
UK scientists dropped from EU projects because of post-Brexit funding fears - bpierre
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/jul/12/uk-scientists-dropped-from-eu-projects-because-of-post-brexit-funding-fears
======
wrong_variable
Large Multinationals like Unilever, even for incremental decisions - like
changing the type of light bulb, takes years to execute. This is why a large
change in their business is so difficult and you need a very good CEO ( ask
Marissa Mayer )

The decision UK made to leave the EU is akin for Unilever to switch from
selling shampoos to selling software - and we are not talking about a
multinational with 100,000 employees. We are talking about an entire country.

The UK -> EU export is 40% but even the rest of the 60% happens through EU
treaties with other non-EU countries.

Not only will the EU trade treaty need to be renegotiated, but so does the 50
other trade treaty with other nations - those treaties took a lot of time and
over 600+ negotiators to write, the UK only have 30 negotiators and about 2
years.

A reworking of the economy usually results is a lot of unemployment and
retraining. Imagine if the C standard library made a small change in some
function. Retraining means public investment or as the austerity people put it
- deficit spending - not sure how much appetite the UK govt has to do
something like that.

Regardless of how much people hate on Java and Oracle - if they suddenly
disappeared it would be chaos and lose of GDP for many years before we retool
our software on Python/Go etc.

Also there is uncertainty - usually the horizon for bringing new laws into
action are declared ahead of time by 4-5 years to give people/businesses time
to plan.

~~~
flexie
I talked to a senior diplomat recently. He said that when talking to diplomats
from China, Russia, the US in the beginning of his career some 30 years ago,
nobody asked about the EU opinion on issues. In the last 10 years, however, he
never heard "what does Britain or France or Germany think about XYZ" but only
"What does the EU think".

What some leavers don't realise is that the entire world had gotten used to
dealing with the EU as a whole and that the world probably doesn't care that
much about what Britain (or England/Wales) thinks about tariffs, terrorism,
refugees, wars, human rights, etc.

Britain will have to follow the EU on many issues if it wants access to the
common market.

Britain is going from having a very strong voice in a very powerful
organisation that the world has to deal with to being a rather small country
the world can largely ignore.

~~~
bpyne
I know little of Britain's political system. If Article 50 isn't being invoked
until the end of the year, can Britain have another national vote on Brexit
before then?

~~~
monk_e_boy
Technically yes. But I imagine that if they did everyone would be incensed and
vote leave - to send a message. Whoever was in power at the time would be
hoisted out in short order.

~~~
vidarh
What makes you think that? The vote was met with such shock that it has re-
raised the prospect of Scottish independence, and caused calls for referendums
on Ireland, and has triggered the start of a small movement for independence
for London (yes, most of the people who signed the change.org petition
probably did it as a joke/out of anger, but there are groups organising more
serious endeavours), and the signals all over the place is drastic increased
devolution for London to placate anger here.

More than 4 million people signed a petition for a new referendum

On top of that we now know that most of the promises from the leave camp were
flat out lies, and they've basically been shown to not have the faintest idea
what they want to achieve.

I'm sure some would switch and vote leave out of spite, but frankly I don't
think the vote was fair or democratic to begin with - it presented a false
choice, in that "leave" could campaign on anything under the sun, with
contradicting ideas about what leaving actually meant, and we see now the
problems that causes: Did the 52% want EEA membership? Did they want full on
isolationism? Something in between? We don't know. And we don't know how the
results would be if they had to pick a specific option, but it is highly
unlikely that they'd be unchanged.

~~~
monk_e_boy
It's sort of like D&D. Everyone in the country had rolled their character.
Assume one roll of a D20. People who rolled 13+ were doing OK in life. 19s and
20s were rich. 1 to 12s are poor.

Cameron (our DM) came along and gave us all a free re-roll.

People with 10 or less voted yes. 11 - 15 were about 50/50 depending on risk
aversion. 16 - 20 voted no.

The numbers are almost always going to sway in favour of change, there are too
many people down at the bottom.

Sure, more options on how to leave would have been amazing, left-exit was
interesting, green-exit was also interesting. Right-racist-exit was bonkers,
but people liked it.

But remember that remain-the-same and remain-and-re-negotiate had both been
tried. And for millions and millions of people it was shit. Utter shit. Credit
card chomping, crappy zero hour job, minimum wage, second hand clothes, crappy
car, no life insurance, no pension, crap.

Next time you're in an Oxfam shop look at us. Picking over dead man suits for
our next job interview. The shame of it. Jobs gone. High streets gone. Only
option is to move to London away from elderly parents, our kids, our friends.

