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Science must shed its elitist image if it is to survive the “polarising debates” stoking turmoil in US institutions, the outgoing head of the main UK research funding body has warned.
Scientists need to show they are “not just people in white coats rattling test tubes”, but a source of high quality jobs and public service innovation at a time of government spending squeezes, said Prof Dame Ottoline Leyser, UK Research and Innovation chief executive.
Leyser’s comments as she nears the end of her five-year term highlight growing domestic and international pressures on the UK’s scientific community. Britain’s public finances are being pinched by sluggish economic growth and rising military spending commitments, while US President Donald Trump’s administration has made big funding cuts.
“Part of the challenge with research and innovation is that it is viewed very deeply in Western culture as a sort of elitist shiny activity that goes on ‘over there’,” Leyser said in an interview. “[We need to] bring the entire endeavour back into the centre space in our culture so that everybody can see the extraordinary opportunity it provides — the huge diversity of jobs, not just people in white coats rattling test tubes.”
The disruption to US science was creating “significant anxiety” there and having a knock-on impact internationally, Leyser said. People feared research and innovation were being “drawn into broader, very polarising debates that are currently dominating world politics” after events such as the Covid-19 pandemic, inflation surges and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, she added.
She echoed anecdotes from British academics and research institutions suggesting researchers were being deterred from studying and working in the US. The Trump administration has announced it will slash funding for research at universities and public bodies such as the National Institutes of Health.
“If a nation isn’t providing the kind of environment people want to do the kind of exciting research and innovation activity that they want to pursue, then people will move — absolutely,” Leyser said. Pressed on whether UKRI was being approached by US scientists about possible opportunities, she said it was “a very active topic of conversation”, without elaborating further.
British science faces its own recruitment difficulties, including concerns among research institutions that the UK immigration system is a deterrent to overseas experts. The House of Lord’s science and technology committee warned last month that the country was committing an “act of national self-harm” because of high visa fees and restrictions on international students bringing family members to the UK.
The visa system and costs were “undoubtedly an issue for all kinds of people wanting to come to work in the UK”, Leyser said. But the Global Talent Visa introduced in 2020 was “increasing in visibility” and was a “very powerful route” for attracting researchers, she added.
Some researchers fear potential spending curbs for science, including UKRI’s near-£9bn annual budget. Leyser said it would be a “mistake” to scale back science funding or see it as part of a “zero sum” game in which it is pitted against spending on core public services. The question should not be “should we fund science, or should we fund buses or teachers”, she said, but “how should we fund science in a way that benefits everybody, including teachers and the transport system”.
Scientific innovation could improve efficiency in public services, she said, pointing to a UKRI-backed project launched during the pandemic to shorten cleaning times for ambulances. Hygiene Pro Clean, one of the companies to respond to a call for technological improvements, claims its Ultrasonic Atomiser cut cleaning time by more than 75 per cent.
Leyser, who is on secondment from her post as Regius Professor of Botany at Cambridge university, is only the second person to hold the top job at UKRI. The organisation was created in 2018 in an effort to bring the sprawling world of research funding under the oversight of one body.
She will be succeeded in the summer by Prof Sir Ian Chapman, chief executive of the UK Atomic Energy Authority. Leyser rejected criticisms made by some scientists that UKRI funds too wide a range of research, rather than taking a more focused approach on areas of particular UK strength. It was essential to fund a “creativity crucible” of fundamental scientific discovery, Leyser said, as well as harnessing the power of “transformative technologies” such as engineering biology.
Leyser gave a robust defence of measures to increase diversity, equity and inclusion in science, in the face of the Trump administration’s aggressive termination of DEI programmes in the US government.
“There are a whole variety of reasons why equality, diversity and inclusion are important — and one of them is that they drive excellence,” she said.
“We need to create teams with different experiences and different approaches to drive the disruptive breakthroughs that are really going to shape the future,” Leyser said. “The idea that DEI is some kind of woke agenda is the wrong way to think about it . . . The whole point about what we’re trying to achieve is an environment where difference and disagreement are good things.”
