Science Research Funding in Universities (Science and Technology Committee Report)

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Wednesday 9th September 2020 Grand Committee

[Lord Lucas (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Patel, and his committee on an excellent report, to which I would like to add some side notes about the importance of keeping a healthy research culture in UK universities, particularly in those areas where the Government have some ability to influence it. That may particularly be through the REF but also through UKRI, OfS and other routes.

I turn my attention first to replicability. Even in physics, the subject that I studied, the level of replicability is well below what it ought to be. This is a matter of great concern to the Royal Society and others. We must insist on full publication of results, data and methods so that it is possible to accurately replicate what has been done. We must also up the status of replication; we must fund it properly and ensure that the scientists doing it find that it adds to their reputation. We must ensure that we are supporting publications which support reports of replication and do not just consider them too boring. I am encouraged that UKRI has recruited a head of research culture in the excellent Dr Francis Downey—mind you, if you search for her name on its site you find nothing. Perhaps she does not exist, but there are at least rumours of her existence.

Secondly, we must up the quality of statistics in UK research. Too many research publications have basic statistical errors in them. There is no reason for this; there is a plethora of good statisticians and statistical organisations ready to help. All research institutions ought to insist on it.

Thirdly, we really need to move on better public access. I am delighted to see that UKRI is tied in with Plan S. However, to take our own situation, when we are asked to take political decisions on things such as the dangers of particulates or microplastics, or whether you are actually doing anything valuable if you recycle glass with paper, let alone the efficacy of vaccines, we need to have access easily to the truth in a real, quality fashion. We should not be party to a system that hides the truth unnecessarily.

Lastly, there is diversity of thought. When it comes to funding research, we should be prepared, in small quantities, to fund research that seems to challenge the very rules of nature. I would be quite happy to see us put a bit of money into EmDrive, cold fusion, or even into critical race theory. We must never allow our universities to get bound into dogma, in the way James Cook University in Australia has been in its persecution of Professor Peter Ridd, just because he was extremely rude about the quality of its Great Barrier Reef research. That ought to be welcomed; one ought to look for critics. Science ought to be a matter of trying to find people who disagree with you and trying to understand why they are wrong, not sacking and prosecuting them.

I am keen that we support UKRI in its interesting research that falls between silos. I shall be very interested to see whether the Government opt for an advanced research projects agency going elephant hunting for big ideas, or whether they will follow my noble friend and kinsman Lord Ridley’s excellent book How Innovation Works and treat innovation as something that happens in lots of small diverse places, rather than large leaps into the unknown. That is a pretty good formula for Lords reform, but it also brings us back to where I started on the importance of having replicable-based science on which to advance.