Labini science and the economic crisis; impact on science, lessons from science (2016)

Francesco Sylos Labini Science and the Economic Crisis Impact on Science, Lessons from Science Science and the Economic Crisis Francesco Sylos Labini Science and the Economic Crisis Impact on Science, Lessons from Science 123 Francesco Sylos Labini Enrico Fermi Center and Institute for Complex Systems (National Research Council) Rome Italy ISBN 978-3-319-29527-5 DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-29528-2 ISBN 978-3-319-29528-2 (eBook) Library of Congress Control Number: 2016931354 © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016 This work is subject to copyright All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made Printed on acid-free paper This Springer imprint is published by SpringerNature The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG Switzerland Foreword The world is in the grip of the biggest economic crisis for more than 80 years Nearly all nations are affected, though, of course, some are more affected than others The key political question of today is: “What should be done to bring this crisis to an end?” In this book, Francesco Sylos Labini, who is a researcher in physics, takes an unusual approach to the crisis by relating it to the situation in science How is this economic crisis related to scientific research? A little reflection shows that this link is in fact very close The neoliberal economic policies, which have dominated for the past 30 or so years, are based on neoclassical economics This looks very much like a science such as physics, since it consists of equations and mathematical models But is it really scientific? Should we trust the predictions of neoclassical economics in the same way that we trust those of physics? Sylos Labini gives good reasons for thinking that we should not, and that neoclassical economics is more of a pseudo-science, like astrology, than a genuine science, like astronomy Sylos Labini begins his argument by analyzing predictions in the natural sciences In some areas, such as the future positions of planets and comets, predictions can be made with extraordinary accuracy; but this is not always the case Predictions of tomorrows’ weather, or of when volcanic eruptions or earthquakes will occur, are much less certain Let us consider meteorology Here the laws governing the behavior of the atmosphere are precise and well established, but there is a difficulty—the so-called butterfly effect A small disturbance, such a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil, can be magnified and cause a hurricane in the United States This leads to what is called chaotic behavior—a subject which has been studied mathematically, and in which Sylos Labini is an expert Despite the difficulties caused by chaos, weather forecasting can be, and has been, improved by better collection of observations, better mathematical models, and the use of more powerful computers If we turn from this to neoclassical economics, we see that the situation is completely different As Sylos Labini points out, we not know the laws of economic development in the way that we know the laws governing the atmosphere v vi Foreword The butterfly effect seems to apply to the world economy, however, since the failure of a few sub-prime mortgages in a region of the United States led to a worldwide economic recession Yet neoclassical economists take no account of the mathematics of chaos whose use is now standard in the natural sciences Although weather forecasts can be trusted up to a point, little credence should be given to those of neoclassical economics, and yet, as Sylos Labini points out, neoclassical economics has nonetheless achieved a cultural hegemony In order to explain how this has been possible, Sylos Labini turns to a consideration of the organization of research, and, more generally, of the universities What is interesting is that neoliberal policies have the same general effect in the universities as they in society as a whole In society, their tendency has been to concentrate wealth in fewer and fewer hands The richest % has grown richer and richer at the expense not only of the working class but also of the old middle class Similarly, in the university sector, more and more funding is going to a few privileged universities and their researchers at the expense of the others This is justified on the grounds that these universities and researchers are better than the others, so that it more efficient to concentrate funding on them To find out which universities and researchers are better, regular research assessments are conducted, and they are used to guide the allocation of funds But how accurate are these research assessments in picking out the researchers who are better from those who are not so good? Sylos Labini gives us good reasons for thinking that these research assessments, far from being accurate, are highly misleading One striking result, which he mentions, is known as the Queen’s question Lehman Brothers collapsed in September 2008 and started the great recession By chance, Queen Elizabeth visited the London School of Economics to inaugurate a new building in November 2008, and here she asked her famous question: “why did no one see the economic crisis coming?” Of course the neoclassical economists of the London School of Economics not only did not foresee the crisis, but they had been advocating the very neoliberal policies that led to it In December 2008, the UK’s research assessment exercise reported its results These showed that the field that had obtained the highest score of any in the country was none other than economics, which in the UK had by then become almost exclusively neoclassical economics If the results of this assessment were to be believed, then economics was the field in which the best research in the UK had been done in the preceding years—better than the research in physics, computer science, or the biomedical sciences Obviously this shows that something had gone very wrong with research assessment Sylos Labini is an active member of Return on Academic