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A BRITISH researcher now based in Texas is challenging Britain’s science
minister, Robert Jackson, to admit that British science funding is in crisis
and that this is accelerating a brain drain that could become ‘a flood’.
Michael Duff, now professor of physics at the Texas A&M University and
a spokesman for the lobby group British Å®ÉúСÊÓƵs Abroad, is meeting Jackson
in London this week to press his points.

Duff wants to discuss the minister’s response to a petition earlier
this, year signed by 1600 expatriate scientists, which called for a greater
commitment to scientific research in Britain. ‘With his letter (of reply),
Mr Jackson demonstrated his profound lack of understanding of the long-term
damage being done; if this is the official response of the government, the
brain drain looks set to become a flood,’ said Duff.

Jackson, in his letter, had dismissed many of the signatories as either
being ‘unqualified’ (a reference to PhD students with up to five years of
postgraduate training) or ‘in the twilight of their careers’.