The United States has not remained the place it was in terms of what it has to offer to basic scientists. While Harvard will remain Harvard, today even there people are feeling the pinch, young and senior faculty alike. When I told my colleagues there the kind of startup deal I was getting at NCBS, many felt frustrated at their lot.
This emphasis on the more "theoretical" and more "basic and fundamental" research areas has been typical of the Indian scenario in the life sciences. Much money has been pumped into these areas. It wouldn't be so bad if Indian science made its mark by reporting something that was original but I am not sure if that has been the case. It may be that someone got something from looking at the wing patterns of butterflies and that someone else got an anticancer compound from a Taiwan butterfly (I hesitate to think of how they justified their initial research to animal ethics and environment protection people). But in India, application has lagged and even today, most Indian scientists (even if they are abroad) lack the ability to bridge different disciplines and tend to be more compartmentalized in their approach. It would be good if these Indian biologists enjoying so much funding and infrastructure at least reported on some interesting patterns or behaviors that is peculiar to this part of the world but for even that, some foreign scientist will be invited to collaborate.
on May 6, 2012