Always on the Horizon, UK must wait for megabucks EU science deal After taking years to get to the point where it could rejoin the EU's €95.5 billion Horizon science program, the UK now seems to want more time to think about its options en route to becoming a global science superpower. In the latest installment of a long-running saga, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has delayed the decision to …
In this case not giving in the way people normally spin such matters...
"Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has delayed the decision to rejoin the European scientific research co-operation program"
I had long been of the opinion the problems were more in Westminster than in Brussels and here is a clear example supporting that viewpoint.
I'm sure some media outlets have been able to spin this as yet another instance of "the EU punishing the UK"...
Don't mistake that for an acknowledgement by Farage and his ilk that Brexit was a mistake and they were wrong- quite the opposite.
He's blaming someone else for fucking it up.
In fact, it's essentially another blame-shifting excuse that, back at the time of the vote, I correctly predicted we'd see from Brexiteers once it turned out not to have delivered the promised unicorns and rainbows.
Not that Brexit was fundamentally flawed, but that others had fouled up (political rivals) or sabotaged (e.g. the EU and "Remoaners") their Glorious Vision of Sunlit Uplands we didn't get because they Didn't Believe Enough.
Of course, with a huckster like Farage, where Brexit was always closely tied to his own personal interests, ego and advancement, it's easy- and beneficial- for him to be able to point to the Tories (the ones who robbed him of his power by- in effect- stealing his clothes and becoming UKIP themselves) and blame them.
(AC who made the "Poe's Law" comment here).
FWIW, the bit about "dog whistling" made me pay closer attention to the title "Dolchstosslegende"- apparently the original German word for the antisemitic "Stab-in-the-back myth".
Doesn't really come across in the manner of being being parodied or mocked, so I'm now inclined to assume they meant it or were trolling on that basis. (And recent history has shown us that most of those in the latter category are using it as an excuse for the former).
Brexit succeeded spectacularly if the measures used to judge it involve:
Observation has demonstrated that the only individuals who shout "communists", "socialists" and "WEF" are those that think "woke" or "left" is everything to the left of Hitler and the venn diagram intersection with these who also think that the earth is flat is scarily high.
>Brexit succeeded spectacularly if the measures used to judge it involve:
That's unfair. It also benefited fund managers that shorted the pound, oligarchs that want somewhere fancy to live outside European arrest warrants and businesses that want to be free of all that 'elf-n-safety and workers rights.
Not that Brexit was fundamentally flawed
It was. To date, there has not been a single instance in which isolationist behaviour has actually benefitted a group, region or country other than for political machinations.
The UK had the best of both worlds: enough participation to benefit (and for the US to be supportive as the UK was the only mechanism by which they could stop the EU from becoming a properly competing world power), yet enough separation to retain a degree of control, the most important element of which was maintaining the UK Pound Sterling and so monetary control. It was a bloody good deal that many in the EU were rather envious of.
Yes, there were some rules to be followed, and I guess that's where the problem was: some rules compelled transparency and an end to the sort of shenanigans where a population is mainly seen as cows whose sole role is to be milked until they die.
Add to this the utterly bonkers idea of letting something with this much impact on the country be decided by a 50/50 vote, a misinformation campaign that was based on straight up lies (bus sized, no less) and just raw reality (trying to rewrite trade agreements and laws in a few years is flat out impossible, so the resulting mess was no surprise to anyone with a functional brain) and it was clear Brexit was never going to benefit the population. And it hasn't.
It has merely pointed out that the moat around the country also lives in people's minds. The dumb ones, that is, who only now start to realise they've shot themselves in the foot.
@AC
"To date, there has not been a single instance in which isolationist behaviour has actually benefitted a group, region or country other than for political machinations."
This is the perspective issue. Remainers argue leavers are isolationist. Leavers look to rejoin the rest of the world.
"The UK had the best of both worlds"..."It was a bloody good deal that many in the EU were rather envious of."
Another interpretation of this being that the EU was so wonderful, stunning and amazing that we in the UK refused to fully join it. The remainers panicking that leave would mean we never rejoin because we as a country would not agree to fully joining the EU. We saw this argument play out when people were absolutely gagging to be part of the Eurozone and we eurosceptics argued against it based on known economics and reality. I havnt heard the term eurosceptic in years as we were right.
Ahh yes the 'internationalist' brexit argument.
