Economy

Helio Beltrão: More than funding, science needs boldness and efficiency

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This column was written for the #scienceinelections campaign, which celebrates Science Month. In July, columnists give up their space to reflect on the role of science in the reconstruction of Brazil. The writer is Jairo José da Silva, physicist, professor of mathematics, retired from Unesp and level 1 researcher at CNPq.

It is fashionable to demand greater financial support from the Brazilian State for scientific research. Not that he doesn’t already spend too much on the bloated public university structure, the institutions primarily focused on scientific research and the federal and state funding agencies. But it spends badly, as shown by the poor result obtained.

Measured properly, in terms of impact, of citations, Brazilian science lags behind smaller countries with far fewer resources (according to a 2020 Pesquisa Fapesp article, the number of highly cited Brazilian scientists is lower than those in Taiwan, Ireland , Israel, Hong Kong and Saudi Arabia, not to mention the big ones).

Among the largest GDP on the planet, it is strange that Brazil does not have any university among the largest in the world. Brazilian science education is disastrous, as shown by the results obtained by Brazilian students in mathematics and science in the Pisa tests, and popular scientific culture is null.

I doubt that many Brazilian politicians or intellectuals, not to mention ordinary people, can correctly state the second law of thermodynamics. Among us, science is not a priority. How many Brazilian newspapers have sections dedicated to science or columnists specialized in science? How many national publishers publish collections of a scientific nature? How many national scientists are dedicated to scientific dissemination?

There are many reasons why taxpayer money invested in science in Brazil does not yield better results. For starters, the system is highly bureaucratized — a lot of time is wasted on administrative activities, meetings, reports, forms, accountability — and wasteful — a lot of money is invested in huge useless conferences, inconsequential trips and internships, and inefficient programs (such as the Science without borders).

But the real cause lies further down, in leniency. Cutting-edge science is not produced outside a highly competitive system whose productivity is not constantly evaluated by the most rigorous parameters. It is not our case. The words “merit”, “productivity” and “assessment” cause a stir in the academic environment, being seen before as swear words. We have legions of savvy staplers supported by the treasury with no production to justify it.

We also suffer from proverbial shyness and hesitate to turn confidently to the great questions that excite the scientific world. Our ideal is to be dedicated disciples of illustrious masters. We prefer to send our articles to less relevant journals, where they have a better chance of publication but will be read and cited less, than sending them to the big journals.

The lack of competitiveness and complacent evaluation encourage this lukewarmness. In some academic areas, there are professionals who, despite being reputed, have never published anything internationally or in a language other than Portuguese. As if there were science en petit comité.

Less than more public money, Brazilian science needs boldness, better management, more efficiency, greater commitment to scientific education and dissemination, competitiveness and improvement of evaluation processes.

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