bologna

European scientists should talk more about the importance of their work — to both the public and politicians — if they are to be as successful in attracting funding as their colleagues in the United States.

This was the message transmitted by some of Europe's top cell biologists at a meeting of the European Cell Biology Organization (ECBO) in Bologna earlier this week.

According to Jacopo Meldolesi, head of neurobiology at the DIBIT research institute in Milan, European scientists are traditionally reluctant to band together and lobby politicians — particularly the European parliament — about the importance of basic research.

Meldosi says this is partly because the scientific communities are fragmented along national lines. Many scientists believe that a lack of lobbying force has eroded the role of basic research in the European Union's Framework programmes of research.

Last month, for example, at a meeting organized by Euroscience, the ‘grass roots’ association of European scientists, Members of the European Parliament criticized scientists in general for a tendency towards ‘re-nationalization’, and for not getting together and lobbying alongside industry and pressure groups such as Greenpeace (see Nature 398, 646; 1999).

Kai Simons, senior scientist at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, says that political lobbying is one of the aims of the newly formed European Life Sciences Organization (ELSO). This body is intended to take over from ECBO, a federation of national societies, which has failed to attract large numbers to its annual meetings (see Nature 393, 615; 1998).

Despite its strong scientific programme, fewer than 900 scientists attended the meeting in Bologna. This is in contrast to meetings of the American Society for Cell Biology, which regularly attract 10,000 participants.

Simons hopes for up to 4,000 participants at ELSO's first meeting in Geneva next year. The organization is being modelled on the American society, he said. Its meetings will be cheap to attend, and it will also organize political lobbying, “but only if we get the mandate from members to do so”.

Peter Rigby, director of the Chester Beatty Cancer Research Institute in London, says that scientists who are funded by charities should talk not only to politicians but also to the street collectors for those charities. The latter “need to know how the money is spent — even if the concepts are hard to put across — in order to keep up their motivation”, Rigby says.