Suffocating scientists with red tape.

last updated 8 January 2015

Netherlands

Ronald Plasterk

It’s no wonder the European Union isn’t a leader in scientific research, said Ronald Plasterk in Amsterdam’s De Volkskrant. As a scientist, “my experience with E.U. financing” has been “disastrous.” To get funding for just one postdoctoral researcher on my team, I had to sit through days of discussions with bureaucrats and boards, only to be presented with a 10-page sheaf of regulations. Accepting the money for the researcher, it turns out, would doom me to attending meetings of a “steering group,” a “partnership board,” a “work package committee,” a “scientific advisory board,” and a “technology transfer panel.” Let’s suppose I felt the researcher would prove valuable enough to be worth such a time commitment. If he did produce an article, I’d have to hurdle another series of obstacles to get it published, including written permission from no fewer than 17 different bodies. The bar is set so high that several Nobel winners have had their grant proposals turned down. Don’t be surprised, then, if Europe’s top scientists continue to decamp to universities in the United States or Asia. “There’s no sense wasting our time in the European Union.”