Did you ever stop to consider that the rest of the world didn't want to deal with an insular and isolated UK or just plain saw it as not very important? The trade deals signed thus far, some 7 years post vote seem to bare that out so far. Who knows by the time our grandkids have grandkids we might have turned a profit.
Did you ever stop to consider that the UK already had good deals with the world via much better trading positions via the EU? Leaving the EU is a bit like leaving a nice comfy members only club with drinks, snacks and hotties to dance with, when your mate Dave promises that the 'Frog and Lettuce' pub down the road is wayyyyy better.
Such a shame its all warm pints and they only have Ready Salted crisps left.
Safe to assume that anyone who happily supports Farage isn't going to be bothered about him coming across as "tone deaf" on this count- quite the opposite.
Ditto the idea that this darling of the English anti-immigrant right wing and British exceptionalism- or his supporters- *should* be held to the same standards as immigrants.
At least Sir Nigel can use the law to seek protection...
The Payment Accounts Regulations 2015
UK Statutory Instruments 2015 No. 2038 PART 4 Regulation 18
Non-discrimination in the provision of payment accounts
18.—(1) A credit institution must not discriminate against consumers legally resident in the European Union by reason of their nationality or place of residence or by reason of any other ground referred to in Article 21 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union when those consumers apply for or access a payment account.
(2) The conditions applicable to holding a payment account with basic features must not be discriminatory.
Ah. Oh.
No. Brexit just helps us *stop and think* whether we actually want to partner up for R&D in a very broken system. One which produces only about a quarter the results per £ spent as any of the other government science grants. As measured by H-index.
“Become a global science superpower.” Umm, let me have a think. NO. Because this is entirely the wrong way to think about and do science, which is why, as above, it is very bad at doing so. You do *not* do science to put a “leadership badge” on. You do science, focusing on subjects which are either interesting (“oh that’s weird, I wasn’t expecting that”) or useful. If you try to “become a leader in climate science” all you ever achieve is propaganda not truth. Propaganda may happen to fall on the side of truth, but only by coincidence.
People measure truth in different ways. Hopelessly delusional idiots go with something like 'I read it in a book' or '${AUTHORITY_FIGURE} said so'. In science, the test of truth is an experiment. That is what keeps science tethered to reality and why flat Earthers verbally attack scientists and refuse to engage on the results of experiments.
Not-loved Euro trash here, "asked" to leave. So, if you guys are not sending all that money to Brussels, why not use it for your science people? Or did you already spend it to provide "targeted support for staff retention and local talent strategies at eligible universities and research organisations."
Oh dear, how sad...
The money "saved" by not paying into the shared Horizon fund meant that:
Horizon is arguably horribly inneficient but it's predictable.
You don't move for a job and find the grant is only for another 6months and then the research councils are all rearranged or the next budget cuts research spending or universities are moved to a new ministry or the university loses overseas students and needs to save money
Could you please explain how international collaboration works between EU universities, and the worlds largest R&D country, the United States?
Or is it that international collaboration works the same way it has always worked? There are centres of excellence scattered around the world in various fields. The entities that are top of tree talk to others that are also top of tree. Links are made at conferences, and global recruitment. If your group isn’t top of tree, nobody is very interested in what you have to offer. That’s a harsh reality, but getting a grant doesn’t change it.
As to top scientists “definitely not all UK citizens”, no shit Sherlock. Citizens of Turkey, Iran, Russia, USA, India, China, Korea. All of whom run top-ranking groups here in the U.K.
What is about the new Head of Cavendish lab in the U.K. that you disapprove of? Professor Mete Atatüre. Graduated from Bilkent in Turkey, went to Boston, then ETH Zurich, then Cambridge U.K. That’s a pretty normal CV for a top ranker. Notice how precisely none of Turkey, USA, Switzerland are in the EU.
Show me a university department with *only* EU or U.K. citizen professors and staff on it, that isn’t just…...mediocre. Not terrible. Just, not even in the same city block as a leading department in the field.
My late father had a store of fruity expressions that would be called on in times of stress. The one that comes to mind almost every day to me now is:
"If you can't Sh*t, Get off the Pot!"
Can't see Sir Cold Porridge taking that up as a rallying cry though.
The vital point here is that this is an "ambition", not a plan. The word plan suggests that there would be a list of clear steps to be taken, timetables and budgets, specialist recruitment, risk analysis and all that jazz.
An ambition on the other hand is something that costs no money, can be announced with a big fanfare, and be as fantastical as you like. Global superpower you say? Wow, impressive!
