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<br /></br><hr /><b>Información general: </b><br />
La revista ‘Nature’ aborda el “suicidio científico” de
España<br /><b>URL:</b> <a
href="http://www.nature.com/news/spanish-changes-are-scientific-suicide-1.10027"
target="_blank">http://www.nature.com/news/spanish-changes-are-scientific-suicide-1.10027</a><br
/><b>Información de:</b> Infoling List
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/><b>Descripción</b><br /><p> <i>Spanish changes are scientific
suicide</i><br />De: Amaya Moro-Martín. <i>Nature</i> 482 (277),
February 16th, 2012<br /><a
href="http://www.nature.com/news/spanish-changes-are-scientific-suicide-1.10027"
target="_blank">http://www.nature.com/news/spanish-changes-are-scientific-suicide-1.10027</a><br
/><br />“The government's irrational and draconian actions will
cause long-term damage to the scientific infrastructure.”<br /><br
/>Spain no longer has a ministry of science. In the last days of 2011,
its new government transferred national science policy to the Ministry
of Economy and Competitiveness, a duty for which this ministry seems
most unsuited. Science was an unwelcome addition that absorbed more
than half of the €1,083-million (US$1,438-million) budget cut
imposed on the ministry. This sends an alarming signal of the
sacrifices that science may face when the government releases its
budget for 2012 next month.<br /><br />This is the first time that
neither 'science' nor 'research' have featured in the name of any top
Spanish government department. It is not just a symbolic shift: it
continues our country's trend of deliberately undermining and playing
down the importance of science.<br /><br />The official line is clear:
science is not a priority in Spain. Of course, we are immersed in an
economic crisis and austerity measures are needed. However, the
government's irrational and draconian actions will cause long-term
damage to the scientific infrastructure and send contradictory
messages to other countries and investors. Although its rhetoric
promises a shift to a knowledge-based economy, every step it takes is
in the opposite direction. The results will be a borrowed-knowledge
economy with little domestic know-how.<br /><br />The problems did not
start with the new government: the previous administration attempted
to pass a Kafkaesque by-law for public universities that would have
created a merit-evaluation system that diminished the weight assigned
to research and technology transfer. The by-law stated that trade
unions would negotiate the criteria for faculty promotion, making
academic careers “more predictable and more egalitarian”. It would
have been the death of meritocracy. The same by-law would also have
ballooned bureaucracy to such a level that it would have threatened to
swamp any university administration.<br /><br />The previous
government also opposed attempts to create a genuine tenure-track
system for researchers in universities and national laboratories, on
the grounds that tenure track is unconstitutional because access to
civil service should be “egalitarian” so tenured jobs should not
be targeted to tenure-track researchers. This is a consequence of the
narrow-minded thought that all researchers in the public sector should
be civil servants, but civil service is unsuited to research
activities.<br /><br />Spain likes to boast that it has an equivalent
to tenure track: the Ramón y Cajal programme. Launched in 2001, this
is the only nationwide programme that has managed to attract and
retain highly qualified researchers from Spain and abroad. However,
drastic cuts in hiring over the past three years and a hiring freeze
announced this year will kill this first attempt at a tenure-track
programme. The prospects are so grim that despite being eager to
return to Spain, some of my Spanish colleagues in the United States
are rejecting Ramón y Cajal positions.<br />frastructure.”<br /><br
/>The hiring freeze is suicidal. Researchers who retire will no longer
be replaced. Unlike many of its neighbours, Spain has a very limited
science and technology industry in which to absorb highly qualified
workers, so scientists aged 20–40 years will have no choice but to
leave if they want to further their career. The country will therefore
face a multigenerational brain drain, with corresponding losses in
innovation, inspiration and credibility. The damage from this decision
will take decades to reverse.<br /><br />The new government is now
effectively trampling on the best hope that Spanish researchers had
for the future. Legislation in the pipeline could have improved the
situation, but the government has, abruptly and without explanation,
closed the two political science commissions — one in the Senate and
one in the Congress — that would have been responsible for steering
through this legislation.<br /><br />The legislation includes moves to
allow universities and research centres to be funded privately, to
develop a new science and technology strategy and to create a proper
national research agency with a multi-year budget. We urgently need
such a system in Spain, where severe and unpredictable fluctuations in
year-to-year funding make medium- to long-term planning impossible.
The strategy is crucial if Spain is to coordinate its increasingly
anarchic 18 sets of science policies — laid out simultaneously by
the 17 regional governments and the central government — and to
introduce a smarter, top-down, approach to tackling national
problems.<br /><br />Spain must bring its science and technology
investment (currently 1.39% of gross domestic product) in line with
European standards (2%) and closer to the 3% goal set by the European
Council Lisbon Strategy for 2010. It also needs a science council,
similar to the German Wissenschaftsrat, constituted mainly of
scientists who have been elected by the scientific community to take
the lead in delivering the national science and technology
strategy.<br /><br />Spain's situation is summed up by a poster for a
recent Hollywood blockbuster: “No plan. No backup. No choice.
Mission: Impossible. Ghost Protocol.” Spanish science cannot afford
ghost protocols. Without the proposed strategy there is no plan, and
without a well-funded and non-political national research funding
agency, there is no backup. The results leave research in Spain with a
mission impossible.</p><br /><b>Información en la web de
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