What Brazilians do and think on the list of the most influential scientists in the world | Science and health

For some scientists, this is little compared to the size of the country and its population. For others, it is a lot, given the conditions: lack of funding and lack of prestige of science on the part of the government and its followers, especially in recent years.

To develop the ranking, the Stanford team, led by John Ioannidis, calculated the citations (when an article by one scientist is cited by another) from the Scopus database, one of the most complete and respected in the world. The result was recently published in the scientific journal Plos Biology. From them, two rankings were developed, one taking into account the impact of a researcher throughout his career and the other for a single year, in this case, 2019.

In the first list, the best placed researchers working in Brazil were born in other countries, although one of them is a naturalized Brazilian. First place is the Dutch soil physicist and agronomy teacher Martinus Theodorus van Genuchten, in position 460. He is currently at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), but has spent most of his career abroad.

Second, in 1661, is the Greek by birth, but naturalized Brazilian, Constantino Tsallis, from the Brazilian Center for Physical Research (CBPF). He developed his career and has worked in Brazil since 1975, one year after completing his doctorate in France.

The two best-born Brazilians, who work in the best located country, are the epidemiologist César Victora, from the Federal University of Pelotas (UFPel), in place 2969, and the chemist Jairton Dupont, from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), at position 3201.

For Dupont, having 600 Brazilians on the list is very little considering the country’s GDP and the large number of highly motivated young people. According to him, this is due, in the first place, to the little importance that most public officials give to science, who see it as an expense and not as an investment in the future.

In second place, he says, comes the entrepreneurial mentality, which seeks immediate profits and prefers to “buy” prefabricated technologies, which takes Brazil away from the limits of knowledge.

“Third, there is the ‘culture’ of denial, which has its maximum expression in the magical thinking that permeates much of our society,” he says. “We will be turning into a society of ‘fanatics’ (intolerant), if there is no reaction from the civilizing forces, which find their maximum expression in public universities.”

Still, Dupont says the number of Brazilian scientists in the ranking may not be that bad.

“In view of the working conditions of researchers in Brazil, we can even celebrate,” he explains. “Mainly because of the persistence of the 600 registered, who, even in the face of immense difficulties, manage to carry out a work that puts the country on the map of knowledge and shows that we have the ability to make a further difference, to lead to a more just and just society. egalitarian “.

Victora thinks otherwise. “It is more to regret than to celebrate, because Brazil is one of the largest countries in the world in terms of population,” he explains. “This is a reflection of what is happening with Brazilian science. Scientists are discredited and we are receiving few resources. Until 2014, investment in science in Brazil in 2015 was increasing a lot. It grew a lot in the previous 20 years, but since then has declined. ” . ”

A reflection of the discrediting of science, he says, “is the way the pandemic has been handled by the central government (in reference to the federal government), without taking into account scientific recommendations. Applying in science is an investment, not an investment. spending. to generate more technology, more health and working conditions for the population. Today this is seen as an expense and there have been numerous cuts in funding and scholarships. ”

Tsallis says that to assess whether 600 Brazilians are relatively few or many, it would be necessary to have information from the other countries involved, as well as complete data on public and private funds made available to science and technology. “In the absence of this information, it is difficult to have a firm opinion,” he explains.

“Personally I see with joy that Brazil has 600 scientists well placed in this type of evaluation, and I would not be surprised if in the not too distant future that number grows, slowly but substantially.”

But nevertheless, he explains that the importance of the survey carried out by the Stanford University team is that it allows to objectively verify the global impact of Brazilian science over many decades. “Given that the support, over the years, from public institutions in Brazil to their scientists is of fundamental importance, such surveys can – and should – guide the best ways to use public funds,” he defends.

According to Victora, the list is very useful, because the impact of a scientist on global knowledge is measured by the number of other researchers who cite their work. “So using the job citation index is a very important marker of how much science produced in a given place by a particular person impacts the level of knowledge around the world,” he explains.

He attributes his presence in the ranking to the work of the epidemiology group that he coordinates at UFPel, which “is well known in Brazil” and in the world. “Mainly from birth cohort studies, which are those surveys that follow children from birth to adulthood,” he explains. “Our oldest cohort is 40 years old.”

These are expensive and time-consuming surveys, he says, but they provide indications of how what happens during pregnancy and early life influences people’s health, intelligence, performance, and productivity into adulthood. “There are very few studies of this type in the world and we are fortunate to have started the work in 1982, which continues today, hence the recognition,” he says.

Tsallis, for his part, attributes his classification to his work by proposing the generalization of one of the pillars of contemporary theoretical physics, Boltzmann-Gibbs statistical mechanics, which resulted in the most cited Brazilian scientific article in all areas since 1945 .if something very complex for laymen, which Tsallis tries to explain:

“Statistical mechanics is the physical theory where probabilities are added to mechanics (Newtonian, Einsteinian, quantum) and electromagnetism, by James Clerk Maxwell,” he says.

It was formulated 150 years ago and works to explain the properties of simple fluids (air, water) and simple magnetic systems (a piece of magnetized iron). “It correctly predicts how a pressure cooker, a refrigerator, a transistor, superconductors and a thousand other things work,” says Tsallis. “The elements of such systems influence others in the same system that are close in space or time.”

The problem is that Boltzmann-Gibbs statistical mechanics seriously fails to explain many phenomena in living systems, in stock exchanges, in astrophysics (due to gravitational interaction), in high-energy collisions that occur in accelerators. of particles (due to the one that occurs in the quark-gluon system), in the description of turbulence in granular media (flour, for example), in quantitative ecology, and in the evolution of urban agglomerations and languages, for example.

“In these cases, it fails, because in these complex systems the correlations appear internally at great distances in space or time,” explains Tsallis.

He says that his article, which is exclusively Brazilian, generated approximately 15,000 directly related ones, published by more than 8,000 scientists from 102 countries around the world. “It is also possible that the fact that I gave more than a thousand invited lectures around the world was taken into account,” he believes.

He should also have weighed in his position on the list the fact that he dedicated a good part of his life to exploring the great questions in the field of scientific knowledge of humanity and their possible applications. “Being considered the most influential Brazilian scientist is undoubtedly, in addition to being an honor, a great encouragement for me and for others, especially for young people,” he says. “This last point is, in my opinion, of the utmost importance, since it is necessary to encourage young people and put their audacity to the test in the scientific and technological subjects that they are passionate about.”

The success and international recognition of some researchers should not mask the difficulties of doing science in the country, say the researchers interviewed. “Today is very difficult, perhaps at the same level as the 1990s,” laments Dupont, saying that “the golden years were in the Lula governments, which invested in research and universities and provided an adequate environment to carry out risky projects. “.

If it weren’t for this investment, he says, Brazilian science would be in a much more delicate situation to face the covid-19 pandemic, for example. “It is tireless work to overcome the dark times that we are going through, mainly with fundamentalist religious interference at all levels,” he says. “We have a lot to overcome: racism, misogyny, homophobia and denial.”

For Tsallis, doing research in Brazil is “fascinating and challenging, but very laborious.”

“Fascinating, because the fact that Brazil is a young country from a historical point of view leaves room for innovation, creativity and free from institutional traditions that can sometimes be very heavy,” he explains. “Very laborious, because what is easily obtained when working at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), at Princeton, Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge or at the Escola Normal Superior de Paris can only be achieved by working in Brazil, with considerable efforts of all kinds, ”he says.