So, back in reality, the science and innovation department becomes little more than a fairytale "all you have to is believe in your dream and it will come true" operation.
Should have called it Department of Innovation, Science, Newness, Excellence and Yearning.
I've heard horror stories from scientists saying that entire research groups have already left the country. The trick is to find the leader of a research group that is working on research financed by an existing Horizon grant, or would normally get Horizon grants but not any more, and persuade them to move their entire research, lab, PhDs, teaching etc. to a university in Dublin, or Karlsruhe, or Delft, or Toulouse etc.
Is this a bad thing? No, seriously, stop and think for a minute. Research teams *working on current Horizon priorities* will move. Ok. So they should, they will follow the money. That’s the wrong question to ask. The right question to ask is: are Horizon priorities, good scientific directions? Is it *effective*.
I’m not going to answer this for you, there’s plenty of evidence that Horizon is very poor at direction-finding, and produces low-quality research, but you can come to your own view. But it still isn’t the point. The point is: why do we never see this question asked in the debate? Why can’t you, off the top of your head, tell me ten important scientific discoveries that came from Horizon funding, and ten “next big things” from the upcoming decade roadmap? Because you should be able to. Horizon spends more resources than the whole of U.K. university research in the first half of the 20th century. Where are it’s Nobel prizes?
It’s really the *only* important question. Not “how much money”, but is it *well-directed* and *effectively managed*. As a Brexiteer, if there were evidence that Horizon were well-directed and producing good science, I would regard this as positive evidence for the EU *even if they didn’t spend a single penny in the UK*. Measure outputs, not inputs.
If Horizon funding had, for example, turned out to be in the right place right time, to have contributed to a Covid vaccine when needed. I don’t care whether it’s Oxford AstraZeneca, or BioNTech leading to Pfizer. And neither should you. But it *didn’t*. BioNTech vaccine discoveries may have been invented within an EU country….but did not arise from any Horizon funding. Horizon funding was in the wrong direction. Horizon funding priorities depend on the judgement of the people allocating, and their judgement turns out to be *not scientifically useful* based on history.
If I were to pick one major recent discovery that has the potential to change the world, I’d pick the potential replacement for Haber process to produce ammonia, hence fertiliser, at low temperatures and energy input. Discovered at Monash University. In Australia. Where? Exactly. Funding level? Too little to measure.
You make Horizon funding as effective and well-directed as Australian R&D, maybe we will listen.
What are your metrics for "producing good science", because you seem to have picked a single example, then said "well in the recent past that didn't get any Horizon funding". How far back in the history of mRNA vaccines have you looked? You will not have to look far with any discovery to find that publicly funded science is part of that chain sometime in the recent past.
And you’ve immediately gone for the deliberate mis-reading of what I wrote. I have not slagged off “publically funded science”? I’m in general a *supporter* of larger government spending, and spending on research, both blue skies, and applied goal-directed. It’s *Horizon* research specifically, and EU Commission funded research more generally, that is very low quality. Government funded bodies like Fraunhofer Institute, Paris-Saclay, Freiburg, Leiden, Barcelona, Cambridge, Imperial, are all excellent and productive. But they largely avoid taking Horizon money, the truth-that-dare-not-speak-it’s-name is that it is the kiss of death.
I have extensive professional experience in dealing with both Horizon grant bids, and nationally funded grant bids. There are so many intrinsic problems with Horizon, which lead to it being very hard to produce actual science with it. It’s money for documents, not for science. Principal Investigators are desperate for grants, so they can’t afford to slag it off, but it is a Faustian bargain.
#1: Horizon is very *prescriptive*. They tell you exactly what work they want you to do, broken into work packages, and the results you will produce. It really isn’t too far off the EU Technical Officer pretending to be a scientist for a month and saying “I have a hunch on some new Science in this area. I’ve written it all down for you in microscopic detail, now go prove me right!”. This has exactly the integrity and success rate you would expect
#2 everything is divided into 5-10 Work Packages for different institutions. It’s based on country. You can’t just say “We’re investigating this, Ana found a thing so she’s pursuing it”. It’s all micro-sliced from day 1. If you hit the barrier of the work division, you must *stop and hand it over*. People who don’t stop *get sanctioned*, it’s a very real threat and deployed really quite often. On more than one occasion I’ve seen a postdoc who doesn’t understand the game ends up with a written warning for doing work that is supposed to be reserved for another institution. This is insanely toxic.
