Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Nature on the Claudio Mendoza case part II: Editorial: When Employees Attack When Employees Attack. Editorial in Nature, Vol 446, 702 (2007) Government scientists should be able to comment publicly — within reason. Badmouthing one’s government is a fashionable pastime in some parts of the world. Many US climatologists, even those who receive federal funding, have grave reservations about the White House’s continued neglect of international climate agree­ments, and they aren’t shy about saying so. In Britain, meanwhile, scientists as well as political analysts have been quick to criticize the government’s plan to spend billions on renewing the national fleet of nuclear-weapons submarines. Roll those two examples together, and transplant them into a soci­ety where freedom of speech is often seen as being under pressure from several directions, and you get the case of Claudio Mendoza. Until recently the head of a government physics laboratory in Ven­ezuela, Mendoza has been demoted after making sarcastic comments about the government over what he regards as its tendency to ignore scientists and their advice (see page 711). What infuriated Mendoza’s paymasters most was probably his suggestion — made in a newspaper article promoting a play about nuclear weapons — that president Hugo Chávez might want to pur­sue a nuclear-weapons programme and that, if he did so, he was liable to fail because of this alleged disdain for expert advice. Mendoza’s comments were not made in any official capacity (his article was signed, with no affiliation given), raising the fraught ques­tion of whether senior government scientists should be free to make disparaging public comments about the state institutions that they serve, when they are away from work. On a facile level, this is a disagreement about whether it is accept­able for someone to be fired because their bosses can’t take a joke. In many countries, acerbic comments about the machinations of politics are a valid and effective mode of public discourse. But, of course, a line has to be drawn somewhere. It is hard to escape the feeling that, in this case, it has been drawn in the wrong place. Many civil servants in other countries might expect a dress­ing-down if they behaved in this way, but might justifiably argue that they have a right to express a grievance. The message coming from Mendoza’s bosses within the Venezuelan national research institute is an unsavoury one. His removal from a management position implies that someone who voices contrary opinions is not fit to be a lab head. What’s more, Mendoza has been warned that he had better clam up if he doesn’t want to lose his job altogether. The play that Mendoza was writing about was Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen, the international hit that deals with a crucial 1941 meeting between Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, and their struggle to comprehend the feasibility and consequences of devel­oping nuclear weapons during the Second World War (see Nature 394, 735; 1998). One of the reasons for the play’s success was general interest in what physicists of Bohr’s generation thought about the issues surrounding nuclear weapons. Of course, these thoughts only became public some time after the United States had built and used the bomb. But times have moved on, and people in Caracas, as elsewhere, would benefit if their scientists were be able to participate openly in public debate on nuclear policy. 9:54:32 PM    comment []

Nature on the Claudio Mendoza case part I: Venezuelan Free Speech Row goes Nuclear The prestigious scientific journal Nature had double coverage of the case of Venezuelan scientist Claudio Mendoza, which I have talked about a few times here. I will make two posts with the material from Nature, in this post I will post the news item reported by the Journal and in the next one, the Editorial which was obviously prompted by the news itself and the clear threat to freedom of speech implied by Claudio's removal or the words of the Director of IVIC, who clearly threatens Dr. Mendoza in his last sentence, no? Venezuelan Free Speech Row goes Nuclear in Nature by Michael Hopkin, Vol 446, page 711 (2007) Freedom-of-speech groups have expressed concern at the treatment of a prominent Ven­ezuelan physicist who has been fired as head of a government research lab after poking fun at the government over nuclear policy issues. Claudio Mendoza was stripped of his posi­tion as head of a computational-physics lab in the Venezuelan Institute of Scientific Research (IVIC) in Caracas because of comments he made in an article written to promote a science-related play. He sarcastically suggested that Venezuelans should not worry about their country’s growing alliance with ‘rogue’ nuclear states such as Iran, because Venezuelan officials do not listen to experts and so would not be able to develop nuclear technology anyway. Although Mendoza is still a researcher in the lab, his dis­missal as head after 10 years raises fears that his right to free speech has been infringed, says Juan Carlos Gallardo, chair of the American Physical Society’s Committee on International Freedom of Scientists. The com­mittee has written to Venezue­lan officials to request details of the case. Although no other scientists there have reported similar harassment, the government has been accused of waging a campaign against freedom of speech in the media, and the fear is that similar repression is now extending to the research community. Gallardo has pledged to monitor the situation and take further action if Mendoza is sacked outright. Mendoza says he has been accused of treason, even though his comments were meant to be witty and he was not writing in an official capa­city. His remarks were published on 13 Septem­ber 2006 in an article to publicize a production of Copenhagen by British playwright Michael Frayn. The play dramatizes a discussion between physicists Neils Bohr and Werner Heisenberg about the feasibility of developing nuclear weap­ons. Addressing fears that Venezuela might seek to join the nuclear club, Mendoza wrote: “Here bridges are built without engineers, diagnoses are made without doctors, oil is refined without petroleum experts, one can teach without being a teacher, you can govern without being a states­man. We will therefore explode nuclear energy while ignoring the physicists.” But it seems that nuclear policy is no joking matter. Although Venezuela has no nuclear pro­gramme of its own, it has significant reserves of uranium ore, and in 2005 Venezuela announced that it would join forces with Iran to develop domestic nuclear power. Venezuela is also thought to have endorsed Iran’s controversial uranium-enrichment programme, although without a seat on the UN Security Council, it was unable to influence the council’s unanimous vote in December 2006 to ban the project. Four days after the article was published, IVIC’s board of directors removed Mendoza as lab head, and gave him 30 days to provide evidence of his apparent insin­uation that Venezuela might be planning to enrich uranium. Mendoza submitted a dossier of newspaper articles but this was rejected as sufficient proof. When asked to retract his arti­cle, he refused. The article was “the last drop” in a series of altercations in which Mendoza has criti­cized his paymasters, says IVIC director Máximo García Sucre. In 2003, for example, Mendoza complained that the govern­ment was not giving enough financial support to IVIC — a claim denied by IVIC directors (see Nature 422, 257; 2003). “He has manifest many times his noncon­formity with IVIC decisions,” García Sucre told Nature. “In a certain sense he is an activist. In this situation it is not possible to be head of a lab — there must be a minimum of affinity with scientific politics.” He adds that such personnel changes are routine, and that Mendoza still has all the rights of any IVIC staff member. Mendoza says that he is unsure whether he will be dismissed entirely. “I don’t think I will try to get reinstated as head. I am just basically trying to survive as a researcher,” he says. “I hope he will understand that the measure that has been taken is a mild one,” says García Sucre, adding that in making fun of government officials, Mendoza has indirectly criticized pres­ident Hugo Chávez. Asked whether Mendoza will be fired outright, García Sucre says: “He should start to work in his lab instead of being in the newspapers all the time saying he is being victimized. Then I don’t see any problem.” 8:38:32 PM    comment []

So who should I root for? So, who do you root for when it is your country´s up and coming baseball pitching star, against your favorite teams news star from Japan? 7:12:46 PM    comment []