Barriers to science migration...

by Salman Hameed

Couple of weeks ago, Nature had a feature story on the internationalization of science. It talked to experts and also conducted a survey of 2,300 readers to assess the changing face of science. Two things struck out for me. First, here is a figure that shows: a) Green: Which countries have the greatest scientific impact today? b) Purple: Which countries will have the greatest impact in 2020, and c) Blue: Would you consider relocating there?

(click on it to enlarge the figure)

Couple of quick things that stand out immediately. The promise of China is quite obvious. Interestingly, I have seen a couple of recent sci-fi films, where the hi-tech "future" is not the US, but in China (Looper) and in South Korea (Cloud Atlas). Second, India also features quite prominently. However, when it comes to relocation, US and Europe still rank very high, with China and India quite low. What is interesting is this following figure that shows incentives of migration (left) as well as the barriers (right):

While the incentives are relatively obvious - better life, salary, and research funding - I think it is interesting that the biggest barrier seems to be "Authoritarian political system and restricted freedom". And this is an interesting example of how science and the freedom of expression gets linked together. In fact, I would weigh the availability of creative space quite heavily in thinking about 2020 science as well, and I don't think that China will become a science superpower in the next 8 years (it may become a military one...). However, Soviet Union did manage to create substantial science within a restrictive system, but it also failed ultimately. Just some food for thought.

While reading this I was, of course, thinking about Umair Asim and the blasphemy mess in Pakistan. I wonder how Pakistan would stack up if we asked international scientists if they wanted to relocate there?

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