the TV show with the Comic Book story lol ;)

Not like CERN

"So yes, rather then spending billions on seeing what happens when you collide sub-atomic particles a near light-speeds to produce more sub-atomic particles - (We've been doing the particle accelerator thing for years now, and while its very interesting it is clear that nothing of any great practical use will come from it in the near future) would we not be better off researching serious alternative cheap energy production methods with some out-of-the-box thinking?"

This is important - the Diamond particle accelerator is NOT about smashing particles together and making new particles, it's a facilty where scientists from a whole host of different disciplines come to carry out research. Synchrotrons like Diamond have been used to create new drugs, to study GMR (the technology underpinning iPods), and to study how pollutants move through the environment - real, tangible applications. It's not even the spin-offs that might result from technological developments, these machines already the result of that.

Diamond and the SRS up in Daresbury are not one-trick ponies for a small community of particle physicists, they are multi-purpose facilites, used by chemists, biologists, engineers - and people looking for alternative energy production methods as well as ways to minimise humanities environmental impact.

Political suicide?

You'd have thought that having found that pissing off a load of people who might want to build an atomic bomb has turned out to cause a shitload of trouble, they'd have thought twice before pissing off a load of people who actually *can* build one......