DRAGGING MY ENTRAILS BEHIND ME

It was crazy really my being here in Brussels. Once, I had been a scientist but had no justification as masquerading as one now.   Twenty years of child rearing, part-time education stuff all did not serve to keep the physics I once knew fresh and updated. Escaping to a Greek island for almost a decade, now felt ridiculously arty and unforgivable.  The only reason I was here at all was due to legislation recently passed requiring all EU funding panels to have 40% women at least.  Scrambling to find enough female physicists my application had wound its way through because of mutual desperation. They were destitute of women physicists and I was eager to earn money. It was marriage of necessity not love.  Both parties were worldly wise and cynical about the whole seedy affair. My goal was to do the job. Sit on a science funding panel and make decisions as to which application got EU backing.  With luck I could return home unscarred and financially better off.  It is a little known fact that when you live on an island in the Mediterranean and get employed in northern times even a part-time salary is rich pickings compare to locals earnings.  I had managed to pull of my first session as an independent science adviser for the EU in Brussels two years previously and did what was expected despite my misgivings so that made the whole trip this time less crazy. Not wanting to fall victim to the rip-off prices of Brussels hotels I stayed not in the luxury hotel complexes but a dire section of Brussels in a real armpit of a hotel.  It felt tricky but with a bit of luck I felt I could do this once again.

Administrators Rule the world

EU funding in the science field is decided by panels of independent science advisers who come from all over Europe to consult together as to the worth of online applications for funding.  Having had a chance, at home, to mark these applications online against the grading criteria set up by the EU funding regulations this week in Brussels was about us reaching agreement in panels of three members face-to-face. We may have been using the same criterion but, human nature being diverse, scientists in the room can have endless takes on the benefits of proposals. At times I felt strangely heartened as many of my intuitive feelings about proposals seems spot-on.  For example, one excellent applicant seemed well-qualified had superb references, international experience in impressive labs, but I queried the fact that with all these periods in state of the art research establishments the applicant had never built on or maintained any relationships with the previous research groups. To me I smelt a rat.  He was either as odd as can be or quite deeply unpleasant neither of which characteristics is worthy of funding for yet another expensive research study abroad. The goal was to send good minds abroad to a 4 star research establishment so that they could bring their excellence back into the EU.  Sending a brilliant but socially handicapped one would be a waste of limited resources. If he hadn't got on with the group in CERN, Tokyo or Copenhagen odds were he would also fall out with the Americans. Given that I did use this all from an application written by the guy it pleased me no end when my colleagues on the panel who knew the applicant bore out my initial misgivings. I told myself that even if my physics was rusty my intuition had not atrophied and was surprisingly spot on. My confidence grew when on the third day I went through another application.  I spotted beneath the wording on computer simulation activities in the project that this person actually was going to China and intended running a nuclear power plant in critical mode to test the strength of the computer model he had designed.  I had a meeting with the French nuclear physicist a fellow panel member who was convinced the whole project was merely a software simulation. After two hours of poring over the proposed he started cursing in French as he realised this applicant actually wanted funding from the EU to deliberately run a real nuclear reactor into critical mode. He'd obviously already got permission from the Chinese authorities to use one of their plants. The two of us informed the ethical committee of our anxiety and moral issues with this plan which we both felt should and could never be EU funded. That evening as I made my way through the grubby hotel lobby I felt like Clint Eastwood when he’s saved the day.  Fool, fool!  Little did I know the humiliation that was only a day or two away.

Dragging my entrails behind me

Each group in Brussels has a team of administrators who have grown in influence and number, seeing to their needs, directing events, providing training etc  These bureaucrats are seriously worried that scientists will get them into trouble.  So having learned from past disasters think of new more complicated hoops to protect themselves from complaints/criticism or litigation. With each year the list of requirements grew ever more onerous.  This particular year they had decided that when submitting the final reports we should not mention any names of people involved.  Obviously, there was too much chance of someone saying “Charlie has not enough experience.”  When perhaps the applicants name was Charlene.  Such mistakes suggest to the applicant that a complete idiot has read their time consuming thirty page application form and make them question the EU’s ability to make coherent and fair decisions.  Equally unforgivable is not naming the research group correctly, either the one the applicant comes from or the place where they wish to travel to.  So all names of research venues had to be eliminated as well.  Given that previous reports had claimed that certain qualifications were not sufficient to justify funding no mention of qualifications, geographical or institutional should be included either.  Projects themselves should not be mentioned in final reports either because a report mentioning spin coupling is a worthy direction to fund could inadvertently show that the report writer had no notion of the actual project intent.  So there you have it the final report on each applicant had to consist of vague statements that stayed clear of science/activity/applicant/research purpose or place/qualifications/names of referees etc.  So bland and uniform did these final documents become that I could not even identify which original project there were detailing.  That may seem entirely reasonable to you but in the world of physics the landscape is sufficiently small that internationally and good physicist in the field will know by name the good research groups and what they specialize in.  Leaders in various fields will be known for their strengths and weaknesses much as football supporters will tell you the names of players on various teams.  I know no footballers names nor physicists.  I am blissfully ignorant of research teams and so when it came to the final plenary session I came to it ill prepared and virtually illiterate.  The previous plenary a couple of years before had only dwelt on the top twenty projects which would receive funding and since none of the projects I had been involved in had reached this stage it seemed I could relax.  We were instructed  to get rid of our papers and notes on the applications.  So I had shredded all my painstaking background research into the quality of publications, research groups etc  Because I knew nothing I had to do a lot more digging to find information.  Once all this was disposed off the only thing we were asked to keep was our final reports that would be sent to participants.  These vague stripped reports meant nothing to me and as I sat there with only these bland musings on my lap I felt the beginning of fear.  Last time only the top funded projects were picked out at random for the experts to speak to as to why they awarded funding to this project.  But the bureaucrats had the last laugh, they had changed the format and projects both passed and rejected were pulled at random from the mix and experts would have to defend/explain their decision.  I remember looking around in distress as one by one projects were called out and experts got their feet to eloquently explain what the project was about and its strengths and weaknesses.  Sweat broke out on my brow as I carefully examined the bland stripped moronic reports about my projects on my lap.  With no name whatsoever there was nothing to distinguish one from another.  I wanted to scream and sank lower in my chair as expert after expert got to their feet and elaborated on their projects.  Shit! shit! Shit!  I write these three times because three times my projects were picked at random and three times I rose to my feet among my peers and stood like an Irish version of Mr Bean describing that work of art as a large painting. 

The humiliation even as I write this comes back to haunt me and I blush in memory of that fateful afternoon.  I returned home humiliated beyond words and am reasonably sure my name is recorded and retold in physics circles and throughout Europe as the independent science adviser who could not remember one solitary fact about any of her projects for which she was responsible.  That might as I checked out of my dismal hotel it was with a deep inner conviction that I deserved such a zombie landscape.  In the words of Buzz Light Year, “One minute you are a superhero and the next you are supping down Darjeeling” and feeling an utter moron!