Apart from the Ministry of Defence, the civil funding agencies are an untidy mix. There are the ministries themselves, from agriculture to transport, and the five research councils. Civil science spending is supposed to be coordinated through advisory committees, but there is virtually no integration between military and civil research.
This funding structure, which worked modestly well in times of relative affluence, is now creaking badly. It is not merely the starvation of funds that has weakened the British research enterprise during the Thatcher years, but the decapitation of its policy-making processes through the abolishing or devaluing of the central advisory groups. The result, as is well-known, has been a catastrophic loss of morale throughout almost the entire scientific field.
Ince, features editor of the weekly magazine The Engineer, treads familiar ground throughout most of this book, threading his way through the interstices of Britain's science-funding institutions. He does not, ...
