Neuroscience research is to lose £4m of government funds a year

More than 80 leading neuroscience researchers have written to the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, the United Kingdom’s main funding agency for research in the non-clinical life sciences, to protest about its recently announced plans for the future distribution of research grants.

The researchers say that the plans are “aimed at reducing the strength of an area of research in which the UK excels, simply because it is too successful.”

The council’s announcement on 24 January concerned proposed changes in its grants procedures. The council said, “In the case of neuroscience [it had] reluctantly concluded that demand-led funding is resulting in too great a proportion of funding …