Rise of the Plastic Professors

I found an interesting article from a few years ago on the Beeb the other day. Back in 2004 Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell, now President at Manchester, lamented the number of people being promoted to professor.

"I am worried about the potential decline in what being a professor means"

At that time an astonishing 9.7% of academics held the title of professor. Richard Wilson from Loughborough asserted that many promotions were nothing but rewards "for being instruments of the university's administration".

Vince the Evil Genius?

Oh Vince, what have you done? You seemed like such a nice, sensible chap.

Naughty Cable guy

It sounds like Vince Cable is going to take a rusty scythe to the science budget, leaving thousands of research scientists out in the cold, threatening our future economic security*, and doing untold damage to basic research capacity by favouring commercially-driven projects. A decent analysis of Vince's words comes from Evan Harris, here. Although the details aren't yet known, unsurprisingly the scientific community is up in arms.