Undermining of science and researchers under the Trump administration in the US is irrational, but serves as a warning for the world, according to the president of the European Research Council (ERC).
Speaking in Dublin on Tuesday before she met Taoiseach Micheál Martin, Prof Maria Leptin said she did not believe the US attitude was reflected in other parts of the world.
“What the US are doing to cut off their nose at the moment, I don’t think is a symbol of what’s going on worldwide. But of course, we have to be wary, because it could happen anywhere.
“Sure, there’s fake facts, but there has always been disbelievers. There always has been conspiracy theories. They’re more widely spread now. They’re more of a threat to democracy, but there is still trust in science,” she said.
Although US scientists were unlikely to be directly affected by tariffs, they were in a difficult position, she said, while all citizens in the US and elsewhere would be impacted if their economies tanked as a consequence.
What China has done over the past 20 years in scaling up research and innovation recognised the importance of research, she said. A similar attitude could be seen in Africa but the EU had fallen behind.
On suggestions that the EU is attempting to lure back US-based scientists to Europe because of Trump, she said she would not describe it that way, but Europe should be a haven for researchers if necessary.
“Science is very international by nature,” she said, with a global network and a high degree of collaboration.
“I don’t like the phrasing of ‘ooh, this is a big opportunity to snatch back our colleagues. That’s not how we see it. We feel with them. We think the US is a great place to do science. It’s more sympathy and understanding for their situation. Of course, if they can’t carry out science for whatever absurd reasons we must welcome them here. That’s what we’re doing,” Prof Leptin said.
Speaking at an event with Irish scientists hosted by the new Government agency Research Ireland, Prof Leptin said: “Basic research may appear uncertain or risky precisely because it explores unknown territory, but history shows us that time and again, the biggest economic leaps come from curiosity-driven research with no immediate practical insight.
“Internet, vaccines, anything you can think of, were originally developed by publicly funded research programmes, and nobody at the time could have foreseen what would come out of them.”
But the ERC’s independence in funding outstanding basic science needed to be maintained, as it was different from research based on delivering economic dividends funded by governments or private industry, she said.
The most pertinent recent example was artificial intelligence, which did not arrive with ChatGPT but emerged over 50 years from scientists “who were basically ignored as weirdos with beards sitting in their ivory towers”.
She said Europe should not try to catch up with the US and China on AI, and instead concentrate on “what discoveries will make us lead in 10 years’ time?”.
The bottom line, she said, was European competitiveness had been undermined by inadequate research funding, which needed to be increased across member states including Ireland – and combined with ensuring greater mobility for scientists within the EU.
While Ireland had been successful in securing €385 million in ERC funding for 245 projects, Prof Leptin agreed a tripling of Research Ireland funding to €1 billion a year was justified and would make Ireland the EU leader in funding science.
Prof Luke O’Neill, a member of the ERC scientific council, said Ireland had massively underinvested in science over recent decades, with funding currently half the European average. When in Brussels, he said, he was confronted with the view “Ireland is loaded, why aren’t you investing in science?”
Scaling up national funding would lead to more ERC grants to do exceptional independent research, he said.
Speaking at the event, historian Prof Jane Ohlmeyer of Trinity College said everybody was rightly nervous about what was going to happen with US tariffs.
“But if history teaches us one thing – and especially Irish history, where we have gone through so much trauma – is that we will emerge from this crisis, and probably stronger,” she added.
She hoped Research Ireland and the Government would not make “the mistake that we made back in 2008 [after the financial crash] when, actually, everybody panicked”.
On funding, “all the money went into applied research, and basically very, very little was left for basic frontier research. And I think that’s why the timing of this visit is so important,” she said.
