Philip, thanks for the comments and the pointer to both the THES piece and David's blog post. I should have mentioned the THES thing. I guess the reason I didn't is because in that matter I disagree in some ways with the principle of your objection, of not the practice.

What do I mean by that? Well primarily that I think we should be focussing our attention on return on investment and economic impact. If we can't make a case on these grounds then perhaps the money should go into schools or hospitals instead. However I think that we can make a very strong economic impact as well as ROI case for blue skies research, indeed it may well be the case that the EI and ROI are higher for blue skies than applied research.

Two reasons for this. One is that the vast majority of the economic impact of research is through training and attracting a skilled workforce to the UK. This is much greater than any spin out activity, and I beleive that government is starting to see this as a major component of what we do. That and the occasional break throughs have a much bigger EI than the small and irregular contribution of applied projects.

On the ROI side (science output per pound spent) then I think it is very clear that less commercial research produces more accessible science outputs more quickly (because they are in fact published) and that they also provide people who are trained to be more flexible and adataptable in research settings.

All that said, two pages of nonsense to add to a proposal is a waste of everyone's time. It will in most cases be unmitigated rubbish and will not be seriously refereed, even if people do agree to look at it. The proposals as they stand are a complete joke. So, given my strong disagreement with the rest of the changes I am happy to support the disagreement with this part of them.

My only caveat is that I think scientists should engage and educate themselves on the arguments around EI and ROI because at the end of the day we do have to justify our existence. But this is a broader issue than cen be dealt with by a box in a form.