Statue of James Clerk Maxwell and his dog Toby, with Saltire flying within the background. Photograph: zelenykabinet used under Creative Commons licence
Let’s face it: few people on all sides of the Scottish independence debate usually are swayed by arguments in regards to the impacts independence might need on scientific research. Yet science is a policy area where major changes would follow from a “Yes” vote for an independent Scotland. Nonetheless, the commentator Colin Macilwain passionately argued that Scottish science is able to go it alone in a contemporary Nature opinion column.
He’s right, needless to say, it should. There are small European countries with strong science policies: he mentions Switzerland and Austria as enviable examples, although both are rather larger than Scotland, and Norway and Ireland might make for more appropriate comparisons. Although science policy is an influence reserved to London, university funding has long been administered by a separate council, which now answers to the Scottish government. Scotland has long deployed its own funding to commission research in support of policy-making.
And, a method or another, Scotland should continue to learn from European research funding – if not as a member state (because Scotland, seceding from an existing member state, could have to use for entry) then as an associated country.
But there’ll inevitably be costs and risks to Scottish science of “going it alone”. These transcend the apparent issues linked to making the transition to independence and developing new institutions and new practices; the continued additional challenges of funding science in a small country also needs to be considered.
Macilwain accepts that losing access to the united kingdom-wide research councils – probably the longest-standing autonomous structures for funding investigator-driven research on earth – might sound like a major loss, but he argues that the autonomy of these councils was eroded lately and in spite of everything, it’s possible to create credible new funding institutions in a brief space of time. He overstates the lack of autonomy of the united kingdom research councils, but he’s certainly correct that it’s going to be possible to set up a brand new funding agency or agencies with robust processes, especially with all that UK (and other) experience to attract upon.
But it will become essential to tread carefully here, because getting the processes and the underlying principles right, and maybe even establishing them in law, can be vital when you consider that the autonomy of funding decisions is usually more likely to be harder to defend in a small political system than it’s in an oversized one. There’s also the danger of one of those referendum blight for Scottish science within the run-as much as and aftermath of the vote: UK funding agencies might be reluctant to make significant investments in Scotland’s research infrastructure and scientists could also be reluctant to go there while the post-independence arrangements remain unclear.
At least these must be short-lived issues. Of long run concern should be the undeniable fact that the hot Scottish research system could be a totally small world indeed. Currently, applications from Scottish researchers to the united kingdom research councils are peer-reviewed by a pool of reviewers drawn from across (and infrequently beyond) the united kingdom. However, with a smaller domestic pool of peer reviewers, small country research funders ought to look abroad for almost all of the peer review effort expended in making decisions about which research (and which researchers) to fund.
This is already recognised by the Scottish Funding Council, that may, as Macilwain notes, operate a distinctively Scottish policy in regards to college teaching funding, but which has long chosen to cooperate with its English, Welsh and northerly Irish counterparts to run the regular peer-review-based Research Assessment Exercise (now the Research Excellence Framework). If an independent Scotland created new funding agencies, a better proportion of Scottish research spending would need to go on administering the method of peer review, including the necessity to pay primarily foreign reviewers: domestic reviewers could have an incentive to check totally free, as likely beneficiaries of an identical funding body, but foreign reviewers have none.
Alternatively, an independent Scotland could prefer to continue to sign up for the united kingdom research councils within the same way that associated non-EU countries pay to participate within the European research programmes. It will have a sturdy moral claim to continued access, and it’d be difficult to determine how a UK government could refuse such an arrangement. Continued access to the prevailing research councils would allow Scotland making sure that a various range of funding sources remains available to its scientists, and can also help encourage UK research charities to continue to fund research inside the country.
So, while Macilwain is definitely right that Scottish science can go it alone, those working in Scottish science may conclude that the extra costs of running a small country research system, the extra risks of maintaining autonomy for funding decisions in a far smaller political world, and the ensuing reduction in diversity of funding streams together outweigh the attractions of establishing an entire new research system from scratch.
