"The Rain in Spain"….FT’s Gideon Rachman on the crisis of the European Project

Gideon Rachman is one of the FT’s very best. Here’s his latest report from Spain–it’s not pretty. In the late eighties and early nineties Spain was brimming with the kind of optimism that produced a generation of extremely bright scientists…many came to the States for training at the NIH, but then returned to the mother country, believing in both the European Project and endless possibilities for innovation. I saw this excellence first hand, in Madrid, Salamanca, Alicante and Barcelona…

Sustained progress in science however requires economic stability in addition to a long term view from political leaders….

That’s a lesson that could well be learned in other places too.

The Rain in Spain…

From ScienceInsider, here. Twenty years ago, support for Spanish science was excellent and a lot of my colleagues from NIH chose to return to Spain following their postdocs to take faculty appointments.  These days, probably not so much…