Argentina’s new president has nation’s scientists very, very concerned

In particular, researchers are worried about Milei’s plans for CONICET, Argentina’s lead science agency, which has a $400 million annual budget and employs more than 11,800 researchers. CONICET is considered one of the top science organizations in Latin America. Over the past 5 years, for example, it has won the top spot in a regional ranking of governmental scientific organizations compiled by SCImago Institutions Rankings.

During his campaign, however, Milei asserted that CONICET was “unproductive” and suggested he would eliminate or shrink it in order to “clean up what was dirty by those scientists who write stupid things.” CONICET “as it exists today will no longer exist,” he promised. Milei also referred to researchers as "gnocchi"—a derogatory term used for public employees accused of collecting their salaries without working—and suggested they should "earn their bread through the sweat of their brow."

Given that Argentina’s scientific community has already been battered by a decade of economic turmoil, a move to reduce government support for science would likely “destroy” CONICET, Capozzo says. Salaries for Argentine scientists are already among the lowest in the region, she notes, and further cuts would likely force many researchers—including herself—to consider “pursuing a different path” and even leaving the country. Navajas, for one, believes that Milei’s policies, if fully implemented, could trigger a brain drain even more severe than what Argentina experienced during the political and economic turmoil of the 1990s.

It’s not clear, however, whether Milei will be able to fully realize his agenda. For example, although he won the presidency, his party, La Libertad Avanza, enjoys relatively little support in Argentina’s legislature, suggesting some fierce policy battles lie ahead.

Researchers say they are preparing. "The upcoming period will demand a defense of the significance of public funding for science," says virologist Humberto Debat of the Institute of Plant Pathology at INTA. "We must now protect what we have because [Milei] pledged to act against it," says biomedical researcher Nadia Chiaramoni of the National University of Quilmes. They are not ruling out organizing protest mobilizations.

Whatever the outcome of those battles, researchers say Melei’s fiery antiscience rhetoric has already done damage. Chiaramoni and other researchers, for example, say it has motivated hate messages they have received on social media. Melei “doesn't critique the caliber of science,” Navajas says. “Rather, he … sows doubt among the populace about what they fund through their taxes amidst an economic crisis."

“Regardless of whether CONICET is defunded or closed,” Capozzo says, Melei’s attacks have “taken the people's trust away from us. That is irrecoverable.”