Just read this article on the New Scientist website,
The article reveals that the job of the head of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and in turn the person in charge of allocation of the UK's science spending, could be for the first time in over 25 year be going to a civil servant and not someone who is from the outside, with background with scientific research. Nor will someone from scientific community be involved in the recruitment of the post. Therefore no checks of scientific creditability with be done.
In my view this could have am negative impact on how the money is allocated to different areas in science. For example a less important scientific project might get more funding than project of greater importance due to the lack of understanding from the new head.
This will remove some of the autonomy that science has from the government and Whitehall in terms on where the research budget is spent.
The new scientist article above does a better job at explaining the details.
Until next time.
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