~~~
mpweiher
_And for millions and millions of people it was shit. Utter shit. Credit card
chomping, crappy zero hour job, minimum wage, second hand clothes, crappy car,
no life insurance, no pension, crap._

Yep.

Except for one teeny weeny insignificantly minor detail: these things have
_nothing whatsoever_ to do with the EU, and everything to do with the
austerity/de-industrialization policies of neo-liberal UK governments,
primarily Tory, but to a somewhat less extent also New-Labour.

And the EU was, if anything, a _counter_ to those forces, with structural
funds, with labor standards, with investments by non-UK firms in the de-
industrialized parts of the UK for access to the common market etc.

And leaving the EU will make these things worse.

So voting against the EU to protest these conditions is not even cutting off
your nose to spite your face, it's cutting off your nose to spite someone
else's face!

While it deserves the word "pathetic" I can't bring myself to it. It really is
just sad. Very, very sad.

~~~
monk_e_boy
what other option was there? I'm genuinely interested. The vote card said IN
and OUT.

Pathetic? Name calling, wow that's low. I love how butt hurt you are. The more
furious rich people are the better the decision feels.

~~~
coroxout
There probably should have been some more options on the paper, seeing as how
people voted Leave for many disparate reasons and with many disparate ideas
(or no idea at all) of what to do instead, and there is no way to keep all of
them happy.

In fact there may be no way to keep any of them happy, since apparently many
of them voted Leave for impossible/EU-unrelated reasons: to keep non-EU
immigration down; to spend money we won't even have on the NHS; because they
don't like what the UK government has been doing and will keep doing outside
the EU with even greater impunity, etc.

"Pathetic" 1\. Arousing sadness, compassion, or sympathy, esp. through
vulnerability or sadness; pitiable.

Seems fair enough. "Name-calling"?

"Rich people": I work for a university as support staff. I earn under the
median UK wage and surely well under the median HN wage. We've had deeper and
deeper cuts year on year for the past several years and post-Brexit an even
bigger chunk of our budget looks like disappearing along with our best
academics and researchers, not to mention other support staff, foreign
language teachers/cataloguers/negotiators, etc. Education and research careers
have been a route into the middle class for many and it's a shame to see that
threatened - even more of a shame when the people who voted for it, the press,
politicians have hardly even acknowledged it's a problem.

But have fun assuming that only rich people are interested in science or can
get any benefit from cooperating with colleagues elsewhere in Europe...

------
codecurve
I just finished an EU funded CompSci Masters degree in Wales, the poorest
country in the UK and it's devastatingly sad to think that once the EU
research funding stops, those opportunities will be gone forever for future
students coming through the department.

There aren't enough large tech companies in the area for there to be any
sponsored degrees available, which probably means that when the funding
finishes, the research will start to dry up and the interesting researchers
will leave with it. Take away the research and what's left is a department of
third-rate lecturers. That's not an inspiring way to learn.

Will the NHS get some of the £350m? Maybe, maybe not. It's likely to be up for
discussion. Will the post-Brexit government allot research funding for CS
departments in North Wales? Not a chance.

~~~
misja111
The UK is a net payer to the EU. For instance in 2015 alone, UK's net payment
to the EU was about 8.5 billion pounds.

So after the Brexit there will be more than enough money to continue the
research funding. But as you mention already, it is another question if the
government will be wanting to pay it. But is this really such a bad thing? The
difference will that instead of the EU, the UK itself will decide which of its
research projects it wants to fund.

~~~
nicktelford
That's assuming tax revenue remains the same, which _all_ economists agree
will not be the case.

Whether or not Brexit will boost public finances is entirely down to how much
of an impact it'll have on the UK economy. No one knows what the impact will
be, but almost everyone agrees that it will be negative... though no one
agrees to what extent.

