Scientists' public engagement work should be generously funded

By Clare Matterson. Public engagement should be an integral part of research, not an unpaid hobby, which is why the Wellcome Trust has decided to invest £4.5m a year in it. There's an app that you might have seen, or even played – The Great Brain Experiment. It's cute, quirky and pretty addictive. Every time I turn on my iPad I find my children have been having a go (perhaps making me look far more mentally agile than I am). So far, over 40,000 people have downloaded and played the app. Among its deceptively simple games is one in which you have to grab apples as they fall from a tree – but beware the apples that turn rotten as they fall.