Research (Roars.it), an organization that is active in opposing the attempts of the Italian government to introduce a research organization modeled on the UK into Italy His book explains the failings of such research assessment systems One interesting argument he uses concerns some of the major discoveries in physics and mathematics made in the last few decades In physics he discusses high-temperature superconductivity, the scanning tunneling microscope, and graphene; and in mathematics Yitang Zhang’s proof of an important theorem in prime number theory Unknown individuals, Foreword vii working in low-rated institutions, made all these discoveries that is to say, researchers who would have had their research funding cut by the rigorous implementation of research assessment exercises The point is that scientific discovery is unpredictable, and one has a better chance of increasing important discoveries by spreading funds more evenly rather than by concentrating them in the hands of a small elite In the final part of his book, Sylos Labini points out that the same neoliberal push towards inequality is to be found in throughout Europe Research funds are being concentrated more in Northern Europe and less in Southern Europe Sylos Labini argues not only for a more egalitarian distribution of research funds, but also for an overall increase in the funding for research and development This is the strategy that will produce innovations capable of revitalizing the economies and putting them once more on a growth path Sylos Labini makes a very strong case for his point of view Let us hope that a new generation of politicians will be willing and able to implement his ideas Meantime his book is to be strongly recommended to anyone seeking to understand the current crisis and its ramifications July 2015 Donald Gillies Emeritus Professor of Philosophy of Science and Mathematics University College London Acknowledgments I am grateful to Angelo Vulpiani, one of my mentors in physics In addition to our countless interesting discussions on the role of forecasts in science, I thank him for painstakingly commenting on a preliminary version of this work I am also thankful for his unwavering encouragement Several friends and colleagues, who have read early versions of this work, or specific chapters, have given me valuable advice and suggestions In particular I thank Lavinia Azzone, Antonio Banfi, David Benhaiem, Andrea Cavagna, Guido Chiarotti, Francesco Coniglione, Stefano Demichelis, Luca Enriques, Donald Gillies, Grazia Ietto-Gillies, Michael Joyce, Martin Lopez Corredoira, Laura Margottini, Enzo Marinari, Maurizio Paglia, Daniela Palma, Roberto Petrini, Francesco Sinopoli, Giorgio Sirilli, Fabio Speranza, and Marco Viola Many ideas presented in this work come from the blog Return On Academic ReSearch (Roars.it), which has given me a privileged observation point on several issues I am therefore grateful to all its editors for our extensive daily discussions ever since we embarked on the Roars.it adventure in 2011, and for sharing my commitment to be both a researcher and a citizen Each one of them has taught me a lot and has influenced my ideas on some of the issues raised in this work, especially, but not exclusively, with regard to research and higher education issues My Roars friends and colleagues include the following: Alberto Baccini, Antonio Banfi, Michele Dantini, Francesco Coniglione, Giuseppe de Nicolao, Paola Galimberti, Daniela Palma, Mario Ricciardi, Vito Velluzzi and Marco Viola I thank Luciano Pietronero, Andrea Gabrielli, and Guido Chiarotti for our numerous discussions on many topics touched upon in this work, and specifically for their collaboration in the study on the diversification of national research systems, as well as for sharing with me their results on “economic complexity” that I will discuss in Chaps and I had fruitful discussions with Giulio Cimini and Matthieu Cristelli on the use of big data in economics I also thank Mauro Gallegati for pointing out several references that have allowed me to deepen various concepts regarding neoclassical economics ix 158 Politics they achieve a substantial increase in human resources in the areas of the university teaching and research, and at the same time manage to correct—with targeted industrial policies—the composition of national production, that is too unbalanced on the side of low-tech activities But it is necessary to it soon, because the point that has been reached, with the trend of cumulative processes in place, may already be close to that of no return The situation of younger generations of scientists across Europe, but especially in the Mediterranean countries, is a clear symptom of a dramatic difference in the development of individual countries and of the European Union itself The Sacrifice of Young Generations We can use an image inspired by the Odyssey to illustrate the point The Achaean wanting to leave for Troy, since, to appease the wrath of the goddess Artemis, he had to sacrifice Iphigenia, the daughter of their king Agamemnon as a propitiatory victim.42 Today it seems that the myth of Iphigenia describes the situation of the new generations of southern European countries sacrificed on the altar of austerity to calm the turmoil of the financial market Unfortunately this sacrifice will be, most likely, in vain because it will not be effective to boost the economy in the immediate or near future Paradoxically, the effect will be the opposite: to depress yet more the possibility of long-term development of these countries Indeed, while the stronger European countries continue to invest in their scientists, attracting also many from other countries, in many other states of eastern and southern Europe, researchers are struggling to avoid being crushed by the economic cuts The result is that the constrained budgets required by austerity policies are undermining the development of innovative research that could help guide us out of the economic crisis and, much worse, are creating a generation gap from which it will be difficult to recover.43 Let’s look in detail at the