Nobel Prize Winner Attacks 'Directed Research'

Britain's latest Nobel prize winner has attacked government plans to divert research funding from basic science into projects that are expected to have a quick financial pay-off. Quoted in the Guardian, Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, a Cambridge Chemistry professor, said that the focus on trying to get very quick pay-offs was 'a huge mistake.' He went on: 'basic science has paid off far more than any directed research. If you don't invest properly in fundamental science, then you won't have the foundations to develop the technologies and applications of tomorrow. Ten years down the line, your technology will be based on obsolete foundations.'