• Question: Do you feel like your area of science will really benefit the human race as a whole? Or, completely honestly, would the money be better spent helping those in need?

    Asked by nancyc to Ben, Jony, Katharine, Mark, Peter on 21 Nov 2011. This question was also asked by sinnita, ilikescientist8.
    • Photo: Jony Hudson

      Jony Hudson answered on 18 Nov 2011:

      That’s a good question!

      I don’t think it’s an either-or question, but rather I think it’s important to get the balance right.

      We definitely need to spend money on science. It’s the foundation of engineering and medicine, and we need to keep that foundation strong. Doing science is also a great way to train young people to think analytically and learn how to solve really difficult problems. People with training in science go on to do all sorts of things, and society and our economy wouldn’t run well without them. Curiosity is also one of the things that makes us human, so I think that it’s important that we keep on trying to discover new things.

      It’s also very important to directly help those that are need. It’s very difficult to think that we’re spending money on science that could be used to directly help people.

      But we have to, because if we stop spending money on science then it wouldn’t take long before we’re all in trouble, and none of us would have the money to help anyone because our economy would suffer.

      So, we have to get the balance right – to try and spend enough on science that we build a solid foundation for our future prosperity, but spend enough on helping people right now that people don’t suffer unduly. Making this decision is, I imaging, really difficult, and one of the many difficult things that our politicians have to do!

    • Photo: Peter Williams

      Peter Williams answered on 19 Nov 2011:

      Already does – i bet there are products in the room you are in right now that have benefitted from work on particle accelerators. Steel, concrete, data storage, chocolate.

      I would argue that there is no better way to help people in need than to spend it on scientific research. For example, more productive crops keep millions from starvation right now.

      More locally, we had a machine called the Synchrotron Radiation Source here at Daresbury from 1980-2008. This had ~£0.5 billion of public money spent on it. An independent report found that this investment generated at least 20 times that amount in economic beneft for the UK. Science spending is the safest bet you can make.

      Our country only spends 1% of it’s GDP on research. The figure in Japan and Germany is 3%. i think the argument for tripling our science spend is totally conclusive.

    • Photo: Mark Basham

      Mark Basham answered on 20 Nov 2011:

      Hi nancyc,

      So Diamond Light Source where I work is the facility which took over from the Synchrotron Radiation Source(SRS) at Daresbury which Peter mentioned. The SRS is a bit of a hard act to follow, but we are trying really hard to keep up the good work.

      As Peter says the great thing about Synchrotron Light Sources is that they can be used for virtually everything, Just check out the pages on the diamond website which go into the great range of science we work on.

      http://www.diamond.ac.uk/Home/Science.html

      So all in all, in my opinion money spent on science now is money saved helping those in need in the future.

    • Photo: Katharine Schofield

      Katharine Schofield answered on 21 Nov 2011:

      I think the others have given some really good examples of how science benefits the human race. Here at the research councils we are always trying to look out for ways in which the science we fund can help towards solutions to the challenges we face in healthcare, energy, security and the environment. I also believe that it is culturally important to support science – as humans we are naturally curious and I think it would make for an intellectually unhealthy society if we didn’t support science research at some level.

      You are absolutely right that you have to find a balance between helping the people who are immediately in need, and spending money on science which is more speculative and long-term, but ulimately will help a huge number of people to live safer, healthier lives.

      Take a look at this diagram – it’s a brilliant way to visualise where all the Government’s money goes:
      http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/documents/2011/11/08/Public_spending_2710.pdf
      It’s a ‘blobbogram’ showing all the things the Government spends money on. The bigger the blob, the more money goes into it. The science blob is towards the bottom in orange/yellow, and then the research councils blob is an offshoot from that. You can make your own mind up about whether the relative size of the different blobs is right or not!

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