This is the text I will present at The missing mediator: Science debates in a knowledge based society
(Istanbul room, 7 July, h. 10.30 - 11.45)
The EU heads of state in March 2000 set in Lisbon (and in Barcellona in 2002) the objective to make Europe by 2010 “the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world, capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion” spending approximately 3% of GDP on investment in research, development, and innovation, a figure comparable to the current investment percentages in the United States and Japan. The gap with these countries, especially in some sectors, as IT and pharmaceutical, had been enlarging; in others sectors such as chemicals, automobiles, food and electronics and electrical equipment, Europe may still be leading, but not for long. For example, Riccardo Giacconi, Nobel Prize in Physics 20021, reminds us that in Shanghai Jiao Tong University “Academic Ranking of World Universities 2004”, of the Top50 Universities, we have 34 in US (a slashing 70%), 5 still in UK, but 2 in Canada, Japan and Switzerland; and only 1 in Australia, Germany, Netherlands and Sweden. Then, France and Italy did not appear at all in the first fifty. However, what is the reaction to this in the media, in the political campaigns? Very mild. If this were a classification for the Soccer World Cup, what would happen? Just imagine what recently happened for the elimination of Italy from the World Cup: emotional headlines running in all newspapers, TV news, as a large national disaster, with requests for immediate change of the trainer and of the entire team, endless discussion between experts analyzing every single aspect of the failure. If only something of the like were remotely possible in the discussion about University and Research world competition, the Lisbon strategy would have been taken much more seriously! Exactly 10 years from the Lisbon meeting, it seems time to try different strategies, the spending has remained very low (average for the EU-19 is 1.3% of GDP, according to OECD2007 data), perhaps introducing strict rules, similar to a “Maastricht treaty”, to reach the objective.
There must be some fundamental reason for this trend, and the resistance to change is large. For example, when Germany's President Schroeder noted that the greatest preoccupation in European countries had been to lift the educational level of the greatest possible number of citizens, rather than the most innovative research programs at elite institutions, suggesting the creation of twenty new centres of excellence in Germany to meet the “challenge”, he found the initial strong opposition of the provinces into which Germany is divided. The reactions to the economic crisis in the last 2 years have probably enlarged further the gap. Only the US included research in the “Stimulus” packages, with an extra 21 billion dollars injected in the system. In this second phase of the economic crisis, stronger for some EU countries, many European countries are reducing the budget even further away from 3%, although some of the leading ones (Germany, France) are apparently resisting in their original plans to invest (Excellence initiative, and Grand Emprunt2, respectively).
In Italy, public universities serve the vast majority (about 95%) of the 1.8 millions students, and as other EU countries, the largest preoccupation has been to attempt to enlarge the students’ population (also with relatively inexpensive fees), and the penetration of university degree education, which is still much lower than the EU average. Hence, “quantity” of students, of “exams” and possible “dates” and appeals for every single exam, has resulted in chaotic functioning, excessive length of the studies. Families probably persist in the illusion that a University degree would open the world of stable and satisfactorily professions as it was the case perhaps in the booming economy after WWII when the student population was a tenth. This may explain resistance to change. Attempt by Minister Gelmini to introduce some reforms (which are judged by some as in the correct direction, although very unlikely to be sufficient to really address core problems) is finding very strong opposition3, especially as it comes together with the first serious downsizing of the University budget from the already tight €7.49 billion (US$9.27 billion) of about 20% between 2009 and 2012. Additionally, Minister Tremonti’s plan to save about €24 billion in public spending by 2012 includes new rules for the Universities almost wiping out recruitment. The two processes combine not only to reduce research support to a minimum, but even to seriously undermine, for the first time, both the level and the certainty of the salaries of the present staff. Even worse situation is faced in the research sector, including the private one, which has seen many companies closing down or downsizing (Glaxo, for example), despite recent private investments of billions Euros. Perhaps the only exception is the “Italian Institute of Technology” introduced in 2003 with a budget of 100million Euros per year, with research focused in only 3-4 areas (mainly, nanotechnologies, robotics and neurosciences), with some opposition from the previously existing “Centres of Excellence”, partly justified.
