"The bullets we've dodged have hit someone else" — UK science cuts largely spare physics and astro, hit projects and labs

On Thursday last week, the UK's major physics and astronomy funder announced steep cuts to labs and facilities: 15% overall to multidisciplinary facilities and 8% to national laboratories, with some specific facilities facing budget reductions of up to 40%. However, feared cuts of up to 30% to grants for researchers in particle physics, astronomy, and nuclear physics (abbreviated PPAN) were mostly avoided.

The Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) budget is to remain mostly flat between 2026-2030. But costs grow year-on-year and are expected to outstrip the budget. To make the math work out, the STFC would have to make cuts. In January, it shared plans to reduce spending by £162 million by 2030.

"One solution could have been for the government to inject more money into the budget — the sums we're talking about are pretty small on the scale of government expenditure," Jim Wild of Lancaster University, a space physicist and president of the Royal Astronomical Society, told me on a video call. For reference, the £162 million the STFC is supposed to save over 4 years corresponds to about 0.012% of the UK's expected £1,368 billion in public spending for the single year of 2025-26.

At the time the cuts were announced, it wasn't clear what was going to get the axe. The STFC supports both large research facilities and grants to scientists in particle physics, nuclear physics, and astronomy. At first, it seemed the plan was to cut £38 million from both; a letter from the STFC's executive chair told researchers that funding for PPAN could drop by up to 30% and asked project leaders to work out how their research would be impacted by cuts of up to 60%.

The July 9 announcement clarified where the cuts are going to fall. Four-year funding for grants to researchers in particle physics, astronomy, and nuclear physics has mostly been preserved; there'll be a 2.7% reduction relative to last year's level, not the catastrophic 30% cut previously feared. Postdoc grants, specifically, are to be preserved at their 2025-2026 level, budgeting for inflation.

"Of course, with these things, the devil is always in the details," said Wild. Sparing one budget line meant striking others; facilities and national labs like the Diamond Light Source, Central Laser Facility, and Boulby Underground Laboratory will take the biggest cuts. Funding for the Particle Physics Department and UK Astronomy Technology Centre, both instrument-building labs, will be cut by 20%.

"It's a zero-sum game," Wild said. "The bullets we've dodged have hit someone else."

Perhaps ironically, the STFC cuts are happening against a backdrop of "record" spending on research and development in the UK (though once you account for inflation, it's barely more than a real-terms freeze, according to the Campaign for Science and Engineering). Last year, the UK government agreed to spend £86 billion on R&D over the next 4 years. Of this, £58.5 billion is going to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology, which allocated £38.6 billion to UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) — the UK's largest public funder of research and innovation, and the body containing the STFC.

However, the new funding isn't necessarily flowing to fundamental science. The new R&D push also came with new priorities. UKRI introduced a "bucket" system dividing its spending into three categories: curiosity-driven research, strategic priorities like AI and quantum tech, and "innovative companies." The idea is to "drive to be more entrepreneurial, to engage more with industry, to realize greater revenue and greater income into our program," UKRI chief executive Ian Chapman told the BBC. Those are not buzzwords I can imagine most scientists in the UK were very happy to hear.

Regarding the STFC cuts, there is still a lot the research community doesn't know. Over the next few months, Wild told me, there'll be talks between the STFC and the facilities it supports to figure out exactly how funding is going to be doled out. For now, preserving grant funding for PPAN researchers is, cautiously, a relief, said Wild. But it's perhaps a rather cold comfort, considering that in 2025-26, the STFC's Astronomy Grants Panel awarded the lowest number of postdocs since 2010 — in the midst of a funding crisis triggered by the 2008 financial crash.

Figure 1

One chart from last week, sometimes by me

Minor Revisions

Follow-up on events from last week and other developing stories

Un-retraction: Springer Nature un-retracted two papers by Nobel Laureate Max Planck that had been erroneously retracted on copyright infringement grounds. They confirmed once again that human error was to blame, not a bot as previously speculated.

Sci Am sale: Scientific American staff and supporters rallied outside the Springer Nature offices in New York City on June 1 to protest the sale of the 180-year-old magazine to LabX Media Group just days before their vote to unionize. The US National Labor Relations Board counted the union votes anyway and staff voted 31:1 to unionize, according to a statement from the Writer's Guild of America East. The union has now called on LabX to officially recognize the union and begin collective bargaining on a contract. As Michael Greshko pointed out, remaining staff are in a bit of a pickle: they're going to do their best to keep the magazine going and make it as good as it can be (as several I've spoken with emphasized), but will do so with fewer staff, the uncertainties and change that come with a new owner, and an angry audience. An open letter to LabX and Springer Nature in support of the Sci Am union has gained more than 110 signatures as of this writing.

Citation Needed

Links from last week