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There was excitement this week when it seemed that science would receive a lot more loot than the ?1.25 billion announced as part of last week's spending review.

Your correspondent was "invited to a press briefing with chief secretary to the Treasury Paul Boateng, secretary of state for trade and industry Patricia Hewitt and secretary of state for education and skills Estelle Morris about the launch of the government's ?13 billion science strategy".

Sadly for researchers up and down the country, it transpired that the Treasury couldn't do its numbers. A computer glitch had replaced the 1/4 symbol with the figure 3.