The UK is often portrayed as a world leader in research, but a new discussion piece by the School's Professor Paul Nightingale and UCL's Dr James W. Phillips questions this narrative. While the UK accounts for 13% of the top 1% most highly cited research across all fields, this measure tells us little about the UK's performance at the absolute cutting edge of science, or how performance is distributed across or within areas.

Nightingale and Phillips examined the performance of the UK in producing the most cutting-edge research across the three priority technology areas identified in the UK Government’s Integrated Review: Quantum, AI and Synthetic Biology. They found that the UK is usually only present on around 3-7% of those advances, which is a quarter to half the level you would expect from the commonly used measures that are used to support the “Science Superpower” narrative. Moreover, in some cases, this performance depends on a tiny number of atypical organizations like the Cambridge Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) and DeepMind.

For instance, without DeepMind, the UK's share of the citations among the top 100 recent AI papers drops from 7.84% to just 1.86%, while it is only present on one of the biggest 27 synthetic biology advances of the past decade, which itself came from the Cambridge LMB.

These results are clearly not definitive, but they do suggest that while the UK is good at research, it is not outstanding in the three priority areas of science and technology.

These findings raise some concerns about just how good UK research is. The authors think they indicate the UK system needs increased investment and potentially substantial reform in the approach we use to fund and conduct research. Excellent science is a critical anchor for the UK's broader science and technology ecosystem and there are costs to not being at the cutting edge. There are strong first mover advantages in technology, and if we are not the cutting edge we may not attract the world’s best researchers, PhD students and post-Docs. Rather than being a Science Superpower, the UK is very good, and doing very well given its low levels of investment, but questions remain about whether it is doing well enough.

These results question the widely held view that the UK is exceptional at invention but somehow weak at innovation – despite having one of the world’s best financial systems, excellent regulation and a pro-innovation culture. It may well be we are not as good at invention as we like to think. 

These results are preliminary, and the authors encourage constructive criticism and improvement of this argument. It is crucial to start a debate about the levels, focus, and nature of science funding in the UK. The UK has a strong legacy of scientific achievement, and it is vital to ensure that it remains at the forefront of scientific innovation in the years to come.

Their full discussion piece can be downloaded here.