‘Scienticide’ in Argentina sparks huge protest by researchers

Hundreds of activists wearing gas masks took to the streets to call out their government for slashing science funding

More than 1,000 scientists took to the streets yesterday in Buenos Aires and other cities in Argentina wearing gas masks like those in the Argentine Netflix series ‘The Eternaut’. Playing on the post-apocalyptic television show’s theme — that oppression can be overcome by unity — they protested the collapse of science, or ‘scienticide’ in the country, which they say was initiated by the administration of President Javier Milei.

Since Milei took office in late 2023, he has made massive cuts to government spending, in part to reduce the country’s deficit and bring down inflation. As a consequence, many scientific activities in Argentina have ground to a halt for lack of payment, about 1,300 employees in the science sector have been laid off and researchers have left for jobs abroad owing to low salaries.

Research funding has completely stopped, Fernando Stefani, a physicist at the University of Buenos Aires who marched at the protest, told Nature. “It hasn’t been fulfilled in any way — zero,” even for research contracts that had already been approved and were in progress, he said. The National Agency for the Promotion of Research, Technological Development and Innovation, which is the main funder of research projects in Argentina, hasn’t made any calls for new projects since late 2023 either.

Argentina’s main science agency, the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), which funds about 280 research institutes across the country and employs most of its scientists, has been paying salaries and not much more, sources say. Some researchers who spoke to Nature aren’t sure whether they will be able to feed laboratory animals in the coming weeks. And even though salaries are being paid, they have dropped by about 40% since Milei took office. “The salaries of younger researchers are on the verge of poverty levels, and those of older researchers are not enough for a decent life,” Stefani said.

Although Milei’s actions have brought year-on-year inflation down to its lowest level in three years, the prices of food and goods have risen. And government spending cuts have left people without many basic services. “The research system is simply being allowed to be destroyed through inaction and underfunding,” Stefani said.

A protester on a subway platform holds a sign that says “Without science there is no future”.Credit: RAICYT

Milei promised to shut down CONICET entirely during his presidential campaign, but he hasn’t done it so far (he has expressed animosity towards scientists, suggesting that they are freeloading off the government). Still, “it’s like death by starvation”, Lidia Szczupak, a neuroscientist at the University of Buenos Aires’s CONICET-funded Institute of Physiology, Molecular Biology and Neurosciences who also marched yesterday, told Nature. “Our salary is very poor — we are carrying on for the love” of science, she added.

CONICET did not respond to Nature’s request for comment by the time this story published.