There have been penalties for those who looked the other way when Epstein was convicted of child sex offences and decided to maintain relationships with the financier — but not for the British ambassador to Washington, reveals SOLOMON HUGHES
The forces of feudalism in research funding
How do you end minority rule in science? The new funding agency, Aria, is proving that feudalism seems to be back in fashion in academic science – although perhaps it never went away, suggest ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT
Labour’s new Treasury unit will ‘challenge unnecessary regulation’ by forcing nominally independent bodies like Ofwat to bend to business demands — exactly what Iain Anderson’s corporate clients wanted, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
DR DYLAN MURPHY looks at a Big Brother Watch report which exposes the government as an enabler of DWP secret spying on benefit claimants
The EU faces a critical choice: will it remain in the shadow of an increasingly unreliable US ally, or will it forge its own path in a multilateral world where co-operation with China is essential, asks MARC VANDEPITTE as leaders meet for the EU-China Summit
A lot of discussion about how the left should currently organise – including debate on whether the Green Party is a useful vehicle for advance – runs the risk of refusing to engage with or learn from the reasons the left was defeated previously, argues KEVIN OVENDEN
For Egypt trade trumps the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians, but how long can the country’s ‘misleaders’ – and others in the region – continue their indifference against the popular will of their own people, asks ROGER McKENZIE
THERE is a problem in science funding. Either you fund an idea, and assume your ability to understand the solution surpasses that of the experts (and risk foreclosing their imaginative potential), or you fund the experts, in which case you sustain the status quo, from which new results may or may not emerge as you would hope.
The balance of this decision fluctuates with trends among those who hold the purse strings. The argument for funding so-called “smart people” is often much favoured by the people who suspect they themselves may be smart. It’s an idea also upheld by the “great man” theory of science, which highlights the importance of individual personalities in driving great discoveries.
Historical materialists reject the notion that these special personalities are independent of the forces of economic and social history, highlighting the importance of the whole network that produces the personalities. But even those who believe in the importance of special geniuses recognise that they need the right environment to produce the best kind of results. This is why, even as capitalists prefer to cut state funding of vital services such as health and social care, public expenditure on R&D has been growing since the ’90s (certainly as a proportion of the budget, also officially in real terms. Understanding this is somewhat complicated by changes in how it is counted).
More from this author
What’s behind the stubborn gender gap in Stem disciplines ask ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT in their column Science and Society
While politicians condemned fascist bombing of Spanish civilians in 1937, they ignored identical RAF tactics across the colonies. Today’s aerial warfare continues this pattern of applying different moral standards based on geography and race, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT
The distinction between domestic and military drones is more theoretical than practical, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT
Nature's self-reconstruction is both intriguing and beneficial and as such merits human protection, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT
