Weekend Economists: See the Kittehs! May24-27, 2013

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82. Not so much a brain drain as forced exile{spain}

http://elpais.com/elpais/2013/05/20/inenglish/1369050837_208748.html

For the last three years, Spain's scientific community has been warning about the impact of government austerity measures: the deep spending cuts aimed at reducing the country's deficit could mean the dismemberment of a research structure that has taken many years, a great deal of money, and much effort to create. Academic institutions' funding budgets are being slashed, leaving many of the country's best and brightest with no choice but to look for opportunities abroad. Spain's brain drain is not a voluntary process: to all intents and purposes, the country is driving away the very people who should be leading the next generation of scientists and researchers.

People like Nuria Martí. The 33-year-old is just one of those directly affected by the government's 31-percent (1.4-billion-euro) cuts to R&D between 2009 and 2012. Martí was fired from the Prince Felipe Research Center (CIPF) in Valencia in 2011. She has just signed off on one of the most important works on stem-cell research in recent years at the Oregon Health & Science University, in the United States, where she now works.

Martí's case made the headlines in Spain, as has that of Diego Martínez, a 30-year-old recently named the European Physics Society's young physicist of the year, but who has been turned down for a grant by the post-doctoral Ramón y Cajal Program, a scheme set up in 2001 to "strengthen the capacity of the research and development groups and institutions in Spain by injecting new blood into the system," according to its first call for proposals. Martínez and the many others turned down for funding have no recourse to appeal.


Nobody working at the Ramón y Cajal Program questions the body's selection process, based on international criteria. But they do point out that the cuts mean that growing numbers of young scientists are being denied an opportunity to pursue research in Spain. In 2011, 250 grants were available; last year that figure fell to 175.