
U.K. science minister says DARPA-like agency is in the works - hhs
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/10/uk-science-minister-says-darpa-agency-works
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dan-robertson
The reason that the uk want to set up a research funding body is that after
brexit the EU will not be funding research projects in the uk.

There are a few things to note here:

1\. Because the funding body doesn’t exist, it can be described fit whatever
characteristics the government chooses, whether or not they could actually
create such a body.

2\. Because of the current state of the government, this should really be
looked at more like an election promise than an actual proposal. In particular
the government can’t really pass any legislation at the moment and will likely
go into an election soon.

3\. On the other hand it seems like a weird election promise. I think most
voters don’t particularly care about science funding and surely almost all of
them won’t know about DARPA or ARPA. So maybe it’s trying to persuade
scientists to stay in the uk. Or maybe it’s a new minister trying to make his
mark. Or maybe it really is just the plan for how the government want to do
research. Or maybe it’s targeted at academics who hate the bureaucracy of
grant applications.

——— ——— ———

My understanding of the current research funding organisations is that they
require a huge amount of work to be done by academics on grant proposals and
on further bureaucracy during the research. (In particular there are more
proposals than there is money so one must write the best proposal one can to
place highly. Also because of the limited funds in the budget, the funding
body wants enough paperwork to get its money’s worth). My understanding of
typical military funding in the US is that they give good money but they
require frequent evidence of actual results. They also mainly want to find
things with reasonable applications to the military. My understanding of
(D)ARPA is that they threw money at various projects with reasonably to very
broad research proposals, often in basic science, hoping something good would
come out of it.

I’m not sure how well a DARPA model would work across all research in the uk.
There are lots of fields and they are different in what and how they research.
It feels like lots of people could lose out on basically any funding. And so
we would lose out on their research.

On the other hand the incentives for researchers (to spend all their time on
grant applications) aren’t great. One weird suggestion I see from time to time
is to put all grant proposals into either a good enough or not good enough
bucket, and then somehow randomly allocate grants between the good proposals.

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thawaway1837
Everything you hear from the government, ever since Boris Johnson was selected
as the PM, is geared towards elections. Winning an early election was his
entire plan from day 1.

In that context, this looks like a low cost effort to potentially influence a
small minority that may be influenced. Y science funding. But more importantly
to provide a talking point to negate at least 1 argument against leaving the
EU, whether in reality it does so or not.

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NeedMoreTea
Kind of hilarious really. Or pitiful.

We had the National Research Development Corporation (to patent and
commercialise research) and the various defence research establishments. Gave
multiple successful innovations, including the hovercraft and commercial use
of carbon fibre. Also involved in the Miles M52 that government essentially
gave to the US. It became the Bell X-1 - compare the photos - X-1 was famous
for some reason. What's more, those defence establishments had world renowned
reputation.

Thatcher sold the lot.

I call hogwash on this idea though - it would require government research
funding. The Tory party has been allergic to that since 1979.

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rayray07
Dominic Cummings (Johnson’s top advisor)has blogged extensively about how
Britain needs to be a leader in hard science and of his admiration for DARPA
model. As Per Dan’s comment - the attraction is that it avoids/minimises the
inefficiencies of the standard academic funding focus on submitting proposals
and then publish or die.

Cummings blog is worth a read. The content is not very political beyond a key
refrain that nearly all current political structures, processes and people
aren’t fit for purpose for the modern world and especially the future. For
what it’s worth, I voted remain.

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noodlesUK
Doesn’t DSTL already do DARPA-like funding to some extent?