So there's really two questions here: a) just how much more/less public money
will be available? and, b) if there is more, how much of it will go to
research?

No one knows the answers to either question, not even the government.

edit: a very quick back-of-envelope calculation based on the forecast tax
receipts for 2014-2015 of 648.1bn[1]: 8.5bn makes up a whopping 1.31% of tax
receipts. Unless I'm mistaken, tax receipts correlate strongly with the
strength of the economy, so any more than a ~1.3% decline in the economy _as a
consequence of Brexit_ , would consume the "savings".

[1]: [http://www.ifs.org.uk/bns/bn09.pdf](http://www.ifs.org.uk/bns/bn09.pdf)

~~~
arethuza
"That's assuming tax revenue remains the same"

And it's assuming that a new government is inclined to take the money and give
it to the kinds of projects that the EU used to give it to - I can think of a
lot of reasons why that might not happen.

~~~
monk_e_boy
A lot of EU funding went to stupid stuff.

------
ThePhysicist
A few months ago I attended the "Quantum Europe" conference in Amsterdam,
where the new EU flagship project on quantum computing was kicked off and
celebrated. With a total funding volume of 1 BN € this initiative is huge, and
there are several British universities and research centers involved. Now with
the BREXIT it's unclear whether they will be able to still participate in this
project, which will start in 2018. And if they can't it will be at least
doubtful if the UK government will allot them a similar amount of funding for
quantum technologies...

I can only start to imagine how disappointed these researchers must be now, as
winning the EU flagship was such a huge deal to everyone involved and took
years of preparation from dozens of industry & research partners. It really is
a shame.

~~~
sievebrain
So tell the EU to let British universities continue to participate regardless
of EU membership.

If you believe they will say no for purely political reasons, then there's the
problem. There are lots of academic collaborations that span the globe. It's
only the EU that artificially ties quantum computing research to immigration
policies.

 _edit: There is a massive amount of political downvoting going on in this
thread. Voting is NOT intended to express agreement or disagreement._

~~~
pjc50
As the sibling comment points out, the participation involves money. If the UK
stops paying into the EU, it stops recieving payouts.

~~~
sievebrain
But it hasn't stopped paying in money, and the EU could easily strike a
separate deal to allow continued participation in Horizon 2020 if it wanted
to.

My point stands: the EU allocates research funding based on political concerns
that have nothing to do with science. And that needs to stop.

~~~
lispm
Research/Science is one of THE main political topics for every country and
also for the EU (and other European institutions involved in science).
'Science' was never and will never be free of political concerns. It's just
the opposite.

> continued participation in Horizon 2020

My impression was that the UK wanted to distance itself from the 'EU
superstate'. Research is just one topic. Get rid of centrally planned and
funded research projects, which are for the political benefit of the EU. ;-)

> if it wanted to.

'cherry picking'. Probably easier for Britain to concentrate on non-EU
research projects. Since they save money from not paying to the EU, the UK can
now freely invest that money into their own research projects and attract
partners.

------
lhnz
Is it really likely that Oxford, Cambridge and other Russell Group
universities are no longer going to be allowed to do Science alongside
European universities?

Is Theresa May and the conservative government against investing in Science?

It seems to me that most of this is is just knee-jerking, and it's likely that
there are quite a few people who will work to ensure that things continue to
work as they should.

Edit: That University Ranking chart posted earlier says it all really. The US
and UK dominate the charts - you don't see EU universities until page two.
This is just a few people cutting their noses off to spite their face.

~~~
PLenz
They'll of course be allowed to do the research - the question is who is going
to pay for it as much of the funding comes from the EU.