situation in southern Europe According to the former Italian Prime Minister Greece “is the most complete manifestation of the great success of the Euro”.44 Greece five years after the “rescue” of the Troika (European Bank, European Commission and International Monetary Found) is still in recession, has an unemployment rate of around 30 % rising to 55 % for young people, has suffered a drop in GDP of 20 and 30 % of its population lives below the poverty level of the European Union Applied over the past five years, the program of austerity policies imposed by the troika in Greece has created the longest and deepest recession in the history of the country with the loss of a third of the collective income, with unemployment rising from 10 to 30 % in a country where only % of the unemployed have never received unemployment 42 I thank Varvara Trachana for this suggestion Heitor [24] 44 Prof Mario Monti, former Italian Prime Minister, Porta a Porta, Rai 1, 12th February 2012 43 The Sacrifice of Young Generations 159 benefits, with poverty affecting 20 % of the population On the one hand, GDP decreased, and, on other hand, Greece’s debt rose from 120 to 180 % of GDP; it is clear that the result is totally counterproductive.45 The austerity measures have caused a real humanitarian emergency In a scientific paper published by the journal The Lancet, impressive data were presented: in Greece after 40 years malaria has reappeared, 70 % of respondents in a survey said they did not have enough money to buy medicine, suicides increased by 45 %, and underweight babies increased by 19 % while stillbirths increased by 21 %.46 The consequences for university teaching and research are clearly terrible.47 Since 2010, there have been no new recruits, the teaching staff is aging and shrinking, and many basic courses have been cut with the relative degradation of the quality of education and of advanced scientific research This situation has resulted in a loss of both national and international research funds, and a major drain of young researchers Investment in universities has declined even more than 50 %: for example, the budget of the University of Athens has gone from forty million in 2009 to fourteen in 2012 and the research centers from eighty to thirty million in the same period Salaries of university professors have fallen by between 30 and 40 % from 2009 to 10.48 This significant loss of resources occurs in a system that was already in distress, resulting in a cut of 100 % in new hires Consequently, the brain drain has increased: 34,000 researchers immigrated in 2012 alone to Germany.49 The situation in Greece is, unfortunately, just another chapter in the tragedy of research and development in southern Europe Italy, since 2009, has suffered a cut of 90 % of recruitment, a cut of 100 % of the funding of basic research, and the disappearance of 40 % of Ph.D courses.50 It should also be noted that in Italy there is a relevant internal imbalance, in which the southern regions, which were already historically in a situation of depravation, due to the crisis and the subsequent policies, have further fallen behind the northern regions.51 Since 2009, Spain52 has experienced a 42 % reduction in R&D expenditure and 40 % in grants for basic research, the disappearance of 90 % of the permanent positions left open due to retirement, and the systematic violation of the contractual tenure track Finally, in Portugal53 where 50 % of the research units of the country could be closed over the Yanis Varoufakis: ‘Our Athens Spring’ See: http://links.org.au/node/4568 Kentikelenis et al [25] 47 Trachana [26] 48 Galsworthy and McKee [27] 49 Olsen [28] 50 Sylos Labini [29] 51 Antonio Banfi, Gianfranco Viesti Meriti” e “bisogni” nel finanziamento del sistema universitario italiano (03/2015), working paper Fondazione Res 52 Martin [30] 53 Rabesandratana [31] 45 46 160 Politics coming months, this defunding will certainly have the effect of paralyzing all research activities of the entire country for the forthcoming decades.54 Compared to southern Europe, in France the situation is better, but no less troubling when considering its future prospects55: for example 30 % of new recruits at the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), the largest scientific institution in France, come from other countries However, recently the laboratories and universities have undergone a punishing reorganization, which resulted in structural cuts in funding to the laboratories, with the result that many researchers emigrate or abandon their careers Over the past decade, research spending has stagnated at just over % and the research funds are managed in such a way that only a fraction of research projects are financed This occurs because the structural funding to laboratories, mentioned by Albert Fert, and discussed above, has been drastically reduced, again a policy inspired by the dogma of excellence In this situation, many laboratories survive while many others struggle just to stay alive On the other hand, since 2005 the total expenditure on science of the German federal government has increased by 60 %—from nine to more than fourteen billion EUR for 2013 For comparison, in the decade from 1995 to 2005, the budget of German science had increased only 7.5 % One effect of this increase in industrial research is that it has thrived Germany spends almost % of its GDP on science and technology, a goal of the European Union (EU) for growth that has remained only on paper for all countries except those Teutonic i.e., Finland, Sweden and Denmark.56 European Science Policy: Robin Hood in Reverse What is the reaction of the European institutions to protect such an important sector for the sustainable development of a country? The austerity measures taken in response to the financial crisis beginning in 2008 are contributing to the dismantling of various university teaching and research systems of the countries of southern Europe, even to the point of compromising the future of new generations of researchers and thus causing damage which will have adverse effects for the next decades What