UK junior researchers nervous about their futures.
A UK science-advocacy group says that a repeated freeze to the government's £4.6-billion (US$7-billion) science-research budget, announced on 26 June, will damage early-career researchers' work and drive them to other nations. Science is Vital, formed to track the results of a 2010 budget freeze, polled 868 UK researchers, and found that 70% of junior scientists have lost confidence in research careers in Britain. Some 59% of respondents applying for grants said their success rate had fallen; 39% of those with labs have recruited fewer PhD students and 19% could not recruit any. “Frustrated young researchers are leaving,” says Jennifer Rohn, chair of Science is Vital and a cell biologist at University College London.
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Funding freeze critiqued. Nature 499, 117 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nj7456-117c
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nj7456-117c