~~~
endeavour
EU money doesn't come out of thin air. It comes from taxpayers. The UK is a
net contributor to the EU so the UK government could choose to fund all
current commitments and still be better off.

~~~
mpweiher
Except for...revenues are not going to stay the same.

For example, George Osborne has just proposed to slash the corp. tax rate from
20% to 15%, in order reduce (not eliminate) the almost certain reduction in UK
investment.

Last year, CT net receipts were £ 42 billion[1]. At the current 20% rate. At
15%, that would be £ 31.5 billion, for a reduction of £ 10.5 billion. Let's
divide that by 52 weeks and you get £ 200 million. Which happens to be £ 10
million more than the UK's net contribution to the EU budget.

So all your "savings" just evaporated just with corporation tax _alone_ , and
that's assuming that Osborne's plan works and there is no reduction in
activity/investment, which is dubious.

[1]
[https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...](https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/524565/Corporation_Tax_Statistics_May_2016.pdf)

~~~
endeavour
It isn't that simple. There isn't a linear relationship between the tax % and
the revenue to the treasury. Lower taxes encourage more companies to set up in
the UK.

We saw this recently in the UK when the top rate of income tax was raised to
50% and the income to the treasury actually fell.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve)

~~~
mpweiher
As I wrote, the tax cuts are being proposed to compensate for lower investment
due to brexit, and it is unclear whether they will be able to compensate
fully.

~~~
endeavour
Ok but the numbers you quoted assumed a linear relationship.

In no way is it "almost certain" that investment in the UK will decrease. The
evidence currently suggests the complete opposite. Look at the performance of
the FTSE100 since the referendum to see the flood of foreign investment coming
into the UK listed companies thanks to the weaker currency.

I'd also point out that decreasing tax rates is the exact opposite of what the
chancellor said he would do before the referendum.

------
joeyspn
As a founder who tried to apply and build a couple of consortiums with my
previous startup, for FP7 and Horizon2020 project funding, I totally
understand the fears. This is the key part of the article:

> _Only 12% of bids for Horizon 2020 funds are successful, a rate that falls
> by more than half in highly competitive areas. Given the low probability of
> winning funds at the best of times, Gorman said it was natural risk aversion
> to be cautious of UK partners. UK politicians simply don’t understand this,
> and think it is ‘business as usual’, at least until negotiations have been
> completed. They are wrong, the problems start right now_

Brexit could endanger a whole project if british companies are members of your
consortium. There's quite a bit of research money at stake, and some companies
depend _a lot_ on this kind of funding.

Once you find the companies that are going to partner with you and apply, then
starts a long journey together, of several years (2 to 5) until the projects
are finished... you can't just start the projects, and "do business as usual"
and then see how UK companies are forced to abandon ship after few months for
political reasons. The projects could collapse, and this is too much
uncertainty.

IMO until the doubts are 100% cleared and we have a new EU <-> UK treaty for
science collabs in place, many EU companies will be reluctant to partner with
UK companies/institutions. Brexit is bad for UK research and UK scientists
knew this...

[https://www.facebook.com/scientistsforeu](https://www.facebook.com/scientistsforeu)

------
Fej
It's always a tragedy when political maneuvering gets in the way of good
science, and you know, advancing the human race.

~~~
wangarific
We have enough trouble overcoming the challenges of nature, we don't really
need people making it harder for us.

------
pluma
A lot of these concerns have been dismissed as "fearmongering". This case
shows that whether the fear is justified or not, it affects the behaviour both
in the UK and out.

This is the real reason experts were warning about the consequences:
perception trumps reality. There may not be a direct impact, but the fear of
an impact affects behaviour which in turn can create the exact impact itself.

------
torrent-of-ions
Again, this is exactly what was expected and we were told by the experts.

~~~
mason240
Exactly, they warned that the EU would be as punitive as possible. Their
reaction to Brexit it shows that was necessary.

~~~
mpweiher
Wut?

There are certain benefits you get by being a member of this club.

I am leaving your club.

Then you no longer get the benefits that members of the club get.

YOU ARE UNFAIRLY PUNISHING ME!!!!

~~~
sievebrain
It makes no sense for relations between countries to be structured as an
exclusive "club". This just retards progress and leads to stagnation when it
becomes impossible to get all the members of the "club" to agree.

~~~
epistasis
It makes every bit of sense. When governments differ, the laws differ, and the
free exchange of research money is slowed.

When you're in the same "club" you can be assured of how things will go. When
a country decides that it wants to leave the club because they want to have
their own rules that are different, and that they don't want to share
finances, then that makes agreements take longer.

