Cosy connections feed the fire of scientific sceptics

This is the week when Britain should celebrate its science. So it is a pity that Sir Richard Sykes used his presidential address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science to talk UK achievement down rather than up, at a time when positive signs are on the increase.

He is right that the UK's economic future depends on science. But it does not follow that scientists or biotech companies must be allowed to do whatever they like. Trials of genetically modified crops are today's case in point. Farmers do not want them near existing crops; consumers are sceptical; and their introduction runs counter to British agriculture's priority of concentrating on high-value organic crops, not low-grade industrial ones. Hiding GM experiments is no answer. The debate and understanding that the BA exists to promote may be.

There is also the issue of the Wellcome Trust's development ambitions in Cambridge and its threat to move elsewhere. We must encourage new industries, but the suspicion of bullying by powerful vested interests makes the public more sceptical.

Open debate is impeded by the lack of disinterested people to lead it. Sir Richard runs Glaxo Wellcome, Britain's biggest drugs company, which wants to ensure that the UK is a world powerhouse in biomedical research. The Wellcome Trust is a significant shareholder in Glaxo Wellcome. Trust and company are both major sponsors of the BA. The environment department has rejected Wellcome's proposal - but it is supported by the Department of Trade and Industry. Wellcome and the DTI are partners in the biggest-ever injection of capital into British science, the Joint Infrastructure Fund, and partners in a new synchrotron costing more than Pounds 170 million, most to come from Wellcome. In charge of science at the DTI is Lord Sainsbury, a big donor to the Labour Party from the profits of the family food retailer. He has personal (albeit arm's length) charitable and commercial interests in biotechnology.

Given the scale of this tangled web, nobody can blame the public for distrusting pronouncements from those in power on topics such as GM foods. The role of universities as a home for the disinterested sceptic has never been more vital. But even they appear to share the nonchalance over apparent conflicts of interest that seems to be commonplace in new Labour Britain. Few voices have questioned the wisdom of the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals' chief executive taking the Labour whip in the Lords. But she has backed down from joining a funding council committee that will hand public money to some universities that pay her salary and deny it to others (page 3). A small victory: but the CVCP will still be represented on the committee.