3.2 Amorim, C. (5 de Julho de 2014) ‘Portuguese government shuts down half of the research
units in the country’, De Rerum Natura, 2014
[http://dererummundi.blogspot.pt/2014/07/portuguese-government-shuts-downhalf_5528.html]
Texto de Catarina Amorim, colocado na Alpha Galileo (agência de notícias de ciência europeia).
The Portuguese funding agency for science (Fundação para a Ciência e aTecnologia – FCT) has
just announced that it will stop funding nearly half of the research units in the country (154
units out of 322), which means to destroy the career of about a third of the total number of
researchers in the country (5187 out of 15444).
Of these soon to be extinct research units, 1904 researchers in 71 units will be gradually fired in
the next 6 years. The remainder 3283 researchers will be award an extremely limited amount
of funding, ranging from less than $7000/year (for units with less than 40 members and no
laboratory equipment) to less than $50000€ (for laboratories units with more than 81
researchers), which in practice is a a slow death sentence as no research can be done with that
budget. Just to put this in context, in the UK a reasonable grant will give the laboratory for EACH
biomedical researcher is around $1700/month.
For each biomedical UK researcher $20,400/year.
For 81 Portuguese researchers $50,000/year.
Worst, most of units closed have show competitive productivity scores at the international level,
according to an Elsevier study requested by the same FCT.
Ignoring this, the government relied on an evaluation led by the European Science Foundation,
based solely on documents, without interviews to the researchers or visits to the units. Not only
that but the panels making decisions were formed mostly by non-specialists in the area. For
example, the one that decided to shut down most of the condensed matter physics units in the
country, had a 1 specialist in condensed matter physics out of 11 people.
Conditions have never been easy for portuguese researchers - PhDs financed by FCT earn
$,1337/month and , worst, there is no professional category of "scientist" what means , for
example, that researchers have no pension plan.
In the last 20 years, portuguese science has been growing steadily, with several research
laboratories of excellence appearing, gaining a place in the international research panorama.
Money was invested in educate researchers and create laboratories, and the results were visible.
In a world as scientific-technological as ours, science is progress and development. Last year
300 000 portuguese emigrated , many scientists due to the economical measures. IN a country
of 10 millions this means that a only last year we lost 3% of the population. Now this. Like Garcia
Marquez so well put "a chronicle of a death foretold".