American Scientist

Britain’s recent passage of a referendum to break away from the European Union (E.U.) was a worrisome surprise. The outcome, known as Brexit, has triggered a series of political events that will reshape the face of science.

Modern research is a global endeavor relying on international partnerships to maintain a network of discovery. All of the latest major scientific breakthroughs—from the development of CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing technology to proof of the existence of gravitational waves—have resulted from broad international alliances. Britain has historically been a leader of this community, elevating concerns about Brexit’s effects.

In 2012, Digital Science, a sister company to Nature Publishing Group, ranked the United Kingdom among the top five nations in its Global Science Scorecard, which measures the influence of each nation’s basic research investments. Annually, the equivalent of $1 billion of Britain’s scientific productivity has been paid for by European funding programs.

These resources will be called into question in coming months as British organizations renegotiate their contracts after Brexit. Although the newly elected British leadership has attempted to delay the process, E.U. officials are calling for an immediate separation, and British academics are already being asked to withdraw from E.U.-funded projects or to resign from leadership roles. In the absence of creative solutions, British scientists will likely experience a growing sense of isolation.

The scientific community has dealt with isolationism in the past. From the decline of scientific thought in Islamic cultures starting as early as the 13th century to Russian Lysenkoism of the 1940s, scientific isolationism has repeatedly emerged, usually resulting in devastating outcomes for the isolationists. Fortunately, our unquenchable thirst for knowledge compensates for these withdrawals by stimulating the proliferation of hotbeds of innovation elsewhere.

In this issue, Daniel Silver recounts, in “Mathematical Induction and the Nature of British Miracles,” the story of a group of ambitious Cambridge students who resisted a wave of English intellectual isolationism during the early 19th century. Silver explains how the Analytical Society, as the group became known, challenged the nationalistic movement to ignore mathematical developments emerging from continental Europe. The leaders of the organization, which included notable scholars Charles Babbage, John Herschel, William Whewell, and George Peacock, recognized that good ideas transcend borders, real or imagined, and that collaboration, not seclusion, is key to scientific advancement. Their efforts ultimately strengthened the principle of mathematical induction, providing rigor to a foundational paradigm of math and science.

Scientific interdependence allows for transnational efforts and institutions to do such things as monitor and respond to infectious diseases, as Robert Dorit explains in “Zika Goes Viral,” calling for ongoing support beyond the newly emergent Zika epidemic; to understand and respond to the problem of invasive flatworms threatening native species, as Ronald Sluys describes in “Invasion of the Flatworms”; and to preserve crop genetic diversity from accidental loss or regional crises, as Cary Fowler reveals in “Seeds on Ice,” offering a glimpse inside the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. International cooperation also accelerates the transfer of knowledge, ideas, and experiences between generations of scientists, as Brian Malow details in the Spotlight section in “Dispatches from Lindau,” where he shares his observations from the annual Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting.

The inherent connectivity of modern science underscores the challenges that are emerging from the Brexit decision. Although science in Britain could seriously suffer, we’ve learned from past experience that the world will adapt and move forward.