The Tomorrow’s Giants conference, jointly hosted by Nature and the Royal Society, was held on 1 July 2010 and focussed on the future of UK science. The meeting was composed of three strands: careers, measurement and assessment, and the future of data. Starting today, I will summarise the main discussion points from each of these areas, beginning with careers. All quotes are paraphrased rather than direct (I was typing as fast as I could, but may have mislaid the odd word). I’ve also combined views from various session (preparatory, feedback and panel debate) into one narrative.

Finding funding

Many delegates bemoaned an increasing focus from grant bodies on translation and impact, rather than core research. There seems to be a tension between short-termism and long-termism in funding scientists. How can we fund research which has no economic deliverables over 5 years, or something that would offer a huge shift but needs 10 years of research? Mechanisms for these scenarios are lacking. Someone also pointed out that a research agenda based on short-term impactful results isn’t the best set-up for stable careers.

“The main issue,” said panellist David Willetts MP, “is not the impact, but the impact agenda – the system of measuring and describing social impact. I’m actually rather sympathetic to the argument that there should be less of that bureaucracy, but people will always need to account for public money.”

Playing to strengths

Another much-discussed theme was the lack of positions in academia for people with high technical expertise, who wouldn’t want to go down the PI route. Do all people have to be trained as leaders? If you have someone with good technical skills (but not leadership) how do you ensure funding for such individuals? There could also be better mechanisms for rewarding and encouraging people who want to make transitions across disciplines.

On the panel debate, Tony Hay of Microsoft Research was asked how the situation in private industry compared with in academia. “You can get sacked!,” he quipped. “Researchers at Microsoft have to do basic research too, but also translate that into a product. There is a tension there, certainly. The career structure is just the same, though. It’s a precarious career structure. It always was. Where we differ is that we have software engineers who sit alongside the researchers, to help build something from the research. That’s invaluable.”

Terence Kealey, Vice-Chancellor of Buckingham University, noted: “People enter the research community expecting that good PhDs or postdocs will be given a good job at the end of that. But we don’t have a national science service, and such jobs are not guaranteed, leading to disappointment.”

Women in Science

One of the biggest perceived barriers to career progression (particularly for women scientists) remains the ‘baby issue’. It is still the case for many that having kids stymies their career. We need to find ways of better incorporating career breaks into career track records and not penalising researchers for starting a family, was the conclusion. One commenter gave a refreshing couterpoint to this much-discussed issue: “Having toddlers can help you manage lab politics.”

It was noted that in many fields women still lag behind men in senior positions. One delegate pointed out that the Wellcome Trust are moving toward a system in which funded scientists are chosen entirely by a confrontational panel interview, which he feared may be more selective for personality traits most often associated with men. After a few tense comments, a senior representative of the Royal Society appealed to ‘facts’. “The RS fellowship changed recently to bring in confrontational interviews (which I wouldn’t want to go through myself) and the number of female fellows increased substantially.”

Finally, it was noted that the RS recently published a book about mothers in science. It was asked: “why were all those women in the book so successful? It seems they were all married to a scientist or engineer”. I expected someone to raise the ‘causation versus correlation’ card at that one, but instead the matter of finding grants to help scientific partners move together was discussed.

Training and mentoring

Nature Editor Phil Campbell kicked things off by asking whether researchers receive all the training they should, and whether mentoring is done well. A range of responses were offered from the floor:

• “There is a lot of training out there if you want it, but many scientists feel exhausted by training already.”
• “I never had any training in writing fellowship or grant proposals.”
• “The efficiency with which people are mentored in their early career is a real issue. The amount of time it takes to learn things in science is enormous. There’s something of a mentality that if you can figure it out, fine. If you can’t, tough.”
• “It’s a shame that people can’t leave science for, say, management, and then easily go back. They could bring real skills to bear.”
• “David Willetts observed that a large portion of Nobel laureates don’t have a ‘standard’ career path.”
• “Training is getting better in my view. There is still the point of view from PIs that this is a bit of a waste of time. But that’s changing.”

Phil Campbell noted that there is a tendency sometimes for people in academia to talk of those who have left as failed academics, rather than successful in their own right. He urged us to counter that view wherever we hear it.

After discussion about scientists moving on to other careers, David Sweeney asserted that he doesn’t buy the view that money is the reason, and that UK scientists are well paid nowadays. You could hear the intake of breath from the audience.

“That’s offensive,” countered one delegate. “Postdocs earn considerably less than most starting salaries in the City. But the real problem is putting pressure on people to do so many things other than their core job. I spend far less time doing what I’m trained to do, which is research. These parts of science grant applications are increasing, while the bit we’re trained for remains static.”

The point was addressed in the panel discussion by Julia Goodfellow, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Kent, who suggested choosing one area of interest beyond core research (such as public outreach), and not trying to take on everything.

If you have opinions about any of these matters, please leave a comment over on the Tomorrow’s Giants discussion forum.