The parallel with soccer may seem unorthodox, but it is instructive also in other respects. Indeed, Europe does a much better job at attracting the best football (soccer) players in the world, than the best scientists (brain drain). Although money spent in putting together the team is not the only ingredient to win the tournaments, the top European soccer teams have undoubtedly typically the largest budgets. Also, there is a rigid and well identified hierarchy of tournaments (first division, second, etc.), and a number of competitions at European level, which would be nice to see at scientific level too. There certainly is a much larger circulation of football players in Europe, than in the average professions. Just consider for example that in Italy only 1.3% of immigrants has a university degree, while in US, the figure is about 42%4. The extent of brain drain to the US (and soon to other emerging countries), is very large not just from Italy or France, but even from UK: in recent years, it has been measured that 56 per cent of UK-born elite scientists (i.e. those included in the top 250 of each field in the ISI database including about 5000 total scientists www.isihighlycited.com) have left the United Kingdom and currently live abroad. The situation is Italy is certainly worse, if only less than 100 highly cited scientists live in Italy (most of them, are in the “Gruppo2003” association, which publishes the journal www.lascienzainrete.it), i.e. less than many US Ivy League Universities (Caltech, Harvard, Yale all have each more than 100). The USA is per capita the largest net-importers of elite (highly-cited) scientists as argued by Prof. Andrew J Oswald, who says: “Creative scientists are worth far more than their salary and lab expenses, because they set a quality standard that lifts the aspirations of dozens or even hundreds of other researchers around them”. This seems to agree with Nobel Laureate's Julius Axelrod who apparently declared that “Ninety-nine percent of the discoveries are made by one percent of the scientists” . Oswald suggests American dominance in recent Nobel prizes may even limit mankind’s creativity in general in the long term, since biographies of leading scientists suggest great discoveries usually came from unconventional ways of thinking. Increasing R&D investments by Asian countries particularly aimed at attracting “extreme” people (A*STAR program, etc.) seem to indicate these countries have learned the lesson, and are moving in the right decision. World-Class Universities are a dream for a generation of Chinese people, and Europe has only historical examples which resist to change sometimes with increasing difficulties.
Europe is essentially declining slowly and inevitably into a lesser position? The EU Commission has for long time failed to recognize the fading role. A “European Paradox” was even postulated of EU excellence in research, but not followed by Technology Transfer5, which is contested by well known academics6. This has motivated a number of funding mechanisms which are today difficult to judge as a whole, but that have been criticized by many. In the lack of top “players” in research, the difference between an “ambitious task”, and a “white elephant” infrastructure of bureaucrats is subtle, and the risk of implementing the latter is high. How many have heard of the €14billion ESFRI initiative at http://cordis.europa.eu/esfri/ or of the European Institute of Technology http://ec.europa.eu/eit/, particularly in the general public? Politicians and the bureaucrats seem to struggle to define the working structure, and in many cases, the general perception is that some European funding schemes seem to incentive characters like “Lanterne” of the late French Nobel prize winner Pierre de Gennes’ book “Petit Point: A Candid Portrait On The Aberrations Of Science” where he explains in few lines the abilities of those people whose primary job is to “milk the cows” in Bruxelles.
In a recent Commentary in Nature7, the head of European Research Area panel, Luke Georghiou, admits there is strong need for improvement of the European research funding allocation, which should go much beyond the bureaucratic limitations of the Framework Programmes and the politicians’ worry for every country “budget share”, to measure instead than real benefit from that money. Framework programs incidentally account for only about 5% of total public-research money in Europe, and therefore cooperation between national governments is still very marginal. And there is enormous margin also to shift to research also money still allocated in too traditional ways. This is what was called the European Research Area. The best initiative so far seems to be the European Research Council, which has funded young researchers based on a good peer review system, and has received enthusiastic feedback from an entire generation of wanna-be researchers, particularly in Italy, who struggle to survive or find a position in a system which protects excessively the established academics.
It is imperative to make Science and Technology attractive to young and energetic people, in terms of salaries and social status, as suggested by Sir Alec Broers' BBC Reith Lectures 2005 -The Triumph of Technology. Also, Europe should just turn back to the best examples of his past, and ambitious tasks. In 1900, the German David Hilbert posed 23 “mathematical puzzles” which kept busy mathematicians busy for a century. More recently, initiatives as Science Debates, or National Academy of Engineering “Grand Challenges” have been quite successful in the US.
A Maastricht treaty with strict rules is probably the only way forward to collate European countries towards a new renaissance, together with a new set of ambitious goals to seriously attack, within reach of European countries. An example could be President Kennedy 1961’s announcement of the “moon shot”, or the US initiatives to sequence an entire human genome in the 1980’s, which have transformed the engineering industry or the biomedical research, respectively. If Europe doesn’t engage itself into some ambitious goals it will risk, as Romani Prodi (former EU President) recently declared, to decline into a museum. Even if with good football matches, at least until we have the money to raise and attract the best talents in that sport!
Perhaps we should involve a Lisbon soccer player like Cristiano Ronaldo to promote the importance of the Lisbon strategy. In sectors where the use of VIP testimonials has been attempted, like in cancer research, this has proved quite effective, and indeed in Italy we have the positive example of Telethon. But maybe a full tournament of Universities and Research Centres should be encouraged. Perhaps Science Debates in Europe should coordinate various initiatives in this sense.
References
Interaction between basic and applied research lecture (2005) http://203.159.5.16/NobelLectures/index.html
Declan Butler, French research wins huge cash boost: President Sarkozy uses 'big loan' to push his reform agenda. Nature 462, 838 (2009) doi:10.1038/462838a
Alison Abbott, (2010) Strikes could 'break' Italy's universities, Nature 466, 16-17
Lorenzo Beltrame. Realtа e Retorica del Brain Drain in Italia. http://www4.soc.unitn.it:8080/dsrs/content/e242/e245/e2209/quad35.pdf
Dosi G., Llerena P, and Labini M.S. (2006): "The relationships between science, technologies and their industrial exploitation: an illustration through the myths and realities of the so-called 'European Paradox", Research Policy 35.
Luke Georghiou, (2008) Europe’s research system must change, Nature Vol 452, 935-936
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