ÐÓ°ÉÔ­´´

Witold Karczewski is a frustrated man. Until a year ago a practising
neurophysiologist, he is now head of Poland’s State Committee for Scientific
Research. He spends his working day battling with parliamentarians and fellow
cabinet ministers for enough zlotys to keep science alive amid the ruins
of the Polish economy.

But last week, Karczewski said: ‘We lost the battle.’ He wanted four
billion zlotys ( £200 000) for this year. He got one billion for the
first three months, with the rest to be decided on later. He is not likely
to get much then. The government is far more desperate for cash at the moment
than for science. It is threatening to repossess half of the billion zlotys
the research committee received from a separate budget. ‘We will now have
trouble keeping even our best institutes alive,’ said Karczewski.

Four billion zlotys buys more in Poland than is indicated by its £200
000 foreign exchange value. All the same, it seems a small price to save
a country’s science. And although governments in western Europe are concerned
about saving science in the east, Karczewski doubts that the money will
be forthcoming from them. ‘Their attitude is friendly, but funding is very
slow,’ he says.

Countries such as Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary and those that emerged
from the former Soviet Union are in varying degrees of chaos as they struggle
towards stable market economies. Western governments are now debating how
to prevent science from dying in these states until they can afford to support
research again themselves.

So far, few suggestions from the rich countries involve the cash that
ministers such as Karczewski need to keep science afloat. The European
Community, under its Phare programme, has come up with some money for ‘institutional’
support that will allow some of Hungary’s best research centres to keep
paying salaries. Poland and Czechoslovakia, the other beneficiaries of the
Phare programme, have not yet received the same support. Most other schemes
put forward involve easterners collaborating with western scientists.

Can western Europe save eastern science? Westerners agree that they
should at least try. This was stressed in Brussels last month when research
ministers from several eastern European countries met with Filippo Pandolfi,
the European commissioner for research, and western science authorities.
The meeting was the first to bring all these elements together and looked
in detail at how best the west can help.

From a western European standpoint, science is a good area in which
to invest. A policy paper from the European Commission says ‘a sound scientific
and technological base is an essential element for the stabilisation of
the economic and political situation’ in central and eastern Europe.

There is also self-interest in western Europe’s efforts. Jean-Francois
Stuyck-Taillandier, head of international affairs at the CNRS, the French
national research organisation, says: ‘It is not good for west European
countries if a scientific desert is created in the east.’ Eastern talent
adds to the scientific resources of greater Europe, especially as international
collaboration grows.

There are advantages too in having a large scientific workforce next
door, especially as the exchange rate is so favourable. France’s research
minister, Hubert Curien, says ‘cooperation with the Soviet space infrastructure
would be a fantastic opening’ for the European space programme, which is
suffering from budget overruns and severe cash shortages. Also, French scientists
have considered buying laboratory animals from Russia rather than the US
because they are cheaper. And biotechnology firms are eyeing the possibilities
of field trials with genetically engineered organisms in eastern Europe,
to avoid hostile public opinion in the West.

The crisis now evident in eastern European science stems not only from
financial problems but also institutional ones. Under the centralised Communist
system, ‘we had an artificial separation of education and research’, says
Tamas Katona of the Hungarian foreign ministry. Now, university teachers
in Hungary are learning to do research and institute scientists are striving
to compete for grants under a peer review system previously unknown in the
east. But despite the efforts at reform, so long as research funds and salaries
are low or nonexistent, Katona fears that more and more scientists will
leave.

This is the principal concern across the continent. There is a growing
brain drain of scientists, with the best taking jobs in western Europe and
the US, and the rest leaving science for business. The problem was emphasised
last week by Alexander Spirin, an institute director and member of the Russian
Academy of Sciences. On a visit to the CNRS in Paris he said that up to
30 per cent of the best, young Russian scientists have found work in foreign
institutions. ‘That percentage is in danger of reaching 50 per cent.’ He
warned that laboratories were ‘beginning to empty in a dangerous way’.

Solving this problem is seen as a priority in western Europe. ‘Brain
drain in the east is not brain gain in the west,’ says the Commission, since
it would ‘deprive the eastern part of the continent of its best human resources.’

Lucio Canonica, of the Swiss foreign affairs ministry, talks of cultivating
the scientific garden next door. ‘Have you ever noticed how many professors
in Switzerland are from eastern Europe?’ he asks. ‘The place is a seedbed
for scientists.’ If eastern research died because the west snapped up all
the scientists the source would dry up, says Canonica. It would be like
spending capital, instead of interest.

Attitudes seem to differ in the US. American authorities have expressed
grave concerns about military scientists from the Commonwealth of Independent
States (CIS) being recruited to unpredictable governments such as Libya’s.
The Bush administration wants to pay for 2000 weapons scientists from the
CIS to stay in the commonwealth and, perhaps, destroy nuclear arms. But
such plans, which have been echoed by western Europeans, will do little
to help the vast majority of researchers.

In July the US National Institutes of Health started three-month ‘shuttle’
grants for eastern European scientists to work in the US, then return home.
Beyond these, however, US institutions seem almost to welcome the brain
drain.

The prospect of US laboratories luring away eastern scientists has raised
alarm in western Europe. ‘Some of the best Soviet mathematicians and theoretical
physicists have accepted professorships at major American universities,
which have been prompt to react to this heaven-sent opportunity,’ says Andre
Neveu, a research director at the CNRS. Per Rex Christensen, head of the
Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, says the US is ‘snapping up good eastern
scientists’. As has already happened with scientists from the Third World,
he says, eastern Europeans will be likely to stay permanently in the US.