~~~
sievebrain
Free exchange of research money has no requirement to be connected to
immigration or trade policy, these are unrelated things. Countries can easily
collaborate on research without something like the EU, as evidenced by the
number of CS papers I read that are for example USA/Israeli collaborations.

The EU is failing because its blind, ideological insistence on connecting lots
of unrelated things together to make an artificial club (really: the
beginnings of a new country). The EU's petulant "retaliation" is treated by
far too many as a given, when in reality it is a policy choice driven by a
quasi-religious devotion to an abstract vision.

------
egocodedinsol
> One university said it had serious concerns about its ability to recruit
> research fellows for current projects.

I have heard rumblings of researchers' reluctance to work in the UK due to
concerns about funding availability in 3 years. No one I know personally, but
I have heard that active offers are being reconsidered.

If the UK can demonstrate a commitment to funds, that would mitigate the
reluctance, but given recent events uncertainty is high to say the least. And
science is uncertain enough already. Put another way, the UK might have to
commit much more resources to attract researchers than before, to compensate
for the added risk.

------
JohnStrange
If there is one deal that can be negotiated successfully, then it's probably
to continue existing science cooperation. Still, as a researcher myself, I'd
also be wary about participating UK institutions in a Horizon2020 project
right now, until more details have been negotiated and Article 50 has been
triggered. Nobody knows for sure now what's going to happen, and the
administrative burdens are already high enough as is.

------
djlastword
There is nothing discriminatory about this. They broke up with us and are on
their way out, of course we're not going to keep paying their bills.

I think there is a lot of truth in this "British organisations will have to
bring more to the table to justify the risk of them being included in a
consortium", not only related to science but business in general. If EU
businesses are supposed to trade with non EU members, of course they need to
offer more.

------
awestley
I wonder how many other things like this will be impacted. By "like this" I
mean not terribly obvious, but when you hear about it; you realize it should
have been.

------
antr
Unfortunately it's understandable.

~~~
anf
How so?

~~~
jarito
It discusses this in the article. The challenge here is related to funding
that is primary delivered by the EU structures. Now that the UK is leaving the
EU, there is some concern that projects that contain UK representation, or are
lead by UK researchers, will not be funded on time.

This is due to the confusion around what Brexit will mean, how long it will
take, how far it will go and what agreements the EU and UK will sign.

~~~
dekhn
Right, but while there is confusion and lack of clarity, it's not clear that
immediately removing UK investigators is appropriate. Some amount of this is
just petulance or telegraphing unhappiness, rather than rational decision
making.

~~~
wnkrshm
The proposals for the big EU calls like Horizon 2020 contain detailed work
packages and plans for how the research effort is going to be orchestrated to
be successful. To my knowledge, the quality of this planning is a decisive
factor in the acceptance of a proposal.

If a research partner drops out halfway through the project, the whole effort
may fall apart - and with research institutions and industrial partners
booking the alloted funds each month, such a failure is hard to justify for
any EU officer.

Of course, it is ridiculous to simply require that the UK partners be dropped
from the project without a significant change of plan or adequate
substitution.

Edit: Also, the aim of these projects is always to strengthen industry or
scientific progress in the participating countries - so politically, if the UK
really drops out this would be giving something for free to a competitor.

~~~
dekhn
I'm having trouble seeing why UK partners here are specifically going to drop
out of a funded research project simply because Brexit.

~~~
Symbiote
They may struggle to recruit staff needed for the positions, or even lose
existing staff¹. For

Successful projects often lead to future projects, so people thinking of
projects in a few years time might not want to start collaboration in the UK,
at least if there's an alternative elsewhere in the EU.

¹ For example, the UK lost me — after the 2014 European Parliament elections
in the UK, where UKIP won most votes, I started looking for a job elsewhere.

------
DiabloD3
This isn't really political.

If the UK exits, they are no longer paying their EU club dues, which means the
EU will no longer fund UK people/project in return; and it is easier to
preemptively block further UK funding that hasn't already been funded and then
(re-)fund it in the near-future if Brexit doesn't happen (no reason currently
to think it won't, the UK just needs to get their shit together and actually
do it), than it is for the reverse, semi-funding UK people/projects until
Article 50 is signed by the UK.

