THE toll of war is beginning to affect progress in science back home. Or perhaps it is just a coincidence that the UK and the US, the two Western countries most involved in Iraq, have just unveiled budgets that go a long way towards killing off frontier science funding in both countries.
In an omnibus funding bill passed in late December, Congress added $70 billion in extra money for the war. To pare down the rest by $22 billion, requested increases for three major physical science agencies – the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, the National Science Foundation, and…
