Britain’s most senior scientist warned last week that UK research is being stifled by an ‘appalling, obsessive’ bureaucracy. ‘A bunch of academic apparatchiks’ is threatening our scientific brilliance, said Lord May, retiring president of the Royal Society.

‘Today, Crick and Watson’s work on DNA would have been blocked before they had got started. Crick would have been sacked for being idle and Watson would have been told to piss off and stop messing about with his grant.’

May – in short – is in typical form. The Australian-born mathematician – scourge of greenies, homeopaths, lawyers, bureaucrats and politicians – leaves office on Wednesday, but he is not going quietly. He described the beliefs of US climate chief James Connaughton as ‘loony’ and warned that Christian and Islamic fundamentalists now threaten to create a blighted, blinkered world worthy of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.

‘Scientists are trusted by most people,’ he said. ‘Polls make that clear. They are up there among doctors, particularly for young people. It is a myth that people do not have confidence in scientists.’

Trusting them is a critical issue for May, hence his outrage over the fact that Connaughton – ‘a slick, charming lawyer’ – heads George Bush’s environmental affairs, and is not a scientist. ‘Of course, if you are trying to defend the indefensible, the first thing you do is hire a good lawyer. That might explain it’.

It’s always a treat to hear from someone who’s aggressive about science vs. superstition. I’m not confident at all about societies where protocol has a higher priority than reason. What do American scientists have to say about the state of our own research?