Ralf Dahrendorf of the University of Oxford chaired a group of scientists
that advised the Brussels meeting between Pandolfi and eastern European
ministers. He says the best way for western Europe to staunch the flow of
scientists from the east is to start small projects aimed at making it more
attractive for them to stay at home. Dahrendorf would like the rich countries
to fund one-year visiting professorships in eastern European universities
for western scientists, improved data networks, and investment in a few
centres of excellence.

He likens the newly founded Institute for Advanced Study in Budapest,
paid for by several western governments, to the Institute for Higher Studies
in Vienna, which drew financial support mainly from US foundations and was
critical in keeping science alive in Austria after the war. He says an offer
from the American Rockefeller Foundation at the Brussels meeting to train
30 scientific administrators from eastern Europe is the sort of small activity
that could have important effects.

NATO, former bastion of the Cold War, also wants to help to shore up
eastern economies by supporting science. Last year it opened its programme
of scientific courses, workshops and meetings to easterners. More than 400
attended. Jacques Ducuing, head of scientific affairs at NATO, says this
year the organisation is setting up three new programmes to increase collaboration
between eastern and western Europe.

Ducuing has £1.1 million for these projects, but he hopes the
spending will ‘trigger further collaborations’. He admits this could simply
increase the possibility that young eastern scientists will find jobs in
western laboratories, but he says ‘a number of them will return as accomplished
scientists which will be useful for their countries’. Besides, he says:
‘If eastern scientists can maintain contacts with international science,
they will be more likely to stay in the east.’

But Ducuing is not sure whether he will get extra funds for the new
programmes, or whether they will have to come out of his existing budget
for science. This difficulty, of matching the level of concern for eastern
scientists with adequate funds, is a problem shared by others.

The Max Planck Society in Germany spent more than DM10 million ( £3.5
million), half its budget for foreign cooperation, on short-term fellowships
for scientists from eastern Europe last year. ‘We can’t shift more than
that to the east, or our links with Britain and the US will suffer,’ says
Dietmar Nickel of the Max Planck. In December the society asked the German
federal research ministry for an extra DM3 million for easterners. So did
the German Research Council. Both were turned down. Research minister Heinz
Riesenhuber says he barely has enough money to support scientists in the
former East Germany.

The Max Planck Society wants to fund western scientists visiting the
east. It wants to invite eastern scientists for six-month fellowships in
Germany, and then supply money and equipment for them to continue the research
when they return home. ‘That would help stop the brain drain,’ says Nickel.
But without extra funds, ‘we don’t know how we can do it’, he says.

Even small European countries are making efforts. Last year Switzerland
budgeted £2 million over three years for eastern scientists to visit
Swiss laboratories. Within six months it had all been spent. Now Switzerland
is planning a second phase of funding, in part for research done in Hungary,
Poland and Czechoslovakia.

The French have also turned their attention eastwards. The CNRS has
‘twinned’ laboratories in the CIS and France, and has plans to expand the
programme across the rest of eastern Europe. The aim is to let eastern scientists
visit their counterparts in France. The CNRS has an office in the Academy
of Sciences in Moscow to coordinate the process, and sends scientific literature
to keep laboratories in the CIS up to date. The French see the benefit as
mutual. And last week in Paris, Spirin called for an expansion of such joint
schemes to encourage ‘fruitful exchanges’. The head of the CNRS, Francois
Kourilsky, wants to increase the number of temporary appointments for researchers
visiting France from 170 to 500, with most for easterners. Last year, 142
of the 170 went to eastern scientists.

The European Commission has also joined in. Last year, at the insistence
of the European Parliament, the Community approved a separate budget of
50 million Ecus ( £35 million) for eastern science. Of that, 10 million
will go to help eastern scientists participate in the Community’s Framework
programme of scientific research.

The rest will be spent on research ‘of value’ in Poland, Czechoslovakia
and Hungary, countries that have scientific agreements with the Community,
as well as six-month fellowships for eastern scientists in western laboratories.
Another 5 million Ecus will come from the Commission’s budget for foreign
scientific cooperation.

But all this amounts to little more than a drop in the ocean, says Ducuing
at NATO. Many science ministers in eastern Europe agree. They are resigned
to suffering at least a temporary brain drain. ‘A few years ago I thought
a brain drain would be a tragedy,’ says Karczewski. ‘Now I think a good
scientist should work in good conditions. If those conditions don’t exist
at home, they should go.’

Rudolf Andorka, president of Hungary’s Research Fund, says ‘I don’t
consider the brain drain as dangerous as is usually said. Many Hungarian
scientists may go to the west, but if they return, there will be no great
loss. And a large number will return.’ Attracting them back, however, will
require massive restructuring of eastern science, a process which is well
advanced in some eastern countries.

Aleksandras Abisala, minister responsible for science policy in Lithuania,
says ‘Lots will go abroad. That may be no bad thing if it is for a few years,
but we will be very unhappy if there is a brain drain on a large scale.’
Lithuania wants to spend 5.5 per cent of its national budget (which is equivalent
at the moment to around 2.75 per cent of gross national product), on research
‘because it is the only resource we have’, says Abisala. In a country facing
food and fuel rationing, that is real optimism. But it shows Lithuania will
take science seriously if and when it has the means to.

All the more technically advanced countries of central and eastern Europe
put a high value on science. The question now is whether western Europe
can provide enough aid to keep research alive in these countries until they
have the means to support those scientists who want to return home.

Additional reporting by Sylvia Hughes in Paris.