Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

U.K. rejoins Horizon Europe research funding scheme

science.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 246 posts

Re: U.K. rejoins Horizon Europe research funding scheme

#51

Post by walthamstow »

O_nlogn wrote: post #8
tetris11 wrote: post #2

This is great news. I remember when Brexit was announced in my last lab, and at first everything seemed okay, but as the months went on I saw more professor bashing heads or colluding to get those rare precious grants as it became clear that the well was drying up.

Disclaimer: I voted to remain, but this is a great example of misleading/fear mongering by the remain campaign. They very vocally claimed that all the "good bits" of the EU cooperation would be permanently ended by leaving the Union. As evidenced by this news and others, that is untrue. There is clearly room for close cooperation in many areas without surrendering sovereign control over your nation.

Except we did surrender sovereign control over our country.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/trading-and-moving-goods-in-and-...

> Before you move goods between Northern Ireland and non-EU countries (including Great Britain)

We started with borderless free trade from Iceland to Greece and we ended up with customs guidance that pretends that GB and NI are in different countries.

The Brexit Trilemma is alive and well today.

Re: U.K. rejoins Horizon Europe research funding scheme

#52

Post by Longhanks »

atemerev wrote: post #42
bacchus123 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it isn't that we wouldn't want to participate but the EU is connecting our Horizon participation with other topics that have nothing to do with it. So I don't really see us rejoining it anytime soon.

As a small country, Switzerland will not be able to finance its world-class scientific infrastructure independently. It is a catastrophe. International cooperation is crucial in science.

Absolutely agree. It is a disgrace how the EU tries to blackmail smaller countries.

Imagine if Switzerland prohibited all EU scientists from accessing CERN.

Re: U.K. rejoins Horizon Europe research funding scheme

#53

Post by mytailorisrich »

RandomLensman wrote: post #46
mytailorisrich wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If being part of the scheme suddenly makes everything possible then I'd say the system is indeed designed to make things difficult for those not part of the scheme... Let's not kid ourselves, this is geopolitics and influence, not just generous cooperation. Edit: Very strange to observe the reactions to my comment... many of you seem have a knee-jerk, black and white, if not naive, reaction to Brexit and the EU. Both…

Like an club, things for members are different than for non-members. Having a common and agree set of rules makes it easier for the members and more difficult for non-members. I would take issue with the notion of the EU having any geopolitical capabilities, though.

The EU is a geopolitical entity with geopolitical aims. that has always been the case.

You don't disagree with my point re. 'club rules'...

Re: U.K. rejoins Horizon Europe research funding scheme

#54

Post by arrowsmith »

tokai wrote: post #32
dukeyukey wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much as Brits like to denigrate the country, the UK outperforms most of it's neighbours in science and technology. Rejoining Horizon is a boon for European science even if the UK is a net benefactor.

You have any data on that? Reading reports on European research output UK is nothing special. Edit: those corrupt uni ranking lists mean nothing.

According to the US News "Best Global Universities" report [0], which ranks universities for their "academic research performance and their global and regional reputations", the UK has 4 universities (Oxford, Cambridge, UCL, Imperial) in the global top 20. The rest of Europe has zero.

Alternatively, the UK has 6 universities in the global top 40, while the rest of Europe has two (one in the EU, one in Switzerland.)

This isn't new. The British higher education sector has been a world leader for a long, long time. And that's despite the last few decades of funding cuts and declining educational standards - I can only imagine where we'd be in a more sensible timeline.

[0] https://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/se...

Re: U.K. rejoins Horizon Europe research funding scheme

#55

Post by neel_k »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #37
kramerger wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the scheme is there to simplify collaboration across borders and connect research teams with very different skills. While you can still do it outside the EU programs, it will require a lot of administrative work which most universities cannot handle.

If being part of the scheme suddenly makes everything possible then I'd say the system is indeed designed to make things difficult for those not part of the scheme... Let's not kid ourselves, this is geopolitics and influence, not just generous cooperation. Edit: Very strange to observe the reactions to my comment... many of you seem have a knee-jerk, black and white, if not naive, reaction to Brexit and the EU. Both…

Let's translate your comment from scientific research to driving:

> If driving on the road suddenly makes car trips possible, then I'd say that the road is indeed designed to make things more difficult for those not driving on the road.