is happening in countries like Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy or Cyprus is similar to what has already happened in the countries of central and eastern Europe in the 1990s: a progressive emptying of skills and of technical and scientific infrastructures It should also be noted that in many countries, such as in Italy, the policy of cuts to higher education and the dismantling of the system of basic research began before the 2008 crisis and subsequent austerity policies These policies have been 54 Fiolhais [32] Trautmann [33] 56 Schiermeier [34] 55 European Science Policy: Robin Hood in Reverse 161 inspired by a national cultural subordination regarding investment for enterprises and applied research, as well as respect for fundamental research As a glaring example, the former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, responding to a question on the motivation of the cuts to research, replied “Why should we pay a scientist if we make the most beautiful shoes in the world?” As incredible as this may be, this perspective is shared by most of the Italian ruling class and has very deep historical roots.57 As for the general economic and social conditions, it seems that Europe is not able to effectively address this dramatic situation As we will see, European policies produce the opposite effect by forcing large cohorts of young scientists to leave science and technology careers or to migrate to the most welcoming countries in northern Europe In this way, the countries of southern Europe represent a reserve of workforce, with the necessary higher education, of researchers, engineers, architects, etc These young people have acquired education at the expense of their country of origin (for example, Italy, Greece and Spain) and are working in the northern countries with precarious contracts and for low compensation This surplus supply of labor obviously holds down wages even of domestic researchers The result will be necessarily an even more unbalanced scientific development of the EU Member States that will contribute to a growing economic and social division and to the lack of sustainability in the medium to long term of the European Union itself Let us see in more detail what are the science and innovation policies of the European Commission, which is aggravating a situation that already seems hopelessly compromised The European Commission launched the Horizon 2020 program with a budget of 60 billion euros to fund a research and innovation project that: “[…] promises more breakthroughs, discoveries and world-firsts by taking great ideas from the lab to the market”.58 Again, we find a considerate approach to the commercialization of science that requires the scientific agenda to be aligned with the problems of society This in turn requires that the investment in scientific research will lead to rapid innovations.59 Horizon 2020 is the largest research project approved from this political view While the European research policy provides only a relatively small amount (about 10 %) of the overall funding for research and innovation compared to national sources, on the other hand its policy objectives are intended to influence the whole European research environment In fact, at the national level there are attempts to imitate the modeling of the so-called “best practices” introduced by the science policy at the European level with the idea, yet to be proven, that if Europe does it then this must be the right way forward Horizon 2020 seems to be organized on the idea that research is an economic activity, and this idea has thus permeated national policies For example, the Austrian government, following what had happened recently in the United 57 Russo et al [35] See the web page: http://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/en/what-horizon-2020 59 Sunkel [36] 58 162 Politics Kingdom and Spain, used Horizon 2020 to legitimize changes in their research policy In particular those that had been delegated to the Ministry of Education before, were moved under the Ministry of Economy of the respective countries The consequences of these structural changes have been dramatic n regards to the terms under which research is conducted Even in Italy, the so-called National Research Plan60 is entirely modeled in accordance with Horizon 2020, and the only research projects initiated by the Italian Ministry of Research (projects SIR61) are modeled on the European called ERC, which we will discuss later, with success rates of % or less Horizon 2020 is founded on three pillars: financing excellent science, making Europe more attractive to enterprise investment in research and development and adopting of an interdisciplinary approach to the major challenges of aging, food supply, energy security, transport, sustainable and climate change Therefore, basic curiosity-driven research is financed only through the first channel, while others are more targeted to applied research or projects chosen in a “top-down” process In this way, fundamental research in many fields, from fundamental physics to mathematics, is surprisingly absent The focus has shifted to applied research with consonant technological implications: for example, the Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) Open program62 supports the initial phase of the research on any subject that can be linked to the development of a new technology Note that for this program the success rate of the projects is about %, or, from about 500 projects submitted to the jury, less than 20 typically are selected This means that, just as regards its innovative aspect, five out of five anonymous reviewers should evaluate a project with high marks It is clear that such a strategy does not favor the development of projects with truly innovative ideas, but actually requires intense lobbying with the responsible committees Also evident is the tremendous waste of human and financial resources in the preparation of a large number of projects that will never be funded: paradoxically a very low rate of funding is seen positively since it is interpreted according to the