We have to warn the Mexicans that climate change will lead to deadly heat strokes and that humidity is just as dangerous as heat. But we can hardly teach Alaskans or Jakartans about humidity from Mexico City. In part, the science has to be local. However, a good article in English, a lingua franca today, can be read here and in China. In part, science is universal.
Whatever neoliberal science is, its ghost haunts the young academic world. It is the evil specter of the 4T that denounces the individualism and privatization of the past. It is a myth, according to its opponents, that points to the chaos and bureaucracy of the current administration.
Prior to 2018, I remember the contempt expressed by some full-time researchers against public intellectuals who do not regularly publish in high-impact international journals. To me, some of Jose Antonio Crespo’s books seemed to me more valuable than sure Leaves in famous magazines. At that time the teachers, saturated with classes, were invited to spend our days off writing articles in English, to try to publish in international journals and to allocate our savings to pay proofreaders who knew how to distinguish British and American style.
Now 4T has turned the tables. Apparently, scholars and public thinkers can stay in SNI. General discussion issues. Teachers can support local or regional scientific journals. As a member of the editorial board of a magazine under consolidation, I know what the battle from Mexico against magazines Foreigner. In addition, Conacyt has halted public-money funding, Our Money!, investigations by fast-food companies in order to “optimize,” according to it, the chemical flavors and artificial appetite stimulants in French fries.
But the new danger is that we are going to the opposite extreme of neoliberal science. Let everything go. We have seen how dangerous it is for the authorities to be obsessed with spreading speculation about ivermectin, that it has not been validated by peers, and has not been properly disseminated. The aforementioned writings about worms distributed in the capital ended up being propaganda in the hands of anti-vaccine groups.
The debate is polarized and I receive insults from both sides every time I approach it. As social psychologist Jonathan Haidt deplores, the rhythm of social networks in the world is about fighting, not talking; This is work. But I see the differences are normal: me and what the UAM scheduler asked me for 15 years. She is what the prestigious research center asked her to do. The same goes for those who work on Mount Guerrero and on the campus of a prestigious foreign university. Our identities, shaped by the institutions in which we work, sometimes put us at seemingly opposite poles.
