Interesting if true

Our fortnightly digest of facts and rumours from the UK and beyond.

Talk is cheap

Researchers and politicians love to talk about the UK being the top dog in biomedical research and we don’t doubt it. But the government’s yet-to-be-actually-built medical research centre in St Pancras, London, is perhaps getting a little ahead of itself. “The Francis Crick is a world-leading biomedical institute” proclaims a poster on the fencing—surrounding what currently amounts to little more than a huge pile of rubble. An exercise in positive mental attitude, or has the competition really got that bad?