ideological assumption that competition assures the best quality Under the same program, the FET-Flagships were developed with the ambitious goal of having an impact that would transform “the science, technology and society as a whole”63 in order to enable Europe to take the lead in the future of emerging technologies These projects have been selected after only two years of discussion, a relatively short time given their budget that is over one billion euro The aim is to stimulate cooperation between different disciplines, communities and programs on a time scale of a decade It is interesting to note that the selection committee, appointed by the European Commission, has remained anonymous for political reasons: the European Commission, in a statement sent to the journal Scientific 60 See the web page: http://hubmiur.pubblica.istruzione.it/web/ricerca/pnr See the web page: http://sir.miur.it/ 62 http://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/en/h2020-section/fet-open 63 See: https://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/fet-flagships 61 European Science Policy: Robin Hood in Reverse 163 American,64 has defended this particular choice as necessary to prevent “an impact on the personal and professional lives of experts in question and on the quality and efficiency of procedures” At the time of writing, two pilot projects have been approved: the first is focused on graphene, the new material discovered “playing with the sticky tape” that we mentioned in the previous chapter, and the second is the Human Brain Project (HBP), which we also discussed in the previous chapter as an example of a scientific bubble As for the latter, the significant funding, the management criteria and the scientific objectives have raised vast criticisms in the scientific community: let’s see in more detail why.65 The basic idea of the HBP was to develop a mathematical model of the human brain that would have allowed major innovations such as the discovery of new drugs, the replacement of some types of animal tests and a better understanding of diseases such as Alzheimer’se The simulated brain would also serve as the driving force for the creation of technological spin-offs for the development of new and faster computers and to create robots with cognitive abilities A year and a half after the approval of the project, an open letter was published, now signed by more than eight hundred neuroscientists, to criticize both the scientific objectives and the management and the organization of the project Following this, the signatories threatened a boycott, and this is why a mediation process was started to resolve the most critical points A committee of scientists was appointed with the purpose of deeply reorganizing the project The major accusation is that the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, has promoted a science policy modeled on “Big Science”, that operates in a top-down manner without serious discussion within the scientific community, and, probably, even without the need of HBP research subjects requiring an effort of this size At the very foundation of this undying decision, there may have been the hope, or perhaps the illusion, that such a project would be able to jump-start the high level of innovation that, for the present, perhaps not coincidentally, we have lost Big Science is definitely needed for some areas: just think of the Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb that, although it was a military project, required a massive organization of scientific research that had never happened before that time The huge particle accelerators like the Large Hadron Collider at CERN or the great experiments of elementary particle physics at the National Laboratories of Gran Sasso in Italy are other projects of Big Science Others are found in the construction of space satellites, or, in astrophysics, in the construction of large telescopes In biology, the Human Genome Project, with the goal of sequencing the human DNA, with funding of more than three billion dollars by various government agencies in the United States, certainly represented the first example of Big Science in that field 64 Teil [37] Teil [37] 65 164 Politics The question one needs to ask is to what extent these projects requiring huge resources, obviously drained from other competing projects, represents an efficient way to stimulate discoveries and innovations Entrusting huge budgets to a small group of scientists and administrators could be a bad choice dictated by a short-sighted science policy that lacks of ideas and courage, attentive only to the possible (but currently inconsistent) technological implications This policy is shaping the profile of contemporary research, deleteriously increasing conformism and stifling innovation According to the detailed report published by Scientific American, the FET Flagship project on graphene, unlike the HBP, has a very clear mission: to develop the engineering technology able to exploit a known material Unlike the modeling of the human brain, this objective does not require the bridging of large gaps in the knowledge base In this case, therefore, instead of Big Science, one can talk directly about Big Technology However, there is then the question: who is funding basic research at the European level? The next obvious question is whether this research policy will improve the condition of the systems of basic research of the countries hardest hit by the crisis, and if it can revive the fortunes for tens of thousands of young researchers To this end, as part of Horizon 2020, there are only two sources of funding: ERC (European Research Council) “starting grants” project and individual fellowships known as Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions According to the authors of the ERC program, this should “funding frontier research, based only on scientific excellence, in a bottom-up way, through a panEuropean competition between individual research projects”: these fellowships are very competitive and are part of the “dogma of excellence” scheme, which we discussed in the previous