UK Science and EU membership: United we stand…

If Britain cares about science, it must vote against Brexit

Leaving the EU would be an unmitigated catastrophe for British science. The UK government spends less than 0.5% of its GDP on science - ensuring that the UK scrapes the bottom of the G8 science funding barrel by some margin. Now, some folks in the government appear to want to further debilitate UK science by allowing voters to decide whether we quit the EU. Perhaps science isn't one of the first things the government thinks of when it's making noises about a European referendum, but it absolutely should be.

First and foremost - it's the economy, stupid. UK science is one of the fundaments of the modern British economy. Oxford Economics' conservative estimation is that the innovation, research and technology sectors contributed around 7.6 billion in gross value added to the UK economy in 2012/13, and that for every 1 spent on science-related fields, the overall return to the wider UK economy is around 4-7. For a government running a deficit, you would think that using science to help build the economy should be more of a priority.