#3 The truth is, a lot of EU science funding doesn’t even have the *goal* of producing scientific results. And I’m not saying that to be snide, it literally isn’t the purpose, for good or bad. Roughly a third of the funding is there just to provide a “framework” for the training of early career people, and do so trans-nationally. Someone doing a PhD in Grenoble is funded to do a postdoc project in Leiden. The purpose is that they should see the benefit of freedom of movement, to form networks with people in other EU member states, and to further their career. Again, I’m not being snide, this is literally *written down* as the first paragraph of funding requirements. Any scientific output is seen as pure positive side-effect.
#4 A lot of Horizon funding goes to non-university entities. There are, I’m afraid, a lot of companies whose *only reason for existing* is to bid for, and execute these “R&Ds”. They produce the documents required, get paid, and that’s the end of it. Actual science is not involved. I can name at least a dozen “companies” along the M4 corridor that were “experts” in “future electronics”. In over 15 years, none of them ever had a single non-EU contract, nor attempted to release a product, nor even went to a trade show not attended by their EU Technical Officers. Each of them got paid maybe £20-30M annually from Horizon funding, employed maybe 20 people, and immediately Horizon funding stopped vacated their premises and listed as Dormant on Companies House. Not fraudulent as such….but really, what is the point of this?
Cambridge got about half a billion from Horizon and similar amounts from it's predecessors, so I don't know where you get the idea that they avoid Horizon.
Yes, indeed, Horizon and EU management is fairly hard work and they do tend to want plans and milestones and all the rest. That doesn't fit brilliantly with science always, but then this is the way of large organisations, into which category the EU fits. A large part of this stems from difficulties in early versions of Horizon with some reasonably dodgy auditing.
The work packages are not prescriptive from the EU; the scientists who write the proposals write the work packages. After which, indeed, the EU want their deliverables.
You are correct that a lot of the training grants do require mobility, and cross-country mobility. I have my doubts about that. But the EU is hardly alone in this. Quite a few people in research believe that you need to move around to be exposed to the best ideas and for cross-fertilization. I can see the argument but at the same time, while some people value travelling and living in different parts of the world, it also makes life hard. It is difficult to buy a house and raise a family when there is a strong expectation that you move every three years. Still, hardly a surprise that money comes with strings attached and that it's expenditure is expected to achieve more than just "good science".
And, indeed, there are companies who specialize in bidding for EU money; just in the same way that there are IT companies that specialize in government contracts. Bidding processes are big and complex, as is the management afterwards. So you get specialists.
So, I agree with some of what you say. But that is quite a different from what you said which is that Horizon does not produce good science. It does.
If Cambridge researchers bid, then I am ashamed of them. My knowledge stems from the early 2010s, when any of the top researchers I talked to would rather have resigned than taken some of those projects.
Please name some Horizon projects that you claim are good science. Then let’s pick up the published papers from them, the journals published, and follow the H-factors of the researchers. It’s all very well saying “there is good science” and ignoring white elephants in the room like the billion-euro Blue Brain Project. Reputations of whole departments were destroyed by that *and rightly so*. Anyone who agreed to work on that is so flawed, ethically and scientifically, that they should never be let near a lab again. There’s worse.
Your comment “And, indeed, there are companies who specialize in bidding for EU money….Bidding processes are big and complex, as is the management afterwards. So you get specialists.”
You have Stockholm syndrome. Believe me, I saw it for so many years in my career. People are stuck in the system, they think it’s all normal, they think there’s no other way to be. There’s nothing normal about this. It is *not* normal in the world to spend 10% of the entire working hours for the project on the bid phase. You think it is, but it really isn’t.
But it isn’t even about the bid process. It’s about the very concept of “for EU money”. This is insanity. Measuring by how much money you have spent is just insanity. If the outcome is *companies that employ some people to do some things so long as you continue to pay them*, then the complete process is pointless, and needs to stop.
“What are your metrics for producing good science"
Not my metrics. The same standard metrics used by academia, to assess which are the top-performing universities and in turn the best scientists. H-index. It depends on the number of publications, the impact factor of the journals in which they were published, and how many citations. And once you have a metric per scientist, you can slice the data further. Go here for more information how academia does it. It’s not perfect, but whatever else it is, it is not subjective.
https://www.adscientificindex.com/
Cambridge, for example, ranks #14 out 16271 universities in the world, by having 1967 scientists of whom 1300 are in the top 50% of scientists, and 182 in the top 2%. Note how skewed that is. Almost all work of scientific importance comes from the top few % of scientists. The rest show up, write some moderately interesting papers, but achieve little of value. It’s not nice to hear, but it is the reality, and it is important we accept that. I got my PhD but realised that academia was not my way: neither I *nor over 70% of postdocs* even make it onto that long list of rather ineffective researchers.