This is the path of least bullshit, as far as I can tell. Given that the UK
has to leave the EU to survive, wants to leave the EU, and the EU has given
them significant reason to go ahead and leave the EU and not go down with the
ship. I'm trying not to judge anyone, but France/German bailout of Greece, and
the failure to save Spain in any respectable manner; all the while Iceland did
the correct thing (and from the viewpoint as an American, our founding fathers
would be applauding Iceland), the EU's economy is going to have their own
Japan-style Lost Decade over this.

Side note: The point of investments is that they are not guaranteed. This is
why investments have return, and there is an entire industry around calculated
risk and the mathematics that go into it. As in, a low risk investment pays
little (but most likely will pay it), a high risk investment must, in turn,
have the chance of paying out a lot (but also has a high risk of paying
nothing).

Given that (something everyone on HN should know, given HN was started as YC's
news outlet, and grew into a rather nice community later on), if an investment
fails, it must fail if that is the only way out. Continually bailing out bad
investments is almost literally theft from everyone else who _didn 't_ fund
that investment.

FDIC in the US exists for a reason: disconnect people's non-investment money
from banks being commercial enterprises, and let people rationally choose to
invest (or not invest) using a safe and well understood system. Telling Wall
Street (or the European equivalents) that it's okay to just aim for the stars
and pretend to get there every single time, teaches them that hyperinflation
is okay and the little people don't matter.

The little people matter, because there's several thousand of us for every one
of them, and the only "us vs them" mentality going on isn't some white collar
vs blue collar shit, and it never will be, no matter how much CNN, Fox, and
MSNBC bang that drum; instead, the only "us vs them" mentality I see going on
is really is the 99% vs the 0.1%.

When push comes to shove, we shove back with several times more force. I'm
already seeing an unprecedented push for locally
grown/raised/manufactured/built/whatevered food/products/services. As in, city
first, metro/county/whatever area second, state third, region of the US
fourth, the US fifth, and first world countries that don't treat their
citizens like shit sixth, with India/China/etc being firmly rejected as they
are vehicles for legalized slavery, and only serve to enrich the already
enriched.

There has always been this movement, but now I'm seeing poor people, people
who simply can't afford to do this... doing it. And it's working. Hell, I'm
not rich, I'm not even middle class (I'm probably the poorest regular on HN),
and I'm buying $3 a dozen eggs because the money stays local, and the guy
raising the chickens buys Blue Seal seed, which they themselves are largely
anti-anti-nutritional (ie, not using garbage protein and fat sources, and not
loading it full of corn and soy), are medium businessy (13 mills across the
US, maybe only employing a thousand people across all of them), and only small
local businesses are dealers for it. Their chicken feed is higher quality (==
healthier chickens that live longer and produce more, and == better eggs with
more nutrition, AND == more eggs), and less expensive than the garbage
Purina/Cargill produces and sells to small time farmers.

So, yeah. There is my rant for the day. Good morning, everyone.

------
kriro
I'd actually go hard for British (elite) universities as partners for the next
round of Horizon. It'll take longer until they get no funding and others will
avoid them. Most importantly there's still going to be plenty of Brits from
said universities reviewing the applications :D

------
Mayzie
This is sad. :-(

------
gaius
The UK is still in the EU for at least 2 more years, and discrimination
against another EU citizen is illegal.

------
wyager
This sounds more like political retaliatory BS than actual financial concerns.
End the project when you lose funding, not in anticipation of losing funding
at some point in the future.

~~~
avian
European research projects I know about get their expenses reimbursed after
the fact. For example, you buy some (potentially very) expensive equipment,
claim the expenses in the yearly financial report and (if the Commission
accepts your claims after review) receive money to your institution's account.
That can be a year and a half after you had to pay for your equipment and in
the mean time your research institute, university, etc. must cover it for you.
I don't find it surprising that people are anxious to proceed with projects
when there is uncertainty whether they will get their expenses paid in the
end.

~~~
wyager
Interesting. I work in a US research lab and while I do not manage finances, I
am under the impression that we are never in debt.

