A crucial moment for US:EU science cooperation

Alan Leshner, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

“The US and Europe should be collaborating on all of these issues,” Alan Leshner, Chief Executive Officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), said in the Inaugural Joint Research Centre (JRC) Annual Lecture in Brussels yesterday.

Leshner acknowledged that over the past decade it has “not always been easy” to collaborate with US science and scientists “but it may be getting easier” as the climate for science, in, and with, the US changes.

During the George W Bush administration the US government was “unfriendly” to science generally, he said. Now President Barack Obama has pledged to back government policy with scientific evidence rather than political ideology. Last month Obama set out an “Innovation Agenda” to restore the US’s leadership in science through doubling basic research budgets, investing 3 per cent of GDP in research and making R&D tax credits permanent.

This change in attitude will improve the position of the US as a global science collaborator, Leshner said. Underlining this, the AAAS and the JRC, as the body that provides scientific input to the EU’s policy-making, yesterday signed an agreement, “to strengthen the international cooperation between their scientific and technical communities.” The first focus of the agreement will be the development of new tools for the verification and monitoring of nuclear arms.

High quality science is now going on all over the world. While the US and Europe remain the leaders in science, “We should help build that capacity elsewhere,” Leshner said.

“Increased international research cooperation to address pressing global problems should of course be a primary goal for scientists everywhere,” with the aim, he added, of improving the quality of life and generating economic prosperity worldwide. Rising scientific communities such as China and India should be incorporated into, “Our currently Western-oriented scientific structure.”

Science is becoming more collaborative and international research teams are becoming more common. But, Leshner pointed out, there are no norms or standards for globalised science. “The US and Europe should work together to integrate the global science community by developing global standards in areas such as science ethics and intellectual property, and by helping to deal with national differences in science policies in areas such as embryonic stem cell research, genetically modified organisms and animal testing”, Leshner said.

He added that the EU is setting an example in the ways it has been working to better integrate its science community, for example the moves to form a European Research Area and the setting up of the European Research Council.

Responding, Roland Schenkel, JRC Director General, said international S&T cooperation is a priority at EU level. “With the renewed EU and US efforts to boost scientific research and the role of science in policy making, there is a momentum for cooperation that cannot be missed.” Collaboration is crucial in science and can contribute to solve the new global challenges that the world is facing, he said.