Monday, February 09, 2009

Peanuts

Scientific research is feeling the pinch too. From a piece in Nature Biotechnology:
...even before the economic slowdown, the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council had planned to reduce its grants portfolio for physics from £137 million ($206 million) for 2006–2007 to £97 million for 2008–2009, according to council reports.


I'm struck by the numbers here: the amount spent on physics research in the UK is tiny in absolute terms (and just got smaller). Less than 100 million UKP is the national budget for the the only research which will give us long term solutions to our energy woes (and much, much more)? The long-term ROI on this spend must be huge: economists, what's going on, why is this stuff so woefully under-funded?

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