Abstract :
On 5 October last year, Konstantin Novoselov shed his usual t-shirt and jeans to don white tie. He and his supervisor Professor Andre Geim jointly accepted the Nobel Prize for Physics 2010. In his acceptance speech, Geim talked about how ??cautiousness and political correctness?? were in danger of drowning unconventional thinking. He said we could stray from democracy to ??mediocracy to idiocracy??. He added, ??if you want an example don??t look any further than research funding by the European Commission??.