Clouds gather over blue skies research

The suggestion that resources should be shifted from physics to climate change research is wrong-headed, says Professor David Wark in this edited address to the British Association Festival of Science, held in Liverpool, UK, this week

Professor David Wark: “baffled” by the idea of robbing particle physics to pay climate research.

The direct route by which scientific advance flows into improved technologies (and hence living standards) is through applied research, but most people who have thought carefully about the problem agree that without continued investment in deepening and widening our fundamental understanding of the world, applied research advances would eventually dry up and cease.  

However, once you have decided that you need both fundamental and applied research, the vexed question immediately arises – how much of each? There is also the question of whether blue skies research should be purely curiousity driven, or whether funding agencies should try to direct even blues skies resources towards areas that they feel are more likely to provide a near-term technological payoff.

A case in point – climate change research  

In his address as President of the British Association, Sir David King gave a cogent and sobering assessment of the challenges facing our growing human population in the areas of resource management and climate change. I completely support his call to arms to tackle these problems head-on, however I feel that at least one of his proposed solutions would be a rather spectacular own goal, making it much harder rather than easier to find the new technologies we so clearly and desperately need.  

Sir David was quoted as suggesting that in order to address the scientific challenges we face we should redirect the human capital currently going into particle physics and space exploration into “the bigger challenges where the outcome for our civilisation is really crucial”.

I find this belief that the best way to accelerate our technological development is to attack two of the most technologically advanced and successful sciences shockingly short-sighted and the belief that any resources thereby freed up would necessarily be re-deployed into the areas are suffering from underinvestment is strangely naïve.

Firstly, to deal with the money, the total annual investment in particle physics, astronomy, and space sciences in the UK is of the order of £300–400 million.  

Comparing this with the billions to be spent on the upcoming Olympics, or the tens of billions spent bailing out imprudent investment bankers, or the trillions being spent on war in the Middle East, none of which will contribute positively to solving the problems which Sir David has so clearly delineated, it is baffling to think that you would go after this particular £300 million when you need resources to address climate change.

There is an acknowledged need to increase the R&D budget of the UK, which is still lower as a percentage of GDP than our major competitors. There has already been a substantial decline in real terms in UK spending on particle physics and astronomy over the last 30 years.  

Worsening this decline is a curious way to contribute to an increase in R&D funding. If our government wished to increase its aid to developing nations (a position I would strongly support) there are many sources for the money that would not have the effect of crippling our fundamental science base.  

I think it is clear, however, that it is not the money in fundamental science which Sir David is after, it is the people. Here I find the implication that people can just be pushed from one scientific specialty into another even more implausible.  If it had the political will our government could, after all, redirect the money as it chose.

However it has, despite a strongly expressed will, made little progress in convincing more people in the UK to devote themselves to scientific careers. The challenges which Sir David has identified will not be addressed without many more brilliant scientists (many more, in fact, than could be obtained by pillaging the existing fundamental science base).  

This is a problem – perhaps the problem – that lies at the heart of why we must continue to support research into the most fundamental scientific questions. Study after study has shown that it precisely these areas which attract young people into science. Young people love the big questions, and they are amazed and inspired to discover that these questions yield to our patient inquiry.  

Sir David wants the best young minds working on solar power, but with all due respect to CERN, many of the best young minds I have trained are currently devising new and even more convoluted derivative options in the City.

If you destroy particle physics and astronomy you will not produce more scientists working on carbon capture.  You will produce fewer scientists overall.

Sir David correctly stated that new world-wide scientific organisation will be required to address the systemic problems he discussed.  CERN is an example of a wildly successful self-organised worldwide scientific effort, perhaps the most successful ever.  To destroy it seems a strange way to start the process of building up others.  

If Sir David wants to convince others to try to emulate the incredibly difficult task of welding disparate groups of strong-willed people into effective world-wide collaborations to attack the most difficult problems we face, he should be praising the incredible organizational accomplishment of our colleagues at CERN, not publicly wondering whether we should abandon their work of a lifetime and try to retrain them as agronomists.    

So on the question of whether it should be fundamental science or an attempt to solve climate change, I strongly believe that it shouldn’t be, indeed I believe it cannot be, either/or.  

We should be able to continue to push the frontiers of fundamental knowledge while simultaneously attacking the critical questions of climate change and resource depletion.  The money is there if we have the will to spend it, and the people are there if we can inspire them to devote their lives to the wonder of doing science.  

Professor David L Wark, FRS, is based at Imperial College London and the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, UK