You will have heard of the sunk cost fallacy. This refers to an irrational kind of behaviour, where people continue to follow a plan on which a lot of money and effort have been spent, even after it has become obvious that the plan would be a disaster. The fact that costs have been incurred prevents those people from doing the right thing, which would be to abandon the plan.

The crazy plan to move Kew’s world-renowned Herbarium to a business park near Reading (it cannot even be called a science park anymore!) at first sight looks like a textbook case of the sunk cost fallacy. Except that it is even worse. The idea behind the sunk cost fallacy is that one starts with a seemingly reasonable plan and makes considerable investments, only to discover that the plan was in fact misguided and should never have been initiated. The mistake lies in not abandoning the plan. Kew’s senior leadership have given this fallacy an interesting twist by coming up with a plan that has never seemed reasonable to begin with.

Kew is already spending a lot of money and resources on the New Herbarium Project (NHP), as it is called. Perhaps the idea is that Defra, which is expected to fund this white elephant, will at some point be persuaded to part with £200m, seeing that Kew has already spent millions on it. The hope of the Kew leadership seems to be that the Secretary of State for Defra will fall victim to the sunk cost fallacy; they seem to count on the fact that said Secretary will behave irrationally.

What is Kew already wasting millions on? It has commissioned architects to help design the facility, it is recruiting a project manager, and it has already employed a change manager by the name of Kim Gowing, whose job seems to be to persuade staff to give up their resistance and to start loving the NHP. The sales pitch of Kim Gowing’s company was: “We deliver your people, so that you can deliver your project.” No further comment necessary. Strangers in suits can be seen walking through the buildings as if they own the place. Several regular staff members at Kew now work almost full time on the NHP, and most of the Herbarium staff will be expected to contribute to the planning process even before funding has been secured. That will be time and money not spent on their actual job of curating the immense collection and on doing vital research to help preserve the world’s biodiversity.

Meanwhile, a staff survey carried out last December shows how out of touch Kew’s senior management is with most of the people in the organisation. The statement “Kew has an open and honest culture” is supported by only 33% of respondents in Kew’s Science department. In the teams that work in the Herbarium this is less than 22%. The statement “Overall, I have confidence in the decisions made by Kew's senior leaders” has just 36% support among the scientists at Kew. Again, this is even lower among those who work in the Herbarium, as low as 14% in one team.

Nevertheless, while ignoring the opposition among Kew’s scientists, curators, and students, the estranged Kew leadership act as if the NHP is a ship that has sailed, and Defra support is taken for granted. Enthusiastic updates and blog posts written by the NHP cheerleaders meet with stony silence from the staff, as dissent seems to be as welcome at Kew as in North Korea. And yet, the ship hasn’t sailed at all. It hasn’t even been built yet. That is because there is still the small matter of securing funding from Defra. The Minister of State for Climate, Environment and Energy, Lord Benyon, has recently written a letter to the shadow Secretary of State for Defra, Labour MP Steve Reed, dated 20 February 2024, in which he stated:

“The New Herbarium Project is subject to full scrutiny through Defra’s standard financial processes to ensure that any proposal represents value for money. Defra has provided Kew with feedback on their initial proposals and no final funding decision has been made.”

Apparently, Kew has been informed that this decision will not be made until 2025. Now, this is interesting, and must worry the Kew leadership. Given the current political situation, it seems likely that the next Secretary of State for Defra will be a member of a different political party. As discussed in an earlier update on this petition, the shadow Defra team do not seem to believe that the NHP represents value for money. In the sense of the Chinese curse (“May you live in interesting times”), it looks as if the Kew leadership will be living in interesting times. The waste of money and effort when the NHP is finally cancelled will be appalling, but cancelling this madness is the rational thing to do. We are confident that this will be recognised by the next Secretary of State for Defra, whoever this may be. He or she will surely not fall victim to the sunk cost fallacy.

If you live in the UK, please consider raising this issue with your MP.

Here is how to do this in 3 steps:

1. Go to https://www.writetothem.com/ , enter your postcode and click on the displayed MP name.

2. In your own words, keeping it short and clear, tell your MP how the planned move of Kew Herbarium would affect you & ask your MP to raise this with the DEFRA minister.

3. Fill in your email, address and name and click on SEND.

Please, help us getting to 20,000 names by signing and sharing the link to this petition https://chng.it/vsDT2xmKXN to avoid catastrophe and Keep the Kew Herbarium at Kew!

For further updates also follow us on Twitter (X), Facebook or Instagram @KewKeepers. 

Please help us stop this crazy plan

Curator Botanist savekewherbarium@gmail.com