If Horizon were a University, it’s H index would place it somewhere in the 11000’s out of 16271 global research institutions. It’s impact factor would put it….see Manchester Metropolitan University? That’s #827. See Wipro Ltd, Bengaluru purveyor of bums-on-seats…That’s #8011. Horizon research total impact factor ranks it alongside Federal University Kashere Gombe State, Nigeria. Yup. Now there are a couple reasons for it being quite that low. But that is where Horizon ranks.
It’s so far below the lowest European institution that accepts students, for really two reasons: it effectively self-selects only researchers that aren’t in the top half. Because of the extremely skew distribution this smashes it’s score. And secondly, it’s simply not research, by academic standards. If you are a genuine professor, you are looking at the newest ideas and working in that area. Horizon prevents this by design. For a project to be Horizon funded, the idea must be sufficiently in the public domain that it can be read and understood by *lobby groups* who propose it to the Commission, who then ask governments whether it’s the sort of thing they would like to fund in the *next* 5-yr funding round, then it goes round internal political negotiations to allocate it to countries, then the RFP needs to be published which takes the Commission more years, then the academics have to bid on that. There’s just no way, no way at all, you can be less than 10-15 years behind leading edge.
"it effectively self-selects only researchers that aren’t in the top half."
I think there's a fair amount of positive feedback operating in research funding. Groups become more successful because they receive more funding. They receive funding because they were previously successful. This is likely to starve researchers who could have become successful but don't have the funding to do so. I wonder how this feedback loop could be broken.
I agree it is a feedback loop, but it can be a virtuous circle rather than a vicious one.
We do actually know how to make university research effective, we’ve known for at least a century. Make a centre of excellence that people want to come to, from around the world. Give them money, and let them decide on priorities. Leave them to it. That’s it. It literally always works. External validation of priorities does not add even one cent of value, it just doesn’t. The places that aren’t Camelot wither; it’s “unfair” but just the way life is.
>” We do actually know how to make university research effective, we’ve known for at least a century. …Give them money, and let them decide on priorities.”
That’s the problem - a lack of money, Westminster has a long history of poor investment in scientific research, of which this government is no exception.
Remember Bojo, Riski et al have spoken about what could happen, but there has been a noticeable absence of money announcements and hard cash being delivered to the universities.
Horizon might not be perfect, but once it allocates monies, the monies appear. Personally, if Horizon monies enable a university to main functioning research departments, teams and collaborations, so they are able to grasp “real” research opportunities, then it is money well spent.
I remember wasting time in the 1980s getting commitment and monies out of the UK government, it was really irritating how often government officials were happy to waste time dancing around the table avoiding making decisions, it was surprising just how often officials (metaphorically speaking) turned up to meetings having either forgotten their pens or ensured they had ink in their pens… In comparison the European programmes, whilst at time’s bureaucratic, did deliver.
Ok, so what you are saying is this: you want money allocation to prioritise R&D. And you want a *constitutional* fix for a *policy decision* problem. Because you perceive U.K. gov consistently under-allocates R&D relative to its other funding demands, compared to what EU Commission current policy is.
Let’s be concrete: U.K. spending priorities include - paying minimum-wage carers to stay the right number of minutes to change the diapers of an 80yr old with dementia; keeping a functioning military, which Germany chooses not to do. Sorry to be blunt like that, but until you acknowledge these are the choices on the table, one can’t talk sensibly. And BTW it’s a defensible opinion that the long-term dementia research has more impact than the short-term care….but you are going to have to be explicit, look those people in the face, tell them what they can’t have, how *you* have taken the choice away from their vote, and put it 1500 miles away.
This just isn’t Ok. If you want to make a policy change in a democracy, fine go persuade the electorate, and you may well be right policy-wise in this case. But changing the system to prioritise your beliefs is just not OK.
