Ignorance of science has led UK to a dire future

Janan Ganesh asks the familiar and evermore pressing question “Why is ignorance of science acceptable in polite company? ( Life & Arts, May 5/6). While the answers to this may be a complicated mix of cultural and socio-economic reasons, the consequences of it are simple, demonstrable and disastrous.

After the last five decades of this ignorance, even disdain, among the government and professional cadres, the UK can no longer offer a single investable technology company among the world’s leading 500 companies and precious few examples among the next 500 (pace pharma and aerospace). For a nation boasting generations of titans from Newton to Hawking, from Faraday to Turing, controlling one of the world’s largest piles of capital in the City of London, this state of affairs simply beggars belief.

The future looks worse. Brexit’s proposed restrictions on the free flow of academics and students, the diminution of the UK’s participation in European programmes and the reduced access to international funding can serve only to reduce the UK’s success in the field.