Nordic Life Science 1
PEACE // INTERVIEW When Russia annexed Crimea in
2014, collaboration between Ukrainian and Russian scientists became severed, resulting in the loss of research and scientific progress in a variety of disciplines. The conflict, for example, led to 18 universities relocating out of Luhansk and Donetsk to other parts of the country, with many researchers losing their homes and laboratories. In an article in Nature, 19 February 2022, several Ukrainian researchers say that the conflict with Russia will further hinder scientific progress, “In climate research, one needs the data from all countries, for example from the area of permafrost. If that data cannot be exchanged, significant information is lost, which is not just an issue of science, but it is an issue for climate research, and in the end will affect us all,” says Jung. T he measures taken by some science organizations to ban scientific publications with Russian colleagues is agains academic freedom, and should not be accepted, continues Jung. “It is very important, that science stays neutral and is not instrumentalized by political goals.” In the big experiments at CERN, a discussion is ongoing about how to treat Russian and Belarusian colleagues. A proposal is on the table that their affiliation will be replaced by something very general, saying they belong to an institute which cooperates with CERN, explains Jung. “It looks strange, that colleagues who worked together obtaining interesting scientific results suddenly become singled out, and for them, no affiliation is shown. This looks pretty discriminatory, and is not inline with the principals of good scientific praxis.” More actual than ever With the escalation in the war, the risk of a nuclear war or an accident in a nuclear power plant is increasing dramatically. The Science4Peace Forum has launched an appeal “No first use – never any use of nuclear weapons” with 14 Nobel Laureates as first signees. “We believe everything has to be done to stop the war now and to ban any use of nuclear weapons,” says Hannes Jung. He also says that we must re-establish all scientific contacts and cooperation if we want to prevent a climate catastrophe. “It is of enormous importance that peace initiatives, like the one against a nuclear war, are considered together with the global problem of climate change. Progress in reduction of CO2 emissions and reaching the 1.5 degree goal can only be achieved if the war is stopped and efforts are made on climate research.” Another global problem where efforts are needed is antimicrobial resistance. Bacteria does not travel with passports and the global scientific response to AMR must maintain and increase if we are to stop this “silent pandemic”. “We can perhaps re-use the contacts and personal connections that we have built up in science over the past 50 years to re-establish communication channels which are broken now. It is more important than ever to keep communication channels, where politics fails in diplomacy,” concludes Jung. NLS “Long term cooperations, which started even during the Cold War, are now put on ice. Scientists who worked in laboratories for fundamental research were sent back.” NORDIC LIFE SCIENCE 79 SCIENTIST & PEACE ACTIVIST LINUS PAULING WON the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1954 for his research into the nature of the chemical bond and its application to the elucidation of the structure of complex substances. Eight years later, in 1962, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his opposition to weapons of mass destruction. The atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were a turning point in Pauling’s life and together with other scientists he spoke and wrote against the nucelar arms race. Pauling was also a driving force in the Pugwash movement, awarded with the Peace Prize in 1995. In 1959, Pauling drafted the Hiroshima Appeal, the concluding document issued after the Fifth World Conference against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs. He was one of the prime movers who urged the nuclear powers, the USA and the Soviet Union and Great Britain to conclude a nuclear test ban treaty, which entered into force October 10th 1963. On that same day the Nobel Committee announced that Linus Pauling was the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize that has been held over from 1962.