SCIENCE AND INNOVATION
A mistake that spreads today is the belief that the product of science is invention, or technological innovation. In this sense, the idea is being promoted that, to get out of the doldrums, we must invent and innovate more, like what happens in Korea. Behind this statement is the illusion that the export of products with greater added technological value will be able to pay the enormous social debt that the country has had with the marginalized population for centuries. However, a quick browse on the Internet with the keyword “patents” indicates that there are countries, such as the Nordic countries, for example, whose high level of well-being and development has little to do with the number of patents they register annually.
There are peripheral countries, including in Latin America, with a much less perverse social structure than ours, which do not have a postgraduate and research system as sophisticated as Brazil's. In other words, social inequality and the abandonment of the less favored classes in Brazil are not a direct consequence of the lack of investment in laboratories or the delay in training researchers. A quick analysis of the nature of the serious structural problems that currently afflict Brazilian society indicates that they do not require cutting-edge science for their solution.
The science and technology we currently have could, in a less perverse social context, deal with most of these basic problems satisfactorily.
However, Brazil cannot stop doing research. Furthermore, it cannot fail to increase its research capacity, given the challenges of the contemporary world. It is worth reflecting here on the importance of research in the Brazilian context. It is clear that the question “what type of research?” deserves to be widely debated.
Research will be essential to face the problems that the 21st century presents to us in all fields. Even in the area of Health, where a large part of the current problems of the Brazilian population would be solved with sanitation, nutrition and common sense, the new century challenges us with the “new dramas” of emerging diseases, opportunistic germs resistant to drugs, degenerative problems of the growing elderly population and the multiple implications of gene therapy. It would be suicide for the country to condemn itself to a position of ignorant customer in relation to new science and technology, as ignorant customers pay more, buy poorly and receive poor service.
The situation is even more pressing in the field of human sciences. The tremendous social problems we face require not only political will and economic change, but also an understanding of the circumstances and factors behind them. Looking at reality in an objective and scientific way is a necessary condition, but not sufficient. Simplistic pseudo-solutions only perpetuate frustration and discouragement.
A country that has science, not measured by the fraction of GDP that invests in scientific paraphernalia, but in the sense described above, is a country that knows and can. It is able to anticipate problems, as it knows more about itself than other countries, which is characteristic of overcoming underdevelopment. Therefore, they are better equipped to find solutions that allow them to overcome difficulties of an economic, technological or social nature.
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