SciDev.Net published an interview with the distinguished scientist and science administrator, David Baltimore, following his comments on international science at the AAAS meeting.
I am concerned, in that I recognize that Baltimore is both smarter than I and better qualified than I due to the high level posts he has held, but I was not totally in agreement with his comments as reported. Those reports tended to suggest that he saw similar priorities for India and Rwanda, but I would think that these are very different countries with very different scientific cultures and institutions, and that both of these are very atypical.
Dr. Baltimore also focuses on what might be called "innovative science", by which I mean the kind of work that won him the Nobel Prize. A great deal of what needs to be done urgently in developing nations is "normal science" checking out that results obtained in other countries and other labs apply in the researcher's country and laboratory. Adapting improved crop varieties to local conditions, implicating the causes of infectious diseases, and validating the applicability of new medications to local populations will not impress the journals nor the Nobel committees, but these tasks are extremely important.
Saturday, May 03, 2008
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