Response: Are there diplomats who defend global interests? --- Patrick,

a puzzling comment that may be worth writing a book about. I think we can distinguish between actors, in this case scientists, that have all the human properties other people also have, and this may include patriotic attitudes, a national-orientation and cultural ties to their region of origin. We can also see that due to the increasing if not almost entire dependency of modern science on third party funding from national governmental or business sources, there will be sth. like national interests. But that does not mean that the actual scientific knowledge flows across borders, by ways of communicating via publications and citations, by evaluations, and cross-border third party projects (bilateral and multilateral consortia) cannot happen at the same time. Would you agree with this?

Source author: Tim Flink tim.flink@hu-berlin.de