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THE BRAINLESS DRAIN
Seventy-two expatriate Fellows of the Royal Society or of the Fellowship of Engineering have written to the Govern- ment asking for more money for science. In their letter, the Fellows claim that 'unless the Government acts to halt the decline in research, we fear that Britain will become a minor player in technologi- cal development. The consequent econo- mic and social damage would be severe.' It would be hard to find two sentences that contained more errors per word; but let us first consider a paradox. Many of those 72 expatriate scientists emigrated to America, a country whose government spends a smaller percentage of GDP on academic research than does our own. Meanwhile, the two industrialised countries whose governments spend least of all per capita on science are Switzerland and Japan. Which other countries could match either of them for technological development, economic growth or social harmony? The expatriates claim that British science is in decline. This is nonsense. Since 1979, Britain's scientific output, as determined by the numbers of research papers published, has increased by 4 per cent every year. This remarkable increase does not reflect, as some have feared, a devalued inflation of quality; it reflects an increase in the number of scientists. Since 1979, the universities have expanded by about 700 full-time academics a year. Where, 11 years ago, there were 40,000 or so dons, there are now over 48,000. The physical, biological and social sciences account for well over half of that very healthy expansion. These new scientists have not been conjured from thin air; they reflect a vast augmentation in money. Admittedly, that augmentation owes little to the Depart- ment of Education and Science, whose direct funding has only kept pace with inflation. But over the last 11 years, the medical charities (organisations like the Wellcome Trust, the Imperial Cancer Re- search Fund or the British Heart Founda- tion) have doubled the money they spend on research. Industry, too, has doubled the money it spends on university science. Research in Britain today looks extremely healthy. Why are the scientists unhappy? Researchers do not like private money. The Government's University Funding Council supports permanent jobs such as lectureships or professorships, but industry and the charities only fund projects for a few years. Researchers, therefore, have to reapply regularly for their own salaries, and they loathe the insecurity. Their aspirations for a proper career structure are not unreasonable, and they are, in part, being met; the non-governmental agencies are increasingly endowing perma- nent posts. But they will never create enough to meet the researchers' hopes. Few researchers understand why British governments fund university science. Whitehall does not expect academic re- search to be of direct economic value; it uses it as a vehicle to train the scientists that industry will need in-house. The uni- versities, therefore, produce many more scientists than they can absorb themselves. But since most young university resear- chers hope for academic jobs, they feel cheated. University science will always foster discontent while it is built on dis- appointed dreams.
If there really is a brain drain — a surplus of scientists — then the Govern- ment should indeed cut its funding. When we are producing more scientists than the British universities or British industries apparently need, why should the British ' taxpayer subsidise the education of yet more? The expatriates argue that government-funded research underpins economic and technological development, but that has been disproved by our last 11 years. Faced with static governmental sup- port, but needing more academic science in its own areas, the private sector simply doubled its own contributions.
Britain led the world, both scientifically and economically, through the Agricultu- ral and Industrial revolutions, despite an almost complete absence of government funding for science. The civic universities, and research bodies like the Royal Institu- tion, were all private bodies. Faraday, Kelvin, Davy et alia were all privately funded. The state only entered on science in a big way for military reasons. The forerunner of the Science and Engineering Research Council, the largest of the state's agencies, was created in 1916 to develop barbed wire, poison gas and the tank. Its economic justification, a form of mercan- tilism, was invented post hoc.
There may be, in a modern democratic society, a role for the governmental sup- port of science for cultural, non-economic or military reasons, but we should not suppose that governments can invest indus- try's money, taken in taxes, more efficient- ly than can industry itself. And the last people whose advice we should heed over research funding are the scientists them- selves: 'People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public.' (Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations)
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