Britain’s Shaky Status as a Scientific Superpower; Atlantic, 6/24/16

Adrienne Lafrance, Atlantic; Britain’s Shaky Status as a Scientific Superpower:

"A sizable portion of funding for scientific research in the United Kingdom comes from EU grants, and the United Kingdom is one of the largest recipients of research funding in the union. Between 2007 and 2013, the U.K. received €8.8 billion—the equivalent of nearly $10 billion—for scientific research, according to a 2015 report published by the Royal Society, an independent scientific academy based in London. Drayson and others say it’s unlikely the United Kingdom will be able to negotiate a deal for such funding to continue...

Yet there’s more to the debate than money. More broadly, many scientists fear that international collaboration among researchers from across the EU will become difficult, if not impossible, once Britain leaves the union.

“Being in the EU gives us access to ideas, people and to investment in science,” Paul Nurse, the director of The Francis Crick Institute, told the BBC. “That, combined with mobility [of EU scientists], gives us increased collaboration, increased transfer of people, ideas and science—all of which history has shown us drives science.”

The European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, is a key example of the kind of collaboration that EU membership has enabled."