This is obviously silly, because the road makes car travel easier, not harder. Schemes like Horizon Europe make scientific research easier in similar ways.

For funding agencies to give money to universities, they and the univerisities have to make a whole bunch of critical but basically arbitrary decisions about how to handle the impedance mismatch between their respective organisations' internal finance procedures. Doing this over and over is wasteful of time and effort, and one benefit of big cross-national research funds like this is that a university can make these decisions once, and then don't have to do it over and over again, once for each funding agency in Europe.

Also, generous cooperation is an important part of geopolitics. Cooperation is how you convince your neighbors you are an ally rather than a threat.

Re: U.K. rejoins Horizon Europe research funding scheme

#56

Post by ninjin »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #37
kramerger wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the scheme is there to simplify collaboration across borders and connect research teams with very different skills. While you can still do it outside the EU programs, it will require a lot of administrative work which most universities cannot handle.

If being part of the scheme suddenly makes everything possible then I'd say the system is indeed designed to make things difficult for those not part of the scheme... Let's not kid ourselves, this is geopolitics and influence, not just generous cooperation. Edit: Very strange to observe the reactions to my comment... many of you seem have a knee-jerk, black and white, if not naive, reaction to Brexit and the EU. Both…

So you are suggesting what? That the UK would be allowed to join a scheme that hands out a large pot of money drawn from EU tax payers without pitching in? Give me a break. Framing this as some sort of ominous plot requires leaps of logic that is far beyond what I can even imagine.

If the UK wants to stay outside, they are more than welcome to keep their funds and do so. However, I can tell you exactly how happy my academic colleagues have been about the enormous mess that has been the UK government promises regarding EU funding over the last few years and that several of them have left or are in the process of leaving due to what Brexit did to the funding climate and academic opportunities in the UK in general.

Re: U.K. rejoins Horizon Europe research funding scheme

#58

Post by arrowsmith »

stephen_g wrote: post #19
hkt wrote: post #5

Ah, I see we've discovered that yet another element of our EU membership has needed reconstituting after we've found life lacks a certain something after leaving. Ho hum.

I mean, plenty of countries that aren’t in the EU do have good relations and trade partnerships with the EU, as well as participation in certain EU programs (including several countries that are part of this Horizons program). The problem was probably more the utter incompetence of the people negotiations over leaving more than the idea of not being part of the EU itself (which wouldn’t have mattered that much if a c…

Brexit was negotiated for us by people who didn't want it or believe in it. That surely doomed it (if it wasn't doomed anyway, which I consider a big "if").

Even Bojo himself was ambivalent about the EU pre-2016, and famously wrote a pro-Leave and pro-Remain version of the same article before publicly announcing his position. It's pretty clear that he was motivated more by opportunism and personal advancement than by any strong belief in Brexit's merits.

Re: U.K. rejoins Horizon Europe research funding scheme

#59

Post by morelisp »

makomk wrote: post #20
dan-robertson wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think remaining a member was always something the uk wanted but it seemed to get caught up in the negotiations. The screw up here is not that this is some U-turn but that rejoining/not-leaving didn’t happen much earlier.

It was - and in fact, associate membership of Horizon Europe was part of the original withdrawal agreement, it was just held up by the EU for years over issues with Northern Ireland. Similarly, the parts of the Brexit deal that are currently causing problems for car manufacturers were opposed by the British side but insisted on by the EU, though that didn't stop the British media spinning them as somehow being the UK…

I mean, yes, obvious the UK's position would be "give us all the good stuff without any of the responsibilities". That's not "held up by the EU", that's just the actual negotiation.

Re: U.K. rejoins Horizon Europe research funding scheme

#60

Post by cossray »

hashtag-til wrote: post #25
gumballindie wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe we'll make a trade deal with countries in our geographical proximity, so we can trade without barriers. Perhaps even allow people to go there and work, and people from there to come here. Who knows what the future brings.

Like a "union" of European countries, you mean? Any suggestions of how we could name it? Let's try to come up with a simple name and a 2 letters acronym so that it is simple for people to refer to it? /s

This sounds great. You mean something like the African Union and its 2 letter acronym, AU?
Post reply on HN