40s and 50s Memories
that in 2009 I and two other OAPs pointed out
that the gene sequences of pandemic 2009
swine flu' had several peculiarities that were
only logically explained if the virus had come
from a 'flu lab' making trivalent vaccines for
use in piggeries. This was, of course, roundly
rejected by WHO et al, but no one has since
come up with a better explanation, and 40,000
copies of our paper have been downloaded. I
reckon we were correct.
Virus evolution has been a fascinating life
interest. When I last visited King's I spoke to
Howard and Joyce Padfield. He asked me
what sort of research I did. I explained. "Oh,
so you believe evolution exists!!" he said. I
assured him it was real, but it was clear that his
memory of my mastery of physics cast me as
an 'unreliable witness'!!
The third stroke of enormous good fortune
for me at Imperial College was to meet fellow
botany student Pat Wilton from Gloucester and
marry her. Amazingly, she has put up with me
for nearly sixty years, and we share a practical
interest in the living world and are keen fans of
David Attenborough. We also have three fine and
interesting sons. The scientist and restaurateur
have brought us six lovely grandchildren, and
the third, hot air ballooning. "You haven't had a
hobby for years" said Paul, our eldest and one
of Australia's leading balloonists, when I neared
retirement, "so here is your student pilot's
license - and I'll teach you to fly"!!! Competition
ballooning is a fascinating and exciting sport,
it resembles geocaching, orienteering or the
Scout "wide games" to which Julian Pytches
and Boris Wilson introduced us all those years
ago, but in 3D and in a medium, air, you cannot
directly see, and you only have control over
the balloon's height (NB a balloon has a mass
of several tonnes and no brakes!!). However,
with skill and, in my case, lots of luck, balloons
can be steered from target to target across the
countryside. It's exciting fun, but after Pat and
I had our 50th Anniversary flight over Canberra
in 2005, I decided to hand in my license after
293.5 hours of piloting, as I could no longer be
sure of hearing the radios that connected me
to my ground crew and to the air traffic control
tower (and passing aircraft!).
Finally I should explain why I believe that the Golden Age of Science, as practiced in
universities, is at an end. When I started research
in the 1950s, funding was at arm's length from
research - people were appointed to work in/on
particular topics, but were then left alone to work
out what could best and most usefully be done.
Some of us won through, many failed. Most of
the laboratory leaders were tenured. Starting
in the 1980s a swelling army of bureaucrats
took over and micro-managed in the name of
"accountability", and convinced each other and
the politicians that they could pick research
winners using research metrics based largely
on publications. Unproven certainly, nonsense
probably!!! All the scientific discoveries by
Australians, and probably Brits too, that
have led to such accolades as Nobel Prizes,
were achieved by projects that were funded
by hands-off block funding, not form-filling,
milestone-constrained teams of operatives on
short-term funding, and pushed by committees
and journal editors into working in fashionable
topics selected by the bureaucrats. "Bell, Book
and Compass: Joseph Needham and the great
secrets of China" by Simon Winchester tells
of Joseph Needham, the biochemist, while
a scientific ambassador to the free Chinese
during the Second World War, discovered that
China, far from being a technological backwater
as was popularly stated in the 'West', had led
the world of discovery and innovation until
around 1500 AD. So the "Needham question"
was, why had China not led the Great Industrial
Revolution? The answer he concluded was
most likely bureaucratisation. To establish the
Chinese nation from smaller competing states,
required bureaucracies. The brightest people
became bureaucrats; discovery and innovation
died. It will take years to discover whether the
bureaucratization of science, that has occurred
over the past two decades in the UK, Australia
and the USA will result in a similar scientific
Dark Ages with the most adventurous minds
migrating elsewhere. Notwithstanding my final
gripe, I have had a charmed life. My final years
at King's were fun, and academically great, but
they never mentioned the practical skills of life
such as how to make my first million, and how
to open a bank account for it! So I stumbled into
adulthood without a clue about 'real living' but,
nonetheless, consistent good luck turned my
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