Dr. Kealey is a professor of clinical biochemistry at the University of Buckingham in the United Kingdom, where he served as vice chancellor until 2014. The University of Buckingham is the only private university in the United Kingdom.

As a clinical biochemist Dr. Kealey studied human experimental dermatology. He published around 45 original peer-reviewed papers and around 35 scientific reviews, also peer-reviewed. His work attracted funding from government, charities and business.

While doing this research, Professor Kealey learned how distorting government money could be to the scientific enterprise. In 1996 he published his first book The Economic Laws of Scientific Research where he argued that, contrary to the conventional wisdom,  governments need not fund science. His second book, Sex, Science and Profits (2008) argues that science is not a public good but, rather, is organized in invisible colleges, thereby making government funding irrelevant. Both works are recognized as vital contributions to the study of science and public policy.

Professor Kealey trained initially in medicine at Bart’s Hospital Medical School, London. He studied for his doctorate at Oxford University, where he worked first as a Medical Research Council Training Fellow and then as a Wellcome Senior Research Fellow in Clinical Science.