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A 100th birthday wish: uphold academic freedom in dark times

The Haldane principle, born a century ago, has enabled government scientists to speak truth to power without fear of retribution — cherish it, says Ehsan Masood.
  1. Ehsan Masood

    1. Ehsan Masood was editor of Research Fortnight from 2009 to 2017. His latest book is The Great Invention: The Story of GDP and the Making and Unmaking of the Modern World (Pegasus, 2016).

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One hundred years ago this month, shortly after the guns of the First World War fell silent, a German-speaking Scottish lawyer-turned-politician sent an 80-page report to his prime minister. In it was an idea whose echo still shapes the way in which many nations fund research — an idea arguably as important to the soul of modern science as the secular state is to modern democracy.

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Nature 563, 621-623 (2018)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-07518-3

References

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