SCIENCE science.org 3 JUNE 2022 • VOL 376 ISSUE 6597 1031going out of business because of inflation,”
Streiffer says.
U.S. researchers often argue that projects
in Europe and Asia are insulated from one
factor, increased labor costs due to delays,
because they typically charge salaries to
laboratories rather than to projects. But
researchers in Europe counter that when
a project needs more money, they face a
stiffer challenge getting it.
In Lund, Sweden, physicists are build-
ing the European Spallation Source (ESS),
a brand-new, accelerator-powered neutron
source that will be the world’s most intense.
COVID-19 delays forced leaders to go to the
project’s 13 member nations to request more
money, says Kevin Jones, ESS’s technical di-
rector, who spent 28 years at DOE’s Los Ala-
mos National Laboratory. “Having worked in
the DOE system, I can tell you that [request]
was a lot harder,” he says. In December 2021,
the ESS’s governing council pushed its com-
pletion date back 2 years to December 2027
and raised its cost 20% to €3.3 billion.
In the United States, NSF ordinarily asks
managers of a troubled project to “descope”
it, or trim its capabilities, before the agency
rebaselines it—a measure that requires
approval from NSF’s governing National
Science Board. But given the current head-
winds, NSF plan to rebaseline all its projects,
says Matthew Hawkins, head of NSF’s large
facilities office. “Why would we want to take
science capability out of a project as the first
step?” he says. “We’d much rather go to the
board and ask for more money.”
In contrast, DOE is sticking with its pol-
icy of carefully trimming a project’s scope
before rebaselining. That’s because within
DOE, a rebaselined project must be re-
viewed not just by the leaders of the Office
of Science, but by a committee of higher
level officials from all parts of the agency,
says Stephen Binkley, the office’s principal
deputy director. “Then it gets really, really
tight scrutiny and the case has to be made
really carefully,” he says.
DOE officials expect supply chain issues
to remain nettlesome even if the pandemic
and inflation wane. Last month, an Office of
Science report detailed potential bottlenecks
in the supplies of everything from materials
such as niobium, a superconducting metal,
to certain types of software.
Projects that have not yet set a budget
or schedule may be better able to cope
with shortages and inflation, as they can
roll rising costs into their baselines. But
if any project, baselined or not, becomes
too expensive, funders could simply cancel
it. “It’s conceivable that projects could be
dropped,” Binkley says. “But, I think it’s
fair to say we’re not at the point where we
have to do that.” j
NEWSUpheaval in Norwegian science
funding threatens grants
Firing of funding agency board alarms research sector
EUROPEN
orwegian researchers are facing dra-
matic budget cuts after the govern-
ment abruptly took control of its
research funding agency board and
said it must curtail its spending.
On 12 May, the Norwegian Ministry
of Education and Research announced it
had fired the entire board of the Norwe-
gian Research Council and replaced it with
a temporary one to deal with what the
government describes as “a serious finan-
cial situation.”
The decision threatens the stability of
research and higher education, leaders
in Norwegian science say. The research
council now faces a shortfall of as much as
2.9 billion kroner ($300 mil-
lion) by the end of 2024—
approximately one-third of its
annual budget. And commenta-
tors question the government’s
handling of the situation. “The
situation now is a crisis that was
not needed,” says Svein Stølen,
rector of the University of Oslo.
The new board met on
16 May to discuss proposed
funding cuts. Measures in-
clude a 20% reduction to grants this year,
the cancellation of the council’s main basic
research funding program next year, and
the postponement of research infrastruc-
ture projects. The proposed cuts would
also threaten awards from the European
Union’s Horizon Europe program, as insti-
tutions rely on the council to top up Hori-
zon grants to cover higher costs in Norway.
A year without money for basic research
would damage Norwegian science and
frighten talent away, Stølen says.
Recent discussions between university
leaders and the research council have sug-
gested a softer approach, with talk of de-
laying, rather than canceling, grants, and
even asking researchers to volunteer for de-
lays if possible, says Curt Rice, president of
the Norwegian University of Life Sciences.
The government does not plan to cancel
existing grants outright, says Oddmund
Hoel, a leader at the research ministry and
a political appointee from the center-left
government coalition.The research council’s predicament is a
“traumatic thing in an area where we have
had very few scandals like this,” says Espen
Solberg, a science policy researcher at the
Nordic Institute for Studies in Innovation,
Research and Education. A government
report said the council broke strict rules
on the management of public finances,
which generally require money to be spent
in the year it was allocated. The council
had combined funding streams from dif-
ferent government ministries and spread
the money across years and projects. It
also built up a funding reserve intended
for delayed projects.
The previous Norwegian government
had imposed a series of funding cuts in or-
der to force the agency to spend down its
reserve. The council and wider
research community assumed
the government would replen-
ish the funds when the time
came to use them, Rice says.
But after a national election
in September 2021, a new gov-
ernment took over, which Rice
says has only offered lukewarm
support for science. It does not
intend to replace those funds,
and the council has now prom-
ised more grants than its coffers can sus-
tain. The previous government has “sent
a bill to us,” Hoel says. “The way they
handled this has definitely made problems
for us.”
The members of the fired board pub-
lished a collective response to the situation
in the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten,
saying they stood by their financial man-
agement choices. “Research requires lon-
gevity,” they said; spreading funds across
years was necessary to fund extended proj-
ects. They say the research minister could
ask the parliament to allow the research
council to continue its flexible approach in
allocating money. This special permission
“may be a possibility,” Hoel says.
Without that flexibility, the council will
struggle to do its work effectively, Solberg
says. “It boils down to this question: Are our
ministries willing to give the research coun-
cil confidence that they will operate their
funding in a better way than their own de-
tailed steering?” jBy Cathleen O’Grady“The situation
is a crisis
that was
not needed.”
Svein Stølen,
University of Oslo