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In this guest post, Stephen Curry calls for scientists in the UK to support the Science is Vital campaign.

Thanks to the world-wide economic reverberations of the credit crunch, Britain’s deficit stands at around £160 billion, meaning that to run UK plc for the coming year the government will have to spend £160bn more than it will receive from taxation. That deficit is about 11% of our GDP. Under the terms of the Maastricht treaty, EU states are supposed to keep their deficits below 3% of GDP. But ours is nearly 4 times greater: clearly UK plc is in bad shape.

To fix the problem will require radical surgery, but just as an inept surgeon can do more harm than good, so those charged with the economic health of the nation must operate carefully.

The government’s response

The government has two ways of reducing the deficit: cutting public expenditure and generating new income.

New income can be derived from raising taxes, politically unpopular and not a traditional Conservative policy. Only about a quarter of the money needed will come from tax increases under this administration: the remainder will come from cuts to public expenditure.

The ruling Conservative-LibDem coalition has announced breathtaking targets for cuts in public expenditure. Chancellor George Osborne wants to see 25% reductions in government spending in the four years to 2014. These will be the deepest cuts since the Second World War, though they will not be applied evenly to all departments.

The question uppermost in scientists minds is, how will spending on science will affected?

Those in power have spoken very positively of the importance of science to the UK. Prime Minister David Cameron said,

It is absolutely vital that the UK develops and builds on its outstanding record in science and engineering.

The view of his deputy, Nick Clegg, is no less emphatic:

Science is an integral part of our economic recovery, as well as being vital to a healthy, modern society.

But both these statements were made before the election. Since then, the new Business Secretary Vince Cable and his Minister for Science, David Willetts have spoken warmly on the need to sustain Britain’s strengths in science and engineering, but there are also some very ominous sounds.

Cable misread the government’s own assessment of the quality of UK science, wrongly dismissing 45% of it as below par, in a miscalculation seemingly aimed at creating space in the public mind for deep cuts in science spending. However, his analysis leaves a lot to be desired. The case for science and engineering may be complex, but it is made of steel.

The case for support

The Business Secretary’s mantra is that UK scientists are going to have to do more with less—a false and hopeless aspiration, for two reasons.

First, UK scientists are already adept at working with less and it is difficult to see how more can be squeezed from the system. The UK government spends about 0.55 % of GDP on research and development, less than almost all its major competitors. But UK-based scientists do spectacularly well with the little they have. Though we have only 1% of the world’s scientists, we produce nearly 8% of all research papers (and claim over 14% of the most highly cited research). We produce more papers per pound spent on research than any other G8 nation (for details see the Royal Society’s valuable and readable report, The Scientific Century).

Second, that magnificent productivity—of which this nation should be heart-swellingly proud—is based on an extraordinarily competitive funding system in which only the top 20% of applications are supported. The competition for funds is already so intense that many excellent project proposals are rejected. If Mr Cable wants to make efficiency savings he could well start with finding ways of preventing the morale-breaking waste and frustration that comes from preparing and peer-reviewing high-quality applications that are not going to be funded.

The wisdom of cutting research into science and engineering also has to be questioned. History has repeatedly shown that investment in these areas pays dividends (see ref 21 in The Scientific Century). More recent examples bear this out: Finland and South Korea both endured economic crises in the 1990s but responded by investing in R&D while constraining public expenditure, and emerged with strengthened knowledge-based economies.

Writing in The Times ($) last week, Professor Colin Blakemore highlighted another case:

Singapore…decided about ten years ago to ramp up investment in research. It now spends nearly 1% of its GDP on publicly funded science, and that has led to industry investing 1.5% of GDP. Singapore’s GDP grew by 18.1% in the first half of 2010. But that’s not the only outcome. Investing in science has put Singapore on the international map of knowledge and has raised its status inestimably.

This sort of stimulus also works in the UK. Haskell and Willis showed that government investment, particularly in funding of the Research Councils, is effective for increasing productivity.

All of this should chime with the government’s stated aim of re-balancing the economy, to make us less dependent on financial services and to build on our very real strengths in the high-tech sector. Both the Royal Society and the Ingenious Britain report by the Conservative Party’s own adviser, entrepreneur James Dyson, point to the need for the government to take a long view of investment in R&D, something that does not always come easily to Ministers working to a five-year election cycle.

Looking to the future, as well as the immediate problem of rescuing the economy we face massive technical challenges, such as energy shortages, pollution, global warming and keeping an ageing population well fed and in good health. These problems will only be tackled by working from a strong base in science and technology: quality research coupled with a highly educated work-force.

Our recovery also depends on the investment decisions made by our competitors. The UK, alone among the richest nations of the world, did not make specific provision for science spending as part of its stimulus package in response to the global downturn.

It is not just our traditional competitors that we need to watch. China, India and Brazil have spent heavily on science in the past several years, emerging as powerful players on the world’s scientific stage. China, for example, has increased its spending on science by about 20% per year since 1999 and is expected to become the leading producer of scientific papers by 2020.

Industrial R&D is already migrating to countries like China and India. For now the UK remains an attractive destination for inward investment in high-tech industries, but deep cuts at the roots of our prized knowledge-based economy could cripple us for years to come as we struggle to catch up.

A choice

For those reasons I ask UK scientists to stand up and be counted—and to give enthusiastic support to the Science is Vital campaign. I recognize that choosing to do so is not necessarily an easy decision. Scientists are citizens too and are affected like everyone else by the economic crisis. We are tax-payers, mothers and fathers; we get ill and need healthcare; we get old and need pensions; our children need schooling; we need a transport infrastructure and local services; we go to libraries; we enjoy museums and art galleries. But all of that public good depends on having the money to pay for it.

The government and the people of this country have truly hard choices ahead. But all the evidence I have seen is that science is a vital part of the solution.

Stephen Curry is a Professor of Structural Biology. His research largely focuses on uncovering the structures and mechanisms of proteins involved in the replication of RNA viruses such as foot-and-mouth disease virus. He has worked in France, the USA and, for the past 15 years, has run a protein crystallography laboratory at Imperial College.