BMJ  2008;336:120-122 (19 January), doi:10.1136/bmj.39454.402813.AD

Feature

Medical research

Getting the best from research funding

¹ London

It is just over a year since David Cooksey published his plans to reform UK research funding. Geoff Watts reports on how the ideas are working

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

"It ain’t broke, but let’s fix it anyway." Although this is not a sentence you will find anywhere in the text of David Cooksey’s 2006 report on the funding of medical research in Britain,¹ this coarse description does capture the thinking that underpins it. Generous praise for the achievements of UK health and medical research—then a "but." It’s rather like a school report: doing pretty well, but could do still better. And this teacher is having his way: the report’s central recommendations are being implemented. So what is happening—and should researchers be nervous?

It was Gordon Brown who set the ball rolling a couple of years ago with his announcement that Medical Research Council and National Health Service research and development funds were to be combined in one ring fenced pot to be held jointly by the secretaries of state for health and (as was) trade and industry. Brown was . . . [Full text of this article]

Objectives of reform

Cooksey report in a nutshell

Putting research into practice

Other views

What’s to come?

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