"All scientific research and collaboration will come to, or has already, come to an end because the electorate of the United Kingdom exercised their democratic right and voted to leave the EU - oh dear."

Another straw man. Really T, get a grip son. Read the posts, try to comprehend the problem and perhaps even have enough humility to accept someone knows more about a subject than you. Of course your validation is not needed to make something true, so in this respect your opinion is irrelevant, but it'd be good to have an intelligent conversation.

I've no dog in this race as I've given up on party politics, but as a scientist I care very much about how the work of my colleagues is affected by events like the Brexit vote. The UK will be at a disadvantage if the free movement of people is stopped, and this means as a society we loose out too. We face intense competition from India and China in applying our research commercially and this is going to increase as the years pass; our seamless links with Europe via the EU meant we acted as one community and shared resources without boundaries.

We can't let the narrow-minded, regressive nationalist agenda dictate the way science works as the thinking of any nationalist is blinkered by notions of 'nationhood' and whatever crap comes with it. This is the best thing about science as it recognises no borders, religions or nationality; if everyone wants to work together they should be able to.

It's the only way forward for us as a species to gather empirical data and collectively use that data for the common good. Brexit threatens that, and that should be thundered against.