chapter, so the success rate is about 5–10 % In this way, in 2013 alone three hundred researchers across Europe and in all disciplines, had access to these funds: a situation that looks more like the results of a lottery than of research funding In seven years of activity,66 there were handed out funds for 7.5 billion euros to 4354 research projects—including starting grants, grant consolidator and advanced grants (grants to young fellows or to older researchers) with a success rate less than 10 % Germany is the country with most projects funded (700 projects with a success rate of 13.8 %); then England follows (604 and 13.60 %), France (498 and 15.50 %), Italy (407 and 6.4 %) and the then others An important fact is that the ranking of the countries that have the best success rate of the projects submitted— an indicator that measures the ability to participate well in the competition—is led by Switzerland (18.2 %), then Israel (17.5 %) and the US (16.7 %), namely those countries where structural funding to research is among the highest in the world As researchers can choose to spend their own funding in any European country, generally the choice is the countries that have the best-organized research systems 66 ERC funding activities 2007–2013 Si veda il sito web: https://erc.europa.eu/sites/default/files/ publication/files/ERC_funding_activities_2007_2013.pdf European Science Policy: Robin Hood in Reverse 165 In this case, England is first, hosting 969 researchers of which nearly half were British The second choice is Germany (614) and then France (571) where foreigners are about one in four, while he countries of southern Europe have the opposite situation with an emigration of the ERC project winners For example, 43 % of the Italian winners of ERC went to other countries Institutions that host the most winners of ERC are the French CNRS, the universities of Oxford and Cambridge and the German Max Planck facilities In 2013, about three out of four ERC fellowships (222 of 300) were assigned to researchers hosted by institutions in the UK, Germany, Israel, France, the Netherlands and Switzerland, that is the countries that have been less affected by the economic crisis and that still have solid research systems (although, as we mentioned, the situation in France is rather critical) Researchers in southern Europe have collected very little funding while those of eastern Europe have not collected any Moreover, while the ERC aims to “fund research excellence”, what it actually then did was to fund those who were already excellent: for example, among the eight Nobel Prize for Physics winners who got ERC funding, six had already won the Nobel Prize before getting the fellowship ERC, while two others were already famous (in terms, for example, of citations), having already written the work awarded with the Nobel prize, when they won it In these cases, it was awarded again to those who had already been awarded, giving rise to a dynamic in which the funds come only to those who already have them, in line with the St Matthew effect Overall, in 2013, Germany and the United Kingdom were the most frequent excipient of EU funds, receiving €1.1 billion each Holland has obtained 560 million euro, that is more or less the same as Italy, which has almost four times the population Poland has been granted 67 million euros and Romania only 17 million euros The European Union has also approved a mechanism distinct from Horizon 2020, designed specifically to address the imbalances within it: they are the “structural funds for infrastructure projects in the poorest regions” These funds, in contrast to those of Horizon 2020, have been entrusted directly to local management, often given to short-sighted politicians disinterested in the problems of innovation and development, and have failed to create the infrastructure for the research for which they were designed This type of distribution of resources is acting as Robin Hood in reverse.67 As all member states, even the poorest, contribute to its financing in proportion to their GDP, inequality is not only increasing between researchers but also among entire regions of the European Community,68 given their actual distribution Finally the Marie Sklodowska-Curie scholarships are designed to spread excellence, widen participation and encourage mobility The situation of researchers in Europe, particularly southern Europe, is so dramatic that researchers 67 European research funding: it’s like Robin Hood in reverse, The Guardian November 7th 2014 Macilwain [38] 68 166 Politics are migrating everywhere hoping to find a lab where they can work and be paid In this situation it would be necessary to initiate Marie Sklodowska-Curie grants that enable European researchers to return home after spending many years abroad Also we should ask if the other financing of Horizon 2020, which are not used for either the program or for ERC Marie Sklodowska-Curie grants, are distributed so as to improve the living conditions of the researchers Here, too, one might consider simple measures such as requiring that institutions participating in Horizon 2020 put into practice policies to encourage the development of researchers, including their ability to obtain permanent positions If national governments and the European Commission aim to achieve long-term innovation, they must provide long-term occupation to researchers Some Ideas for a Change69 The above discussion clearly shows that the European Commission did not take any action to stop the dismantling of the national R&D systems in some of the countries: on the other hand the continuous cuts in financial and human resources encouraged or imposed by the Commission itself have worsen the situation On the other hand, the European Commission could have taken measures to encourage the national governments to make R&D a priority: the Commission has certainly shown it can exert a strong influence on national policies when it considers it appropriate European institutions should take responsibility to minimize the growing research and innovation gap between member states, which feeds the very