Sir

Raymond Pierotti's Correspondence expressing his opinion (Nature 419, 667; 200210.1038/419667a) that academic scandals are less well known than business ones reminded me of Michael Faraday's description of his “desire to escape from trade, which I thought vicious and selfish, and to enter the service of Science, which I imagined made its pursuers amiable and liberal”.

Faraday, a bookseller's apprentice, had written to Sir Humphry Davy at the Royal Institution of Great Britain in pursuit of a career move. Davy advised him that experience would correct his opinion of the “superior moral feelings of philosophic men” (see The Philosopher's Tree, ed. P. Day, 2–3; IoP, Bristol, 1999).

Business and science have long been interdependent. Faraday's “philosophic” researches, for example, paved the way for vast technologically based industries and many other scientific, technological and business developments.