It is a curious fact of UK science is it not that many of its leader have surnames either eponymous in the world of shopping or sounding as though they should be: Sainsbury, Willetts, Walport, Drayson all sound like signage I might find on a Saturday wander into Dulwich?

Lord Sainsbury – whowas arguably the best Science Minister of the last thirty or so years – gave an interview to THES this week ahead of his election today as Chancellor of that out-of-town research superstore otherwise known as Cambridge University. [By definition this means that The Francis Crick Institute is going to be the research equivalent of Wetsfield)]. 

The fact is that I was a little disappointed although perhaps unsurprised by his anti-consumer take on the assessment of research impact in the forthcoming REF.  Perhaps when  you are in the top four institutions it is sometimes difficult to see past the volume of goods being sold.

I’m off to a social media conference on Tuesday, so time to spare to share this rather interesting article from FierceBiotechIT about the matching of twitter traffic to vaccine uptake in the US.

And this from HealthCanal including an interesting aside about how patients tweeting one another is causing potential problems in clinical trials.