Research Funding Cuts in Canada and Italy Provoke Protests. (July 11, 2012)

ScienceInsider reported yesterday that the cuts in funding announced at the end of last month by Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government to science and environmental programs has engendered a "death of evidence" rally which cite "concerns about the deliberate erosion of the capacity of Canadian institutions to gather evidence for informed policy decision-making". In addition to Canadian researchers, international biologists attending the Evolution Ottawa meeting will participate.

And last week the Italian government announced proposed budget cuts to over a dozen of the nation's research institutes as part of a €26 billion austerity program. "News about these cuts came out of the blue, and it's outrageous," ScienceInsider was told by National Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN) President Fernando Ferroni who would see his €278 million budget cut by 3.8% this year and by another 10% both in 2013 and 2014. "I believe that this ... is the best way to kill INFN," particle physicist Fabiola Gianotti, the spokeswoman for ATLAS, one of two experiments that nailed the elusive boson at the Large Hadron Collider at the European particle physics laboratory, CERN.

Additionally the National Research Institute for Food and Nutrition (INRAN) would be closed, which would mean the loss of Italy's only independent institute in the field of nutrition research, and a major Italian hub says Giuditta Perozzi, an INRAN scientist who's helping set up an international petition. The institute's demise would greatly impair Italy's role within trans-national research programs, she told ScienceInsider, which also reports: "Other institutes facing cuts—although smaller than INFN—are the National Institute of Oceanography and Experimental Geophysics, the National Institute for Astrophysics, and the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology. Italy's National Research Council (CNR), a €1 billion funding agency, would see its budget decrease by 1.2% this year and 3.3% each of the next 2 years.

Nadia Pastrone, head of the Italian part of CMS, the other Higgs-hunting experiment at CERN worries that Italian physics will suffer if it's unable to recruit new talent, and Giovanni Bignami, president of the National Institute for Astrophysics, says he's "bewildered" by the cuts, because the National Agency for the Evaluation of Universities and Research Institutes (ANVUR) started a review of all national research institutes less than a year ago. "We waited for ANVUR's establishment for years, and we are keen on being evaluated. Now, do they want to throw everything ANVUR is doing out of the window?"

 National Research Council (CNR) President Luigi Nicolais isn't giving up hope of a reprieve just yet saying: "We shall do our best to convince our politicians that research is a key element for the economical growth of our country."