london

Britain's corridors of power last week witnessed a rather unusual gathering of scientists and senior ministers who — in the company of some potted plants — assembled in 10 Downing Street to brief the prime minister, Tony Blair, on why science matters, the issues surrounding public investment in science and its policy implications.

The presentations were made in a series of tightly orchestrated, four-minute slots, delivered around the long, boat-shaped Cabinet table. The potted plants, reputedly the first to be placed squarely on the Cabinet table in front of the prime minister, arrived with Caroline Dean from the John Innes Centre in Norwich, who talked about her work on the genes in the plant Arabidopsis.

Dean was among those whose talk came under the heading, “A Taste of Science”. Any resonance with the billing found on the back of pre-prepared supermarket meals — “A Taste of India” — was a reminder that for most government ministers, science might as well be a far-flung foreign land.

But the scientists present left the meeting rather pleased. “I felt that science had moved to the top of the agenda,” says Paul Nurse, director-general of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund.

“I'm prepared to be as cynical as the next person, but I came away feeling fairly impressed and upbeat about the whole thing,” says Matthew Freeman of the Medical Research Council's Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge.

According to the reports of those present, ministers talked of the recent success of the Research Assessment Exercise conducted on British universities, and there was cautious discussion of a possible new white paper on science.

It also appeared clear that senior ministers were not confident that the recent announcement of significant additional funds for science (see Nature 394, 209; 1998) was likely to be sufficient to silence scientists, and they were expecting further calls for money.

The scientists in turn delivered some important messages about the difficulties of finding adequate funding for their work. One of those present was Polina Bayvel of University College London, representing the country's electrical engineering departments.

Already backed by a prestigious Royal Society University Research Fellowship, Bayvel has raised £1.5 million (US$2.5 million) for an optical communications laboratory — but the effort has involved writing more than 35 grant proposals over the past five years.

The need for long-term funding for good scientists was driven home by Matthew Freeman, who used his own highly successful laboratory as an example.

Despite being billed as a mix of young and old, and life and physical scientists, the meeting inevitably ruffled a few feathers. “The make-up of the meeting clearly reflected a life-sciences bias,” said one physicist. “This is understandable, but what's worrying is there might be an ideology to fund life sciences more because they create more wealth.”

For many, however, the surprise turn of the meeting was the widely distrusted trade and industry secretary Peter Mandelson, who, despite his reputation as the Labour party's ‘spin-doctor’, seems to have made something of a hit with the assembled academics. “I really liked Mandelson,” said one. “I hadn't expected to, as his image is an alarming one. [But] he was intelligent and had a really sharp, black sense of humour.”

Towards the end came discussion of how to improve science's poor public image. National Science Week, suggested one participant, needed some high-profile events — such as a minister bungee jumping off a tall building to demonstrate Newtonian dynamics and Hooke's law.

“Haven't you heard?” quipped Mandelson. “I'm doing that from the Millennium Dome”. Such an event would certainly serve to attract visitors to the government's £758-million dome, which houses an exhibition celebrating the millennium.