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George Radda, head of the MRC, defends the allocation of money for longer-term research. Credit: MRC

For years, critics of Britain's Medical Research Council (MRC) have quietly grumbled that the prestigious funding agency doesn't plan its priorities carefully enough, or communicate properly with the community of researchers that it supports. Now the detractors are claiming vindication after a scathing report from a parliamentary committee endorsed their views.

The report, released on 25 March, says that the MRC has grown distant from many medical researchers. The committee accuses the council of “inconsistent and inadequate communication”, and of allocating too much money to big projects, such as the UK Biobank genetic database, leaving itself unable to fund as many individual grants as it had led researchers to expect (see Nature 418, 714; 200210.1038/418714a). “The recent success rate for the MRC's grant applications has fallen to levels that are unacceptable,” the report says, adding that researchers' anger at this is “entirely justified”.

George Radda, a biochemist and chief executive of the MRC, says that many of the charges levelled by the House of Commons' Science and Technology Select Committee result from “misunderstandings” about what the agency is doing.

But several medical researchers contacted by Nature say that the charges are broadly justified. “In my view — and that of most of my colleagues — the criticisms are just about on the mark,” says David Colquhoun, a pharmacologist at University College London.

“A lot of what is in the report is valid and fair, and the MRC needs to take note,” says David Price, a physiologist at the University of Edinburgh and one of the scientists who testified before the committee.

“The MRC has a good track record, but in the past few years it has gone to pieces,” says Ian Gibson (Labour, Norwich North), the committee's chairman. The harsh language in the report reflects the views of organizations and senior scientists who testified before the committee, he says. He adds that, in his view, the MRC is run by a small, London-based group that is not fully representative of medical researchers around the country.

Radda defends the decision to back the UK Biobank, to which the MRC has pledged £20 million (US$32 million) over seven years. “We have a responsibility to set up national facilities that support science in the longer term,” he says. But he says that the MRC should have done more to inform scientists of its financial situation. “We now have a very detailed statement on our website about funding between 2003 and 2006,” he adds.

And William Stewart, a microbiologist and former chief scientific adviser to the British government, says that Gibson's committee has in the past been overly critical and might have been more constructive in this case. “They should be fighting for more money for science,” he comments, “but there's no mention here of the MRC's need for more funds.”

The government is due to respond to the report within two months, and its officials had no comment last week on what it will do about the barrage of criticism levelled at the council. But Peter Cotgreave, director of the pressure group Save British Science, thinks the findings will encourage more energetic communication from the MRC and discourage further commitments to large projects. “If they commit money long-term next time, having had these problems pointed out, they will be asking for trouble, and may not get funded,” he suggests. “The other research councils will argue that they should get more money because they know how to spend it.”