large gap in social welfare This requires a long-term vision with sustained R&D investment with anti- cyclical funding policy for R&D For instance, structural funds should be used to stop the brain drain The investment in public R&D should not be counted in the calculation of the national deficit Another suggestion concerns having something similar to a tax credit: when a member state with a R&D deficit increases its public investment in R&D by some amount, its global contribution to the European budget could be decreased by a percentage of that same amount, following the same philosophy as the structural funds In summary, it would be necessary that the European Commission would use incentives to increase national funding for research, such as not including spending on research in the measurement of the national deficit In addition, the intentions of the Lisbon Strategy should be resumed, while this time trying to implement them for real I fact, it seems that the European Commission has the means to impose on the Member States a long series of financial parameters, from austerity measures to milk quotas, but is not interested in pursuing their sound development in terms of research and innovation 69 I thank Amaya Moro Martin, Gilles Mirambeau, Rosario Mauritti, Alain Trauttman and Varvara Trachana for discussions and suggestions They Have Chosen Ignorance 167 They Have Chosen Ignorance Europe is in crisis, but perhaps it has not been quite clear so far that, at the heart of its promise of development, is a profound crisis in research For this reason, it is necessary to fundamentally reconsider the roles of education and advanced research in a post-industrial society First we must consider that economic development, unless it is accompanied by civil development, leads to impoverishment of a country, and therefore the first and foremost purpose of research and education is to elevate the general culture; as former President of Harvard University, Derek Bok, very effectively argued that “if you think education is expensive, try ignorance.” The open letter that I had the honor to promote with other scientists70 from several European countries, complained loud and clear about the state of abandonment faced by the research of the continent, beginning with the title inspired by Derek Bok: “They chose ignorance” The national policymakers of an increasing number of Member States, along with European leaders, have completely lost touch with the reality of research So that, ignoring the lesson of Vannevar Bush They have chosen to ignore the crucial contribution of a strong research sector to the economy, particularly needed in the countries more severely hit by the economic crisis Instead, they have imposed drastic budget cuts in Research and Development (R&D) that make these countries more vulnerable in the mid- and long-term to future economic crises This has all happened under the complacent gaze of European institutions, which worry more about Member States complying with austerity measures than about maintaining and improving national R&D infrastructures that can help these countries change their productive model to a more robust one based on knowledge-generation Research should therefore be the foundation of a new model of development that tolerates long lead times and needs systematic support Instead: They have chosen to ignore that research does not follow political cycles; that long-term, sustainable R&D investment is critical because science is a long-distance race; that some of its fruits might be harvested now, but others may take generations to mature; that if we not seed today, our children will not have the tools to face the challenges of tomorrow Instead, they have followed cyclical R&D investment policies with a single objective in mind: lowering the yearly deficit to what might be an artificial value imposed by European and financial institutions, all oblivious to the devastating effect this is having on the science and innovation potential of individual Member States and of Europe as a whole As Keynes wrote, recalling what happened in the United States, the country that otherwise is considered the champion of the free market, it is the state that should open new horizons and possibilities: They have chosen to ignore that public investment in R&D is an attractor of private investment; that in an “innovation State” like the United States over half of its economic growth has come from innovation with roots in basic research funded by the federal 70 http://openletter.euroscience.org/ 168 Politics government Instead, they unrealistically hope that the R&D spending increases required for these countries to reach the Lisbon Strategy’s goal of % of GDP will be achieved by the private sector alone, while reducing public R&D investment This is in sharp contrast to the drop in the number of innovation companies in some of these countries and the prevalence, among small and medium-sized enterprises, of small family businesses with no innovation capacity The loss of investment in research is irreversible, because it is sacrificing generations of young scientists, especially in southern European countries that, precisely to find an exit to the economic crisis, should have more and more substantial increases made in their investment in research And instead: They have chosen to ignore that time and resources are required to train researchers Instead, shielded by the European directive to decrease workforce in the public sector, they have imposed drastic hiring cuts at research institutions and universities Together with the lack of opportunities in the private sector and the cuts in human resources programs, this is triggering a “brain drain” from the South to the North and from Europe to beyond The result is an irrecoverable loss of investment and a worsening of the R&D gap between Member States Discouraged by the lack of opportunities and the uncertainty inherent in the concatenation of fixed-term contracts, many scientists are considering leaving the field, with the nature of research activities making this a one-way journey This decimates