Nobel laureate Giorgio Parisi: “Politicians drive at night in the dark. Science is the light of a beacon”

“The political class is like a driver who has to drive a car through a very dangerous road at night. And the science is the headlights.” To hope that the next government does not travel with the lights off is Professor Giorgio Parisi, one of the six Nobel laureates who participated in the Festival of Health this year. A few hours after the oath of the new government, the Roman physicist, known all over the world for his research on complex systems, defines himself as “optimistic, even if it is always good to hope for the best and prepare for the worst, to avoid being thrown off guard”.

With unsuccessful funds, no guarantee for research

Interviewed by Luca Fraioli, Parisi said he will not miss an opportunity to meet the new minister Anna Maria Bernini to talk about research funds. “Potatoes and onions cannot be grown by watering the plants every other year. And the same goes for research: with the funds that arrive in fits and starts and without long-term planning, there are no guarantees for the our researchers and this certainly makes Italy unattractive and fuels the brain drain abroad “. The National Recovery and Resilience Plan will be a real breath of fresh air, but “we need to launch a five-year plan worth 10 billion that will bring Italian scientific research steadily, even after the end of the NRP, to funding levels comparable to those of France” .

A long-term plan for areas outside the NRP

The former minister Maria Cristina Messa had already been presented “the document produced by Luigi Ambrosio, Ugo Amaldi, Luciano Maiani and Angela Santoni which discusses in detail the amount of funding needed for the future of research and how to use them. The PNRR will bring new lymph to research, but as colleagues have analyzed, there is a serious risk that at the end of those funds everyone will collapse again. A long-term plan is therefore necessary that immediately begins to sprinkle those areas of research that the PNRR does not touch. and then continue with systematic financing. The calculation provides for an investment of 10 billion over five years, which is very little “. The proposal proposes to stabilize public spending for research and development at at least 0.7% of GDP: “We are not asking to go to the moon – Parisi underlines – but there is an urgent reasoning already on the next budget, which will have to be presented. race”.

Research and education ministries separated

After the fall of the Draghi government, the Nobel laureate appealed to Mattarella to ask the future Prime Minister to keep the Research and Education Departments separate. And so it was. “I think it’s a very good thing. I started my attendance in the ministries at the time of the Berlinguer Reform and I was able to touch firsthand that a single minister would not have been the right choice since he risks being swallowed only by the school sector. “. He also said he was in favor of a political and non-technical minister because “his main task is to obtain funds, and a politician can carry more weight than a technical one”. But he found the creation of scientific committees fundamental, such as the one for the environment proposed in Mattarella as part of the petition “A vote for the climate” launched by the Gedi group.

I hope the new government will be able to listen to science

“It is essential that institutions as well as individual politicians listen to what science has to say. Ad hoc committees can be set up or that prestigious institutions that already exist, such as the Accademia dei Lincei, can be contacted.” But science and sovereign politics do not always go hand in hand. “Love for the homeland and for science can go very well together – he concludes -, but this does not always happen due to previous ideological prejudices. I am confident that the new government can move in the right direction, and this will only happen if it knows how to listen. the scientists”.