There can be little doubt that when science becomes nationalistic–that
is, when international scientific exchange declines–for what ever
reason, then the scientific enterprise writ large is damaged.
During my stay in the UK last week, it become very clear that, at the
moment, feelings about the United States are quite negative. This
sensibility seems to run both broad and deep and, should it continue,
will inevitably put at risk the extraordinarily important network of
research collaborations, student exchange and international scientific
dialog.
I can’t speak personally, but I suspect that what I saw in the UK is
present to greater or lesser degree in other nations that actively
participate in the scientific enterprise.
The question then becomes how to manage the current state of affairs
from the standpoint of science so as to minimize the damage and the
risk. The answer, to my mind, is that it becomes even more important to
nurture and protect these threads that make up the network of
international scientific exchange.
At the institutional level this can be reified by formal and informal
ties to sister centers across the world. At the level of scientific
publication, it can mean actively recruiting manuscripts from
international authors. From the standpoint of research support, it means
that we should be redoubling our efforts to support initiatives such as
the the Human Frontier Science Program (www.hfsp.org) or the NIH Fogarty
Center (www.fic.nih.gov) which exist to support international
collaborative science. Finally, on the individual level, it implies
treasuring our scientific relationships that extend beyond national
boundaries. In the end, it may be those individual relationships that
sustain the enterprise as a whole.
Jim
Discoverers and Discoveries 