Researchers
chafe at spending cuts and fear a brain drain.
Researchers in Argentina are incensed about budget cuts that look set to
hit the nation’s science ministry especially hard next year — even though
President Mauricio Macri pledged to boost science spending when he took office
last December.
“Science in Argentina faces a critical situation,” says Dora Barrancos, a
gender-issues researcher at the National University of Quilmes in Buenos Aires.
She fears that the cuts, after years of budget increases, may presage a return
to the troubles of the twentieth century, when scientists fled the country in
their thousands. “If young scientists do not have opportunities here, the brain
drain is going to restart.”
In September this year, Macri’s government proposed to cut overall science
spending to around 32 billion pesos (US$2 billion) in 2017, a fall of
around 6% in real terms, according to government estimates of domestic
inflation. As part of that proposal, the science ministry would have seen a cut
of more than 50% in real terms. In October, scientists poured out onto the
streets in protest.
Related stories
A revamped budget, passed by Argentina’s lower house of parliament on 3
November, has added around 1.3 billion pesos to overall science spending,
limiting the damage to around 2%. Still, the science ministry will take a
real-terms cut of 36% — and researchers remain unhappy. Argentina’s Senate is
due to vote on the budget by the end of November.
Particularly galling is that Macri had promised dramatic increases to the
country’s research spending in his campaign. He proposed raising the share of
the economy dedicated to science and technology from around 0.6% of gross
domestic product in 2014 to 1.5% by 2019. Instead, he has prioritized paying
off Argentina’s debt, notes Jorge Aliaga, a physicist at the University of
Buenos Aires.
Aliaga also points out that the government's overall budget is rising in
real terms. Taking that into account, he argues that the science budget is 8.5%
down on where it would be if it had kept pace with overall spending.
Street protests
Aliaga is part of Science and Technology Argentina (CyTA), a group of
concerned scientists who in October coordinated a petition against Macri’s
first budget. More than 33,000 researchers and university teachers signed it,
and CyTA and university-student associations organized protests in
9 cities, including outside the parliament in Buenos Aires.
The noise got parliament’s attention, and helped prompt the revised budget.
But the damage-limitation hasn’t been enough, researchers say. The National
Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), a research institute that
employs some 9,600 research staff, now gets a 6% real-terms raise to around 10
billion pesos ($660 million). Most of the institute's cash is swallowed up in
paying salaries for researchers. It planned to increase its research staff by
10% annually until 2019 — and had hired 920 young researchers this year — but
will only be able to pay 400 new staff in 2017. As a result, “young scientists
will go abroad, and the setback will be very difficult to revert”, says Andrea
Gamarnik, a virologist at the Leloir Institute Foundation in Buenos Aires.
Lorena Coria, a 33-year-old biologist on a CONICET postdoc fellowship to
develop oral vaccines for children, is one researcher who applied to be hired
by the institute this year — but as a result of the constrained budget, now
does not know if she will be taken on. "I know there are good
opportunities abroad," she says.
The science ministry takes the worst hit. In particular, its National
Agency for the Promotion of Science and Technology, which funds both basic and
applied research, had been set for a 60% real-terms budget drop in September’s
version of the budget. With November’s parliamentary adjustment, and by
borrowing money from credit organizations such as the Inter-American
Development Bank, the agency may yet recover some of its lost spending power,
says science minister Lino Barañao.
Barañao also insists that there will be no brain drain. He prefers to take
the long view, noting that science and technology funding has steadily
increased since 2007. And parliamentary budgets do not set funding in stone:
this year’s spending on science, for example, looks set to be around 4% higher
than the 2016 settlement that was agreed by parliament. The same could happen
in 2017, he says.
Nature
doi:10.1038/nature.2016.21013
17 November 2016
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario
Deje su mensaje, y debajo, su nombre y email.