TWITTER, @JUSTINQTAYLORInternational collaboration is a bedrock of modern science, so President Donald Trump’s signing last week of an executive order that barred refugees and some visitors from seven countries from entering the U.S. garnered a strong response from the communities that rely on open borders to conduct research.
“Our borders are a creation of human beings, but dust, pollution, wind, heat, ocean energies and flows—they don’t pay any attention to international boundaries. These things have an enormous impact on us and we have to study these things with a global perspective,” Matthew Scott, president of the Carnegie Institution, told The Washington Post. “Any infringement, especially an entirely unnecessary one, on the free flow of brilliant people . . . is shooting ourselves in the foot.”
And the so-called immigration ban is already harming working scientists, Nature reports. Luca Freschi, an Italian microbial geneticist described how his plans to conduct research at Harvard were put on hold, since the ban would prevent his Iranian wife from joining him abroad. Samira Samimi, an Iranian glaciologist, ...
