Romanian Science In Freefall 156
ananyo writes "In 2011, Romania took a step towards changing its cronyism-ridden research landscape by allocating government grants for science solely on the basis of performance. In 2012, a new government eliminated those rules, then slashed science funding — and since then things have gotten a whole lot worse. The entire National Research Council, Romania's main research-funding agency, has resigned in protest and 900 scientists signed a petition addressed to Prime Minister Victor Ponta, demanding that the research budget and quality control be restored. Ponta himself unfortunately has been accused of academic plagiarism so seems an unlikely figure to address corruption in the scientific establishment. The new science minister, Ecaterina Andronescu, is experienced — she's held the post twice before and is a rector at the Polytechnic University of Bucharest. But she's already reversed conflict of interest rules brought in by the previous government that were designed to end cronyism. And no wonder — they would have meant that she couldn't be science minister and run a university at the same time. Oh, she has also been accused of plagiarism."
Re:Freefall from where? (Score:5, Informative)
You might want to educate yourself on the subject. Here's a starting point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_and_technology_in_Romania [wikipedia.org]
Not much fundamental research happening over the past 20 years or so - probably because the best and brightest are all working abroad. But, before that, I believe Romania contributed more than its fair share.
Re:They make up for it in other areas (Score:5, Informative)
Nope, the French sell horse as horse.
Which I have no problem with, horse tastes pretty good.
The Romanians turned out to be the source of the horse labeled beef in the latest EU horse meat scandal.
Submitter is wrong (Score:3, Informative)
I completely agree with what the article states - romanian science is in free fall. But it is wrong about some facts.
In charge of Romanian education and research are two gentlemen - Mihnea Costoiu (Ministry of Research, close to Ecaterina Andronescu - and according to his resume he got his PhD in 6 months - CV and more info at http://www.hotnews.ro/stiri-esential-13845257-cine-este-mihnea-costoiu-propus-ministru-cercetarii.htm [hotnews.ro] ) and Remus Pricopie (Ministry of Education, former rector at SNSPA, National School for Political and Administrative Science).
Before that, we had The Ministry of Education and Research as a single entity - and in the past 10 years we had over 12 different ministers in charge. Every one of them tried to radically change everything while actually changing nothing. Ecaterina Andorenscu was the longest lasting and did the most harm.
The only real change was through a law in 2011, passed by Daniel Funeriu - which got obliterated indeed during the short reign of Ecaterina Andronescu in 2012.
There are many things to tell - but the conclusion is this: we are in deep sh*t and sinking.
Re:They make up for it in other areas (Score:3, Informative)
Your statement is correct but incomplete. To the best of my knowledge the end result of the investigation was that the horse meat originated in Romania but left Romania labelled as horse meat. The French company that bought the meat from Romania re-labelled it as beef, or got it re-labelled from Cyprus, or Netherlands (I personally believe the horse meat itself was delusional)
That was only for the "horse meat Lasagne" scandal in the UK though. Following that scandal there were toughened controls in Romania and throughout Europe that revealed quite a few cases of Romanian companies selling horse meat labelled as beef. Those did not get as much attention though, Romania's reputation was down the drain already (deservedly or not).