What is said in this message is unpleasant. I do not believe that only the dumb scientists remained in these countries. Maybe the answer is even more unpleasant. Smart guys, all over the world, decide to study other disciplines than biodiversity and ecology in general. The world is full of people with good PhD trainings in ecology who are unemployed or underemployed. The greatest majority live on soft money and are obliged to find exceptional results (and to publish them in "high level journals") if they want have their contracts renewed. This often leads to rediscover the wheel every once in a while. Young people know that. Many try anyway, but the risk of unemployment or underemployment is very high. In the past, natural history was a hobby for aristocrats, now there are no more aristocrats or they prefer to live a different life. Having a job for life, even at a low salary, is a great privilege and allows to perform free research, even at low cost. It is possible to do good ecology at low cost. The main missing resource in western world science is time. Results have to be fast, contracts are of one or two years, and then the new contract forces you to shift to another topic. There is no time to develop a real strategy for most of the researchers.
Our eastern friends and colleagues have an evident problem of communication. They think that publising in international journals is an enterprise that is out of their reach and that one has to "know" somebody to reach these tribunes. This is not true. Of course the articles have to be good, this is the only requisite. And journals are happy to accept articles from "strange" countries (other than the usual USA, UK and Germany). This enhances their internationalisation.
A problem of provincialis affected (and in part still affects) research in the Mediterranean sea. And the problem is very similar to that of the Baltic. We Mediterranean scientists used to publish in our own languages (Franch, Italian, Spanish, but also Greek, Slovenian, Serbo-Croatian, Turkish) and did not want to use anglo-saxon tribunes. This resulted in the irrelevance of our science. This tendency is almost finished. French scientists once were strongly discouraged to use English for their publications. This made much less visible a very valuable research effort. Now French Journals use English, and Ecology Letters, the European Journal of Ecology, is sponsored by the French CNRS, is directed by a French scientist, but there is not a word in French in it. English is our language. And we can discuss in this forum just with this language. The Emperor of Japan, Hirohito, was a specialist of hydroids (we exchanged reprints). He was very nationalistic, I presume, he was considered a god in Japan. He published his papers in English! The official that said that smart scientists emigrated and only the stupid ones remained evaluated people only on their willingness to live a nice life. The problem of the "escape of brains" is very felt in Italy. Most of the Italian Nobel Prizes in science (any science) worked in the United States. They were forced to emigrate due to lack of possibilities in their own country. Then the State launches a policy to have them back, but the young ones who are forced to emigrate are still far too many. And most of the times they end up working in a factory, applying their knowledge to practical problems. Giving up being scientists in the field of ecology.
At a Workshop on Biodiversity and Ecosystem functioning, a British scientist lamented that in his institution there were no new positions since 18 years! People are retiring and are not substituted. This is true all over the world in our field.
So, this is not a problem of the Baltic, is a world problem.
Now go back to the Baltic. We need a different tribune for this topic. |