More than that, I urge you to take a step back, and realise that constitutional change from national government is not in your interest either. Policy is temporary, but constitution is forever. At some point, a different set of people will be in power in Brussels, and they will have different policies. Maybe they prioritise infrastructure building. Same amount of money, just it’s jobs for sparks and metal monkeys instead. Why do you think Commission care? You are completely dispensable. Then Horizon just…..stops. Commission don’t answer to anybody. Look it up, they don’t have to ask European Parliament for permission not to renew Horizon. The reverse is true: they do have to ask Member States permission to allocate Horizon budget, but if they decide to ask for different priorities, then Member States have no role to force them to ask for Horizon instead.
I think you need to step back and remind yourself about how scientific research funding worked before the UK delegated some matters to the EU.
As you note Westminster has to juggle many balls. However, it chooses to open its mouth, so way back the UK decided to invest in some physics research, however, politicians (as we are being reminded of again with last weeks by elections) always have one eye on the opinion polls. Hence having committed to spend money when it came to actually paying out the money, the press jumped on the government for spending on science rather than welfare/NHS/public sector pay etc.. so government delayed and delayed …
Some weren’t unaware of the problem and decided a good way to avoid this trial by media was to delegate research spending so that it was no longer a matter for Parliament to approve specific research (project) spend (*). Additionally, it was recognised the UK on its own wasn’t going to achieve much, it needed to collaborate with others, hence the seeds were sown for Horizon. Which despite its problems - which you have identified a few, has largely enabled scientific research to be funded in the UK out of the Westminster limelight.
Hence my point is that (with Brexit), we are back to the pre-EU situation at Westminster. I expect Rishi will, with a general election just over the horizon, be wanting to doing stuff that polls favourably rather than what is right, hence wouldn’t be surprised if he will try and delay committing to Horizon until after the election. Remember researchers don’t tend to be big backers of the Conservative Party, but house builders and wealthy idiots are…
So what I and I suspect many others want is, not to prioritise research spend but to deliver on what they promise. The Conservatives promised the UK would continue to be in Horizonn, so they need to deliver.
(*) We can take this as being “successful” as the leave campaign in focusing on how much money went to the EU failed to understand all the desired spend that was within that - Horizon being just one example.
Try the Blue Brain project
https://www.epfl.ch/research/domains/bluebrain/
There’s a billion euros of perfectly good neuroscientists being forced to work on utter shite, right there.
In that case, they literally revolted standing up in the conferences, writing open letters to newspapers, and brought the whole project down in flames, so badly was it misconceived.
@Justthefacts
What has the Blue Brain project to do with Horizon.
" EPFL’s Blue Brain Project is a Swiss brain research Initiative led by Founder and Director Professor Henry Markram."
The Blue Brain Project (BBP) is supported and funded by the Swiss Government and distributed by the governing board of the two Swiss Federal Institutes (ETHZ and EPFL), with around $22 million per year.".
Blue Brain was otherwise known as the Human Brain Project (HBP), and was one of two Flagship billion-euro projects initiated by EU Commission under FP7 funding. It later transitioned to Horizon 2020 funding. The other project was Graphene.
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2013.12291
https://cordis.europa.eu/search?q=contenttype%3D%27project%27%20AND%20%2Fproject%2Frelations%2Fassociations%2FrelatedSubCall%2Fcall%2Fidentifier%3D%27FP7-ICT-2013-FET-F%27&p=1&num=10&srt=Relevance:decreasing
It failed *badly*, culminating in shouting matches at conferences, actual demonstrations by neuroscientists outside EU Commish HQ. Markram is a charlatan, and obviously so even when the project was initiated. He claimed that he was going to be able to simulate a human brain in silico by 2017, for a billion euro of EU money, and they bought it. That was his claim, and don’t let any articles since pretending that the goals were set lower, fool you. It doesn’t surprise me at all, that he is still running his scam on the Swiss government, after the roof fell in on HBP. But several hundred million euros of EU money had been spent by the time the plug was pulled.
However, I will correct you on one thing. You seem to assume that because the project is now executing in Switzerland, at EPFL, and Switzerland isn’t part of the EU, that it couldn’t be supported by Horizon. This is absolutely false. Horizon money supports many project work teams outside the EU, not just in Switzerland, but in for example, Turkey, Ukraine, Russia (awarded in February 2023), Canada. They just don’t make it common knowledge.
Oh, so it’s nine years since they gave a billion euros to a charlatan who said he could fully simulate a human brain in silico by 2017.
And that makes it Ok then? They’ve learned from their mistake? They’ve published a full mea culpa of how they got led up the garden path, with hundreds of people telling them there was a problem beforehand? And now they would never allow that again?
