IN HIS PROFOUND ANALYSIS OF THE MICROCOSMOGRAPHIA Acadernica of his time, F.M. Cornford identified among the parties the Adullamites, who ‘are dangerous, because they know what they want; and that is, all the money there is going’. He goes on to say that they ‘are not refined, like classical men. That is why they succeed in getting all the money there is going’.

Of Cambridge scientists in the 1920s, the era of sealing wax and string, this was an unduly harsh judgment, but it may be thought prophetic of today's academic world, in which scientists spend millions of pounds on research projects whose only apparent justification is peer judgment; this research is worth support because other scientists in the same field say it is.