Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
This article, commenting on the Rothschild and Dainton reports, is by Mr William McCall, general secretary of the Institution of Professional Civil Servants.
This is the second in a series of comments on the Dainton and Rothschild reports. The author is Professor C. H. Waddington, Institute of Animal Genetics, University of Edinburgh.
In the next few weeks Nature will publish a series of comments on the Dainton and Rothschild reports recently published in A Framework for Government Research and Development. The first is by Professor M. Swann, Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Edinburgh.