BREXIT and science, where do we go from here.

Abstract

On Friday 24 June, the UK woke up to the news that as a country it had voted to leave the European Union (so-called BREXIT). Exactly a month later, on the 22 July, a letter signed by more than 1600 young investigators was published in The London Times exhorting the government to ensure that support for science was in no way compromised, as a consequence of the UK leaving the European Union. This publication marked the end of a month which saw the UK’s higher education institutes (HEIs) move from initial surprise, shock and disappointment at the outcome of the vote to one of an increasingly steely determination and focus to ensure that UK science, including biomedical science, does not become compromised by the political and economic changes that may result from BREXIT. So what exactly are the threats to UK science that may result from this vote? UK universities are widely recognized as being amongst the strongest national group of HEIs in the world. In addition, research undertaken in UK universities, notably of course in the biomedical field, is widely recognized as being strong and of economic importance; In 2012, for example, biomedical research was calculated to …