UK risks scientists leave Britain to avoid losing EU research funding | Hacker News Reader

UK risks scientists leave Britain to avoid losing EU research funding

news.sky.com

This sounds fairly easy to solve: the UK could replace the EU research funding they opted out of, with their own research funding. After all, they're saving money by not contributing to the EU anymore.

It's not that simple even if there was the will to actually support science at a similar level. Funding requires staffed funding agencies and program officers to evaluate grants and decide areas of concentration in different fields to focus funding on. This will take years if not decades to get into place.

Does the UK not already have something like that? Netherland certainly does. It would surprise me if the UK didn't. They just need to fund it more.

But then they would stay, and we don't want that either. Plus we'd have less money to throw at the people that voted for brexit (the horror!)...

You still lose the collaboration aspect. It's not just about the money.

> You still lose the collaboration aspect

There are research collaborations between the USA and China, why couldn’t UK researchers still collaborate with Europe? If not then this is a petty and childish state of affairs that reflects very badly on both the UK and the EU.

It's actually very difficult for researchers to obtain visas to travel from certain countries to the USA. The UK and EU27 used to have free movement so there was literally no red tape beyond "is your passport up to date?" Now you need to get a visa from the Home Office (or vice versa) and that adds considerably to the time and complexity. If you have family it may not be possible to bring them along at all. This isn't "childish", it's exactly what Brexit was intended to do.

> it's exactly what Brexit was intended to do.

These sort of details weren't specified in the referendum, though. What we currently call Brexit is mostly unfounded interpretation by the successive governments of the UK.

> This isn't "childish", it's exactly what Brexit was intended to do.

I find it hard to believe that the UK v EU red tape is more implacable than that between the US and China. However, if it is then it is arbitrary, petty, and vindictive nonsense. If it’s not then it’s childish and petulant reluctance to get to work overcoming the obstacle and getting on with the real work.

The problem is that the conservatives in the UK govt. don't care about things like this. It's tax cuts and wrecking the NHS so private health care companies can come in and "fix" things.

It's so much like the situation in the US, except compared to Trump, even Johnson seemed somewhat reasonable.

"Reasonable" is not a word I'd use for Johnson, but he is intelligent. His looking like an idiot was mostly an act in order to look disarming.

this is pure ideological misinformation.

It was Labour who actually started the privatisation of NHS services in 2003. Keir Starmer has also been quite vocal that NHS privatisation would continue under Labour.

Politicians of all walks of life do not have a solution that doesn't involve privatisation.

fix up.

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