The UK government department that houses science looks likely to be broken up amidst the flailings of under-fire prime minister Gordon Brown’s cabinet reshuffle.

The Department for Universities, Innovation and Skills (DIUS) was set up by Brown when he came to power in 2007, bringing together the science and higher education agendas. Its head, John Denham – who has a chemistry degree – has been promoted in today’s reshuffle, with no replacement announced.

Rumours abound that the department will be taken wholesale under the wing of business secretary Peter Mandelson (in the Department for business, enterprise and regulatory reform, or BERR). Alternatively, responsibility for science may move to BERR, and another department will take on universities.

Either way, science would be back under the control of business interests, as it was before DIUS was created. The move would reinforce the government’s push to fund research that boosts the national economy – a desire which science minister Lord Drayson has expressed on a number of occasions.

The best of the blow-by-blow speculation can be found on Twitter, but in blog action, The Times points out that the opposition Conservatives wanted to abolish the DIUS experiment anyway. “We’ll get no more ”https://news.google.co.uk/news?q=penguin%20poo&sourceid=navclient-ff&rlz=1B3GGIC_enGB312GB312&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wn">penguin poo research with Mandelson running the show," thinks The Ethical Palaeontologist.