In that case, they definitely won’t have let €50M project at the end of last year, promising to implement full brain uploading by 2027. Oh wait, they did? Oh. Well there goes that then.
>” there’s plenty of evidence that Horizon is very poor at direction-finding”
I suggest there are smoking guns and (probably) evidence of Westminster being poor at direction finding.
I see you reference CoViD; we know the government were very poor a directing commercial funding at PPE suppliers who had delivery track records. We assume because a vaccine was delivered that the entire investment in CoViD R&D was well directed. Also as a result / lesson learnt, how much money is the UK government is now investing (year on year) in mRNA research?
I agree with you. I think it’s a shocking disgrace that the “Lesson Learned” inquiry seems to focus on finding whose fault it was. Rather than immediately (as in, a year ago) kicking off all the R&D and actions that are clearly required, for the next time this happens. And it will happen again, in twenty years if we’re lucky, and five years if we’re not. Because it really isn’t hard to identify at least half a dozen big-ticket multi-billion items that we will really regret not having done.
mRNA research is one. But also, a standing army test-kit factory capability, and vaccine manufacturing capability is another. We spend more on mothballed Barbie doll manufacturing than mothballed vaccine factories. Figuring out how to run vaccine trials even quicker is another: a year seemed completely implausibly fast until 2020…..right, what has to happen to make it 3-4 months? That transmission model was BS, so how about a major effort to identify where it was wrong, etc. Where’s our new PPE plan, not just for Covid but for the other possibilities?
Having agreed with you… Can I point out that *no country* is doing this? U.K. isn’t doing it…but neither is Germany. Nor any EU initiative. Neither is the USA even though they no longer have a denier in charge. W.T.A.F.
Look at Horizon allocated funding lines, related to vaccines:
https://research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/research-area/health/coronavirus/vaccines_en
VACCELERATE: €12M two years ago. Yes, the decimal point is in the right place.
Click on some of the links in the EU page. Half of the links are dead. Commission have not updated their response or initiated any new funding actions in a year. That’s how bad this is. “The pandemic is over, everyone back to farming the budgets.”
To be fair, the UK has (or had) some prerequisites that make being a (not 'the') global science superpower not an entirely unrealistic ambition. It's just that many steps have been taken in the last decade or so that are precisely the opposite of what is needed. Steps such as making universities more reliant on international students for their income and then making it much harder for international students to come to the UK. Or throwing up barriers for international scientists to come to the UK by bombarding them with mountains of bureaucracy just to be allowed to work in the UK. Or having an esteemed professor denied a visa so they can't speak at your conference because someone at the Home Office doesn't like their skin colour.
Wanting to become a global science superpower and then leaving the European Union is a bit like wanting to become a global military superpower and then abolishing the Navy and the Air Force. It's not the most helpful of steps.
> the UK has (or had) [my emphasis] some prerequisites that make being a (not 'the') global science superpower not an entirely unrealistic ambition.
The irony is that the UK- primarily England's- fantasist desire to return to its former glory by looking backwards rather than forwards is probably the biggest accelerant of its decline.
The conclusion and most obvious example of that being Brexit.
This is what you get when you want to return to the power and prestige of the empire era without realising- or caring- that all this *was* backed up by an empire which isn't coming back.
> It's just that many steps have been taken in the last decade or so that are precisely the opposite of what is needed. [..] Wanting to become a global science superpower and then leaving the European Union
That's the point. You can't separate that claimed desire to become a "global science superpower" from that aforementioned Little Englanderism that culminated in Brexit, but has its roots going back decades.
Well, that alongside the post-War UK's decline in its capacity and respect for scientific research. Particularly from the Thatcher era onwards, where it was left to the short-term mercies of the markets (with almost anything promising bought out by foreign interests) and the Tories were more interested in an economy based on dubious financial services.
That's been baked in for many decades and it's not going to change significantly more quickly. That *is* today's post-Thatcher, anti-EU, Brexiteering UK.
It doesn't matter what the UK had- or could have had- on paper without being hobbled by that.
Hence "Ha ha ha ha ha ha ROFLMAO" to the UK government's all-talk puffery that the UK can become a "global science superpower"
Hasn't it always been like that?
Kelvin formulated the second Law of Thermodynamics IN 1851, during the pursuit of more efficient steam engines, which was driven by market forces. Theoretical physics (of its day), from market finance.
