MRC recruits science writer

It is surprising that more science writers have not joined the handful who have taken on appointments on the bodies that oversee various research organisations. After all, writers have to spend more time getting to know more of what goes on than many of the people who get grants from Research Councils, for example.

Writers don't even have to sit back and wait for someone to summon them on to these bodies. The RCs even invite people to apply for seats in their council. We don't know if this is how Vivienne Parry, an ABSW member, came to be a new members of the council of the Medical Research Council. But we can think of a number of drawbacks to applying for such a job.

The income, a grand total of £6570 per year can hardly make up for the work that you might have to forego when you have this sort of appointment. There are just too many opportunities for aggrieved outsiders to scream loudly about potential conflicts of interest. Fortunately, Vivienne, who has, among other activities, made some neat radio programmes in recent years, isn't the sort of person to be intimidated by such accusations.

If nothing else, having a "back" on board at a Research Council should help them to improve their media relationships. Some Research Councils, those I have to deal with, seem to take this aspect of their work seriously enough to allocate adequate resources to the work. They end up with small, hard working teams that really do not have the resources it takes to do an effective job.

A new research council

The Science and Technology Facilities Council quietly opened for business on 1 April. (Maybe it was the date that kept them quiet.) So anyone who tries to visit PPARC or CCLRC arrives at STFC.

Actually, it doesn't quite work like that CCLRC automatically redirects you. PPARC delivers you to a web site that "is being maintained as an archive resource for a transitional period".

One of the problems with web sites is that they can vanish completely. Anyone interested in the history of either organisation should grab what they can while it lasts.

There is a separate page for Press contacts .

Sadly, we could not find an RSS feed. So you will have to get on to their email lists, or monitor the appropriate web pages.

RCUK dispatches science news

As if there wasn't enough news out there already, Research Councils UK has jumped in with another way to eat into your reading time. But RCUK Dispatch might save you time. It consolidates lots of stuff from the Research Councils.

Nice idea. Pity they haven't see fit to provide it as an RSS feed. Doesn't look like you can sign up for an email version either. So you'll have to visit the web site every day, or use a robot like UpdatePatrol to do it for you, to see what's there.

Oh well, nice try.