Bravo Paul Nurse

I finally got around to reading the much talked about comment by Paul Nurse that appeared in the last issue of Cell. Some background ... Paul Nurse (or should I say Sir Paul Nurse) won the Nobel Prize along with Lee Hartwell and Tim Hunt for the discovery of the cell cycle, arguably one of the biggest discoveries in the past 100 years. He recently moved from London to New York to head Rockefeller University.

Nobel Website Bio.
Rockefeller homepage.

In his commentary, Nurse identifies 3 major problems with academic research in the US today:

• Academic funding and the pyramid scheme.
• The attack of science by various religious groups.
• Recruitment (i.e. the lack of American scientists + the miserable way foreign scientists are treated in the US)

Yes these are all issues that I and others seem to insensately write about on our little blogs. I highly recommend that you read the whole commentary. It's available for free to the general public on Cell's website.

(thanks BC)