It's only in the WWII years and soon after that science research was funded by government (military technology being the main driver).
Wanting to become a global science superpower and then leaving the European Union is a bit like wanting to become a global military superpower and then abolishing the Navy and the Air Force. It's not the most helpful of steps"
But fully in keeping with having a bunch of untalented morons in charge of the country [whichever party, ditto]
Did you actually read what you wrote, and think? Arguably “wanting to become a global military superpower and then abolishing the Navy and the Air Force.” has been historically the exact correct strategy for some countries.
For maybe 50 years, it has just not been *possible* to compete militarily with the USA. You can “want” all you like, but if you do it, you’d end up poor and broken, which doesn’t seem like a good outcome for “politics by other means”. Crucially both Japan and Germany were de-militarised post-WW2. Maybe not voluntarily, but saving 2% GDP annually on military really adds up. It definitely contributed to the economic outperformance of those two nations, and continues to do so. Arguably, they “won” WW2 in terms of true outcomes for citizens significantly more than the U.K. did, although the USA did better than any. It’s been a winning strategy for Germany to have a military so weak that in the past few years they could barely field five working fighter aircraft at a time. Security paid for by the USA, with consequences, because all choices have consequences.
Maybe not on topic, but it does show that you and your supporters need to think a lot more, and talk a lot less, to have any grasp whatsoever of the issues.
@Justthefacts
After the war countries like Germany, Japan and also Italy had to stat rebuilding the industry from scratch.
Meanwhile Britain fell a sleep content with an outdated industry and political system believing that once world leading is for ever world leading.
And there is more to it. It's all conserved in a guy like Mogg and similar.
Rish! cannot afford to do any deal which trips the "sovrenteeeeee" alarm on the more boneheaded Brexiteers. Horizon requiring agreement to the ECJ makes that a no-no.
(Forget the fact the UK is now bound by Malaysian regulations on palm oil thanks to the CPTPP.)
This is going to be an ongoing theme, again and again and again as the UK pisses around with tying to have it's cake and eat it.
The funniest thing is in the EU, the UK had a seat on the ECJ
> as the UK pisses around with tying to have it's cake and eat it
In its useless flailing and pissing around as it tried to square the fantasist puffery of Brexit with the reality of its actual consequences, the UK has ended up pissing on the metaphorical cake itself, and can now neither have nor eat it.
@LogicGate
As you ask, I have started to use RCS on my Amdroid and it has this "damned" feature of "suddenly" doing a word full capital due to something you did without noticing it.
RCS stands for Rich Communication Service, and is fine when you learn to use it. It's also possible there is an Emacs feeling to it, though.
Don't you worry Lars,
I fully well understood your intention.. However, creative misunderstandings can sometimes make for much more interesting conversations. ..
..And I love the idea of new members of the ECJ being handed a branded low cost compact car for work purposes..
Have you thought through the implications of why that is *relevant*? If the ECJ were impartially ajudicating the *law* as passed by Parliament, nobody should care whether the justices were hyper-intelligent giraffes from Mars. Or impartial *professional* judges, with prior decades of practising at the Bar, which is the same thing.
Of course, everybody understands that they are not, that they are political appointees, mere tools intended to apply pressure on competitor European states. You know that, I know that, everybody knows that. They do not *apply* law, they are another layer of unvoted, invisible influence. Nationally representative? They are located in Luxembourg, and to all intents and purposes represent Benelux. They have a leader, the President, of which there have been 11 in total. Two of them have been Belgian, one from Netherlands, one from Luxembourg. Hardly representative. The current one is Belgian, his predecessor was Greek, and during the Greek period the Vice President was, you guessed it, Belgian. It’s just a coincidence.
So let’s look at the professional background of the current President of ECJ, shall we? Koen Lenaerts. Loads of top legal qualifications, until 1983, at which point he immediately became *professor of law*. Not a practising lawyer. He has literally never actually held any professional practicising post, advocate or otherwise, outside the ECJ. Never. He is not a lawyer who made it up through the ranks. And his total experience of being an advocate lawyer *even in the ECJ* is three years back in 1986. Three years. He is a professor, always has been, and then they made him king without the slightest bit of professional experience of law.
This is a charade.
Except they proved at the last election that if you say Brexit and wave a flag all the traditional labour votes will switch to you.
If the Tories had a plan - they might be thinking of a US republican model where all the working class voters vote conservative and labour is left with just media graduates and anybody black in the cities.
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