TSS Agency – “This situation has no precedent in the entire history of Argentine democracy,” says Valeria Levi, vice-dean of the Faculty of Exact and Natural Sciences at UBA, regarding the crisis that the Argentine scientific system is going through. “Since this government came to power, we have been completely underfunded. In my case, I have not received any funds since January and this is the situation experienced in all research groups. It is as if we do not even have money to do our daily shopping. It is not that we cannot buy a house: we cannot buy the bare minimum to function on a daily basis,” he adds.
The latest news regarding the implementation of funding for Argentine science is not encouraging at all. “The paralysis is total,” warns the Network of Authorities of Scientific and Technological Institutes (RAICYT), of which Levi is a member. This Tuesday, Alicia Caballero, president of the R&D&I Agency, one of the main funding agencies for research projects in the country, acknowledged in a meeting with the secretaries of Science and Technology of the universities that “there are no funds” to launch new calls. In fact, the last one should have closed in March to proceed with the evaluation of the projects but it was never closed.
And not only that. Although Caballero said that only what “is already signed” will be paid, he also pointed out that the funds are not enough to comply with the “best valid budget” clause of the current PICT (scientific and technological research projects). This clause updates the amounts granted every year so that they are not too obsolete due to inflation, since these are projects that last three years. “It is a misleading expression. With ‘What is signed,’ the president wanted to imply that the financing of current projects would continue. What is the problem? If the best budget clause is not respected, the amounts would be so ridiculous that it would almost amount to a defunding of the projects,” Levi explains.
On the other hand, the funding corresponding to last year’s call (PICT 2022) will not be processed either, which had already been evaluated by the Agency’s Board of Directors and the list of projects that were going to be financed had been given. This was before Caballero took over the presidency, in March of this year. “She said she was not aware of this process, so they are going to review everything. Above, she pointed out that for her there were many projects and scholarship holders, so this implies that they do not want to finance them,” said Sebastián Civallero, secretary of science and technology of the UBA, present at the meeting that the official held on Tuesday with representatives of the National Interuniversity Council (CIN).
The only justification given is the well-known expression “there is no money”, but the peculiarity of the case is that the Agency is financed mainly by international credits from multilateral credit institutions, such as the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). “That is why the excuse that there is no money does not work in this case because the money has arrived, it is loans in dollars. There is a political decision not to finance Argentine science”, says Levi.
The cessation of funding for the R&D&I Agency comes on top of all the budget cuts that the scientific system has suffered in recent months: reduction of doctoral scholarships from 1,300 to 600, non-renewal of 250 postdoctoral scholarships, emptying of S&T organizations such as INTI, the National Meteorological Service and the former MINCYT; the fall in salaries of researchers and teachers, sometimes below the poverty line.
“The lack of normal development of university partnerships, in a framework consistent with inflation rates, is leading us to a brain drain to the private sector and abroad. At UBA, we have almost three thousand researchers dependent on CONICET. A third of them receive the salary from UBA, so the non-updating of the salary affects both the most excellent teachers and researchers,” explains Civallero.
Regarding the lack of basic equipment to be able to work, he says that many researchers put money out of their own pockets to buy them, counting on the fact that they would recover it thanks to the budget update clause in force for several years. “They were counting on it because the Agency is not new, it is more than 30 years old and has transcended governments of all political colors. However, without this update, they will not be able to recover the money they invested,” he emphasizes.
Faced with this panorama, Civallero says they are working on several fronts. On the one hand, they are carrying out an in-depth analysis to understand what administrative and legal actions they can take regarding the signed contracts that are not being complied with. On the other hand, they are talking with the deans of the 13 faculties to measure the real impact on each of them. In addition, they have their own funds to buy supplies for certain equipment that, if it stops working, breaks down and can no longer be turned on again.
In the meantime, RAICYT is circulating a public statement requesting membership, which already has about eight thousand signatures. “Our idea is to hold an activity at the science and technology center next Friday at 11 a.m. to deliver this petition and publicly demonstrate for what we call scienticide. The slogan will be ‘Science in danger of extinction’ and the idea is that it can be reproduced in the different provinces in the way they deem most appropriate,” Levi concluded.
