The Talent Angle

By Alex Usher. The post-Naylor Report effort to get big new investments in fundamental science is in trouble.  Bluntly, the Finance Department appears not to be buying the argument that fundamental research is, in fact, a good investment.  I’m not 100% surprised: the Naylor mostly tended to assume the wider benefits of research to economic growth rather than demonstrate or prove it, and the big U-15 institutions have banked everything on a rhetorical strategy of: money for research à a miracle occurs à innovation and growth!  A strategy as wrong-headed as it is cynical, frankly. More...