the skilled research workforce available for industry Rather than decreasing the deficit, this exodus is contributing to the creation of a new type of deficit: a deficit in technology, innovation and discovery Europe-wide And again the lesson of Vannevar Bush on the difference between fundamental research and applications has been forgotten: They have chosen to ignore that applied research is no more than the application of basic research and is not limited to research with short-term market impact, as some policy makers seem to believe Instead, at the national and European level, there is a strong shift in focus to these marketable products when those are only the low-hanging fruit of an intricate research tree Even though some of its seeds might germinate in new fundamental insights, by undermining basic research they are slowly killing the roots In short, relinquishing control of, and abdicating responsibility for, investment in research could subject Europe to the very devastating effect of deepening the developmental gaps between countries, that the construction of the European project had precisely been intended to fill However, funding to curb the bleeding is not enough, because there is a profound error in the method with which even today financed research are financed, i.e., the discredited and unrealistic mirage of the dogma of excellence, which suppresses diversification and therefore innovation: They have chosen to ignore how the scientific process works; that research requires experimentation and that not all experiments will be successful; that excellence is the tip of an iceberg that floats only because of the body of work beneath Instead, science policy at the national and European level has shifted towards the funding of a diminishing number of well-established research groups, undermining the diversified portfolio we will need to face the societal and technological challenges of tomorrow In addition, this approach is contributing to the “brain drain”, as a small number of well-funded research institutions are systematically recruiting this selected group of grant holders They Have Chosen Ignorance 169 In addition, it is also necessary to remember the role of education and teaching in the universities, too often forgotten to make room for obsessive measures to foster the productivity of scientists In addition it has been forgotten that social equity relies on the right to education rather than an increase in tuition fees: They have chosen to ignore the critical synergy between research and education Instead, they have severed research funding for public universities, diminishing their overall quality and threatening their role as promoters of equal opportunities And foremost, they have chosen to ignore that research does not only need to serve the economy but also increases knowledge and social welfare, including of those with no resources to pay the bill Again there are huge imbalances between northern Europe,71 where there are no tuition fees—they have recently been abolished in Germany—and the countries of southern Europe, where the average annual fees are around 1500 euros, as in Italy and Spain.72 Research is condemned to a certain death in Europe, not only in its economic dimension, but also—and above all—as one of the values of which civilization has managed to be the bearer It is therefore desirable that not only the greatest possible number of members of the scientific community, which so far has had a marginal role too in the public debate, undertakes to support these initiatives, but that large numbers of all citizens so, if they care that the European project resumes its original historic path: They have chosen to ignore, but we are determined to remind them because their ignorance can cost us the future As researchers and citizens, we form an international network used to exchange information and propositions And we are engaging in a series of initiatives at the national and European level to strongly oppose the systematic destruction of national R&D infrastructures and to contribute to the construction of a bottom-up social Europe We call on researchers and citizens to defend this position with us There is no alternative We owe it to our children, and to the children of our children References Donald Gillies, Selecting applications for funding: why random choice is better than peer review Roars Transactions, A Journal on Research Policy & Evaluation (2014) Angelo Vulpiani, Caso, probabilità e complessità, Ediesse, Roma 2014 Jason Dedricka, Kenneth L Kraemerb, Who captures value from science- based innovation? 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Verso Books 2014 24 Manuel Heitor, Science Policy for an increasingly diverging Europe, Roars Transactions, A Journal on Research Policy & Evaluation, 2, 2015 25 Alexander Kentikelenis, Marina Karanikolos, Aaron Reeves, Martin McKee, DSc, David Stuckler, Greece’s health crisis: from austerity to denialism, The Lancet, Volume 383, No 9918, p748–753, 22 February 2014 26 Varvara Trachana, Austerity-led brain drain is killing Greek science, Nature 496, 271 (18 April 2013) 27 Mike Galsworthy, Martin McKee, A research, innovation and health rescue package for Greece, Research Europe, 30 July, 2015 28 Erik Olsen, Pressed by Debt Crisis, Doctors Leave Greece in Droves, The New York Times, July 2015 29 Francesco Sylos Labini, For the sake of Italian science and culture, Euroscientist 25 September, 2014 Redazione Roars, Università 3.0, Ecommons, Rome, 2015 30 Amaya Moro Martin, Spanish changes are scientific suicide, Nature 482, 277 (16 February 2012) References 171 31 Tania Rabesandratana, Head 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Institute... century.10 The motion of the Mercury’s perihelion was calculated using Newton’s theory, considering the sum of the gravitational effects of the Sun and of the other planets The value derived from the theory,... −2, and the constant a is equal to the product of the masses of the two bodies and the gravitational constant 4 Forecast between observations and theoretical predictions through its gravitational