OK, that’s the ‘egg’ of the /chicken or the egg/ problem. That’ll do fine, if you want to start there. I have no ideas for how to stress the importance of science and technology in a culture’s future, other than stressing the childrens’ education., in which case, we are looking at a generation of time needed for tangible changes.

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For your amusement, I wrote the following editorial in October 2002 in “Italy Daily”, a four-page insert that used to appear in the Italian version of the International Herald Tribune, once per week. This time was 2 months before I moved to Italy, when I was much more idealistic, but also naive. It does give you some idea about why the western world is confused about the current state of Italy’s science, given the impressive past that the country has had.
Ciao,
Amara

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Seeds for the Next Renaissance
by Amara Graps

As a result of Riccardo Giacconi’s well-deserved Nobel prize award for his astrophysics research that led to the discovery of cosmic X-ray sources, an unusual discussion has emerged in Italian public life of the phenomena of Italian scientists who emigrate out of Italy to pursue their research. As a foreign (American) astronomer in the process of immigrating into Italy to continue my work, I don’t have enough deep background information of this phenomenon.

Currently to my unexperienced eye, the brain drain shouldn’t surprise casual observers, as government-supported scholarships are very low, salaries to scientific researchers are barely higher than for bus drivers, large research networks are being told they must close, so then some Italian scientists eventually become too discouraged and vote with their feet. The word ‘discouraged’ is an understatement. Scientists generally have mild and forgiving characters and do what they do for the love of their work, much more than for fortune and fame. Therefore, the conditions leading to their departure was likely extreme.

However, any situation can change, and if one adopts the stance: ‘Yes, we’ve done that, now how can we make it better?’, I think I can offer perspectives to consider during your reflection on the role of science in Italian cultural life.

Italians have much to be proud in their past scientific and cultural accomplishments. Their long cultural history displays a vast range of experiences lending to a ‘done it all’ attitude and, hence, a daily focus of living well (eternally) in the present, according to the wisdom of what it has learned. With this as one’s environment, one might think that looking towards the future and making novel changes could be difficult. Is change difficult for Italians? One needs only to stand on a Roma streetside during peak traffic times, becoming dizzy with the whirl of mosquito-scooters, to know that Italy is a society in motion. To where does the society move? To where _can_ the society move? What guideposts can the culture use from its past?

Italy had and currently has many scientists one can imagine as role models, however, I can think of no better scientific and cultural guideposts for Italy’s future than Galileo Galilei, Leonardo da Vinci and the Italian Renaissance.

Friends and colleagues have told me that Italians seem curiously nonchalant about the scientist Galileo. In our opinion, however, Galileo was one of the most important figures of the last one thousand years. He introduced mathematics into physics and hastened the separation of physical science from philosophy. Many U.S. high school and first-year university science students perform duplicates of Galileo’s laboratory experiments. Galileo’s house arrest and Pisa Tower exploits, either exaggerated or real, are prominent in the classroom stories. The NASA/ESA space mission to Jupiter and now orbiting Jupiter since late-1995, was named after Galileo. For my eight hundred planetary science colleagues at a 1999 science meeting hosted by our kind Italian colleagues, one of the most memorable events in our scientific careers was sitting in Universita di Padova’s “The Galileo Galilei Great Hall” and seeing Galileo’s pulpit, from where the great man lectured to his students.

Galileo Galilei was an astronomer, mathematician, physical scientist, and budding entrepreneur who advocated experimental evidence and individual experience over authoritarian elements. Two of my favorite quotations by Galileo Galilei are “You cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him to find it for himself,” and “In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.” As a guidepost for the future, Galileo Galilei’s achievements could remind Italians of the value of dogged determination and scientific rigor, of listening to one’s own heart and mind, and of observing technical progress and supporting new opportunities.

Leonardo da Vinci shared Galileo’s enthusiastic love of observation, investigation and discovery. His genius was that he excelled in an astonishing variety of fields that are now considered artistic and scientific specialities. For both his wide-ranging accomplishments and the period of his achievements, the description of him as a “Renaissance Man” uniquely suits his large stature in our history books.

How can Leonardo and the Italian Renaissance be a guidepost to Italy’s future? The Renaissance was triggered, in part, by a revival of Greek ideas. The Renaissance do-ers didn’t want to just recreate again, what the Greeks accomplished, instead, the creative individuals in the Renaissance wanted to build on those ancient ideas and then take those ideas further into new directions, permeating all aspects of society. The conditions in Italian civilization seemed to be primed for the first Renaissance seeds to germinate and flower, then those ideas spread to the rest of Europe like a breath of fresh air.

In our present complex times, increasing technological advancements swirl around us demanding more of our attention. Scientific education, research and awareness is essential, not only to keep pace with our fast-paced world, but also to provide a psychological comfort zone for all people in society, showing that humans are linked with the delightful discovery traditions from our past. We are all children at heart, perhaps Italians even more so, eternally seeking answers to age-old questions, and playing in the stream of time. I suggest to use the current discussion of the role of science in Italian culture, not as a way to lament past actions, but, instead, to embrace your past and present accomplishments and channel your endless energy to create seeds for the next Renaissance to germinate and flower.

Dr. Amara Lynn Graps (Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik, Heidelberg, Deutschland and Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Roma/Frascati, Italia)

you raise a good point – one can argue whether conference-going is pleasant or a waste of time and funds, but what one can’t argue about is that a thick list of conference contributions is a very important ingredient in the CV of a would-be academic.

What can I say – the mechanism is very well oiled. We need conferences for our careers, so we spend money to go. Conference organizers spend money to organize them because it also adds to their prestige. The money comes from funding agents and goes to hotel bills, plane tickets, and – what I find most annoying – to publishing companies. Perhaps the biggest fault is in the organizers though. They really gain little and produce lots of damage.

