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A month after announcing increased austerity measures on international travel for scientists, Mexico’s National Council of Science and Technology announced last month that at least one restriction would be loosened. Scientists would not require presidential approval for every trip abroad. However, the plan included other deep cuts to research budgets, decreasing funds for equipment maintenance, gasoline to collect field samples, and even the use of electricity inside research facilities. These restrictions remain intact.
The elimination of the approval requirement has not helped assuage concerns among researchers about the future of science in the country. “After a generalized rejection of the scientific community to [the most recent budget cuts] the only loosened action was not to ask direct permission to the president to go abroad. In other areas [of the reduced budget] there are no real impacts, as far as we can see,” Manuel Elias Gutierrez, an ...
