Comment by ATIThrowaway

> really the question should be something more like "did ATI funding help advance UK research generally?" not "was ATI able to claim its own successes?"

This is a reasonable objection, but imho misses the point.

Any entity that's unable to account for its positive externalities will underestimate its value. This happened to the Turing. Universities did not want to lose their staff to secondments or buyouts, and Turing cancelled major independent programs like their PhD offerings. Leads fought for their universities, as the article notes---not necessarily to make Turing itself better!

While recent cuts/"realignments" are painful, they also have re-focused support for projects at scale---projects that are substantially more than an afternoon a week for two academics. It's still, in many cases, subsidized consulting for UK businesses w/ dubious scientific merit, but that's a broader issue with the UK's research culture.