Cheers,
T.

I do think there is hope, but maybe not in our lifetime. Change will be very slow, but things are bound to go in the right direction – to some extent…

Cheers,
T.

I know there is no balance in research in Italy, all the money goes to physics medicine and biology. And yes, physicists’ per diems used to be on par with those of diplomats. Now I think things have changed, but they are still high.

I would not bitch about it. It is hard to change the situation. Let’s hope things improve…

Cheers,
T.

INFN has a non-existent per-diem for trips within Italy, where one is reimboursed for all expenses, if documented and not exceeding some maximum (I think 45 euros a day for meals).

It sucks that you have to buy your own tickets. I think the situation in Italy is improving, but only very slowly… If only this government lasted some more I think we would have a better situation in University and research centers soon. Fabio Mussi is doing a good job in my humble opinion…. His very first act when he was given the seat was to stop the italian veto on stem cell research in Europe.

Cheers,
T.

Ok, I don’t want to be too specific about particular situations…. Let’s just say that there are institutes with a budget which is not proportionated to the number of members.

> On the other hand, salaries in Italy are too low…

This is an argument that I heard very often, but this makes me very unconfortable. For two reasons:
- It encourages the practice of doing not-so-needed travels, with the “justification” of the low salaries; you can imagine how one can be happy to justify this approach in other people, when the group budget is over already in november (this happened…) and you cannot do your trip to some important place where important people insist that you explain your important work in an important occasion, because some of your colleagues, in the first months of the year, felt a moral justification in staying a bit more than needed because their salary is so low.
- It is unfair towards other scientists whose work is more “local” in nature (i.e. almost all other scientists: the existence of large international collaborations, or the need to perform the experiment in an external laboratory, are very specific of a few fields: particle physics, astro sciences, maybe the Genoma project; and I’m understanding from Amara that the astro people are treated in a different way). In fact, I had very unpleasant discussions with fellow scientists from other fields, who accused my cathegory to be privileged under all respects, including higher “effective salaries” due to the frequent and excessive per diems. Needless to say, they would enjoy a cut on our expenses to be redistributed to the rest of italian science. And while I can justify the major part of our large expenses (the big tools), the part about the per diems is very hard to defend…

(*) my institute split from CNR and moved to INAF in early 2006, so the following might be true still for CNR

INFN usually takes about three months. But, in cases when a large expense is foreseen, one can ask for a 70% advance before going for the trip, and that usually arrives by the time one leaves. So INFN appears to be much, much better than CNR in this respect.
Also, the plane tickets and train tickets are charged directly to our funding agent.

So I think the problem is with CNR. As for the low salary, well, of course I agree. It is probably three times lower than what it is in Germany or in the US. However, one must also take into account the fact that many employees in Italy have a low salary. Teachers, for instance, are paid even worse than research scientists. Now, of course researchers deserve a higher salary because of the higher level of education, but teachers simply get too little money to live on.

Ah, and, just today the news of a new contract for teachers might change the panorama a little bit… Not by much I think.

Cheers,
T.

And how long to get reimbursed? In my Italian institute, the reimbursement time is 4-9 months. The travel goes on my personal credit card, as for every Italian scientist, and a credit card (perhaps like mine) with a low limit. So while I’m waiting for reimbursement, I am also paying interest on my business travel expense, and having difficulty paying daily living expenses because of the large chunk of money required for the travel. For me, these more than offset what might be high per diem (although INAF’s is lower than yours, I think). And to add insult: my bank (which is the default bank for all CNR scientists) told me that my ’salary was too low’, when I asked for a higher limit to cover my scientific business travel.

The time for reimbursement is/was also a large reason why I started declining going on business trips for my own group and nurtured my collaborations and sought travel assistance from my colleagues outside. Reimbursement for my business travel when I collaborate with my colleagues outside was within one month, as is usual elsewhere.

Generally, I consider the method for how business travel is managed for the Italian scientists as somewhat insane. In none of my previous research environments in Europe or the US, has business travel been such a personal hardship for the scientist. The scientists have a base level unlivable salary, they often buy their own equipment like computers to do their job, and they cover their own business travel on their personal money for many months until reimbursement. In my opinion, for science to continue in the country in such circumstances, it must be subsidized by the Italian families.

Amara

P.S. When I say business travel, that doesn’t only include meetings and conferences, but any kind of necessary travel. The NASA Dawn VIR instrument was largely calibrated and tested on the massively overdrawn credit cards and family loans of several scientists in my institute, for example.

Tommaso, I’ve been doing such things for 25 years! Anyway, LOL.

Randall, you raise a good point: the trouble is mostly in the factory of conferences. We could do away with 80% of them and save the money to hire brilliant people like Kea (see comment #21), so that is a real waste. And so is the business of publishing proceedings…

Andrea, it is not true that italian institutions have trouble sending to CERN their personnel. In my institution, Padova, we have two researchers full time at CERN! You certainly know that. In any case, I think your university pays a reasonable amount for your trips, while INFN pays too much. On the other hand, salaries in Italy are too low…

Kea, as I mentioned above, I concur… I think it is a waste, but on the other hand I know that by waitressing you are following a plan that will eventually put you in the position of getting a research position with your own travel funds…

It is not so uncommon that the path to a dream job in science goes through some unexpected twist. I worked one year with people with mental disabilities before graduating, because back then all young men in Italy had to do one year of civil service or one year of military service. And another case comes to my mind: a CDF colleague and a fresh PhD out of Harvard, who had to go back to Greece for a three-year military service – and he was over thirty already (I think he only did one year though). He is now a professor.

Cheers all,
T.

here I meant: many *less* days.