A cursory but scathing article on the ravaging of Argentinean science. Of
course, no mention is made at all of the relation between these policies and
the payment of the foreign debt, structural deindustrialization, educational
barbarism, and so on. But well, this is The Economist. When Argentineans retake
power of our own country and begin our path again, The Economist will most
certainly give detailed information on how we are Fascists full of resentment.
But this time has not come yet.
The article mentions the Argentinean Nobel prize winners. There are a couple of
things to be said on at least two of them (clearly awarded due to political
more than academic reasons), but this will be theme for a future posting, if
ever. As to Roberto Perazzo, if I am not wrong he is either my teacher of
Physics at high school or a relative of his. He was an extraordinary teacher of
physics and at the same time a vintage right-wing reactionary. His remarks on
our “love for success, whether it’s Maradona, a racing-car driver or a trapeze
artist” is to be predicated on our higher, ruling classes, only. It is a
typical example of self-deprecation, of imperialist ideology. But, well, the
article itself is worth a reading. Enrique Oteiza, also mentioned, is a
mainstream "progressive".
Argentina
Unloved boffins
Feb 22nd 2001 | BUENOS AIRES
From The Economist print edition
SCIENCE is important to Argentina. In a little over 50
years it has produced three Nobel prizewinners, good
going for a second-world country of 37m people. Last
year, to the government’s delight, it even managed
to sell a locally designed nuclear reactor to Australia.
Yet its scientists reckon they are unappreciated.
According to Roberto Perazzo, a physics professor at
the University of Buenos Aires (UBA), one of the
country’s main research centres, Argentines “love
success, whether it’s Maradona, a racing-car driver or
a trapeze artist”. They therefore like their scientists
to win prizes; but they do not believe they can
contribute much to the improvement of society.
Mr Perazzo points to the evidence. The National
Atomic Energy Commission (CNEA) is close to
collapse; its library is out of date; research grants
are down 30%; the staff has been slashed by three
voluntary retirement plans, and the government has
ordered a freeze on new appointments. Even the
scientists who prepared the fuel for the new
Australian reactor have departed.
Thin funding lies at the base of this. Argentina
dedicates a mere 0.35% of its GDP to science and
technology. Its researchers look enviously at Brazil,
which spends over twice that proportion and almost
five times as much in real terms. Last year Brazil
released, to world acclaim, the genomic sequencing
of a bacterium that attacks oranges.
On February 19th Dante Caputo, the science and
technology secretary, suddenly resigned. He had been
claiming stoutly that the government, despite its
fiscal straitjacket, meant to increase science funding
by 5.4% this year to around $700m, and would make
similar annual increases in the future. He also
wanted to channel research funds through the
universities, which have not controlled scientific
research since it was removed from their remit by a
military government in junta days. Many scientists
liked Mr Caputo’s plan in principle, but worried that
the universities would prove too disorganised to run
things properly. They also felt they had not been
consulted. As he left, Mr Caputo lamented that
neither the government nor scientists had supported
him.
History has made Argentina’s academics easy to
alarm or offend. The 1970s military regimes’ distrust
of intellectuals meant that the repression of
“subversive literature” extended even to mathematics
textbooks. Even in the relatively enlightened 1990s,
Domingo Cavallo, an economy minister of deserved
fame in his own field, famously told scientists to “go
wash dishes”. As a result, the country has
haemorrhaged scientists for decades, mainly to the
United States and Europe, but also to Brazil, whose
rulers, even in its own years of military rule, took a
kinder view of their work.
The flow was interrupted briefly with the victory in
1999 of the Alliance government, whose manifesto
included an apparent commitment to raise science
spending to 1% of GDP. Mr Caputo said it promised
only to “tend towards” that figure, and that private
investment, currently around half the level of state
spending, must make up a big part of it. But many
company research budgets have fallen, particularly
after the wave of privatisations during the 1990s,
with new owners often closing labs and shifting
research work abroad.
Enrique Oteiza, a social-sciences professor at UBA,
points out a worrying trend. In previous decades, the
scientist-emigrants were mainly senior figures fleeing
political turmoil. Since the 1990s, most have been
young researchers who cannot find posts after
finishing their postgraduate studies. Over the past
decade, largely in response to pressure from
international financial institutions, the number of
local research posts has been cut by almost half. It is
reckoned that around a third of Argentine researchers
are now working abroad; among them, maybe, a
future Nobel-winner or two.
Néstor Miguel Gorojovsky
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