Science in a divided Europe

Atlas particle detector at CERN. Source: The Guardian

Some Western scientists working on CERN’s Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland don’t want their names to appear on the same scientific papers as Russian scientists.  The result is that scientific papers written there aren’t getting published at all.

CERN – the European Organization for Nuclear Research – is supported by 22 European countries plus Israel.  Ukraine is an associate member.  Russia has observer status, and CERN has cooperation agreements with Belarus and a number of other countries.  CERN has decided end Russia’s observer status and Belarus’ cooperation agreement when they expire in two years.

This is part of a wider pattern.   Eleni Petrakou wrote in the Guardian:

Although unique, the case of the LHC experiments is part of a wider trend. The German Research Foundation has warned scientists against publishing with co-authors from Russian institutes. The Web of Science database tracking citations has stopped evaluating articles from Russia. There have been reports of individual peer-review referees rejecting articles.

And as Russian institutes are getting excluded from international projects, some fields see a direct impact – such as climate change research, which is being set back by the suspension of collaboration in the Arctic.

That’s sad.  There was a time when science was international.  Even during the Cold War, some American and Soviet physicists tried to keep in contact. 

LINK

Splitting the atomic scientists: how the Ukraine War ruined physics by Eleni Petrakou for The Guardian.