JUNE 1 — We now live in a golden age of discovery — CRISPR, quantum leaps, climate modelling, and AI that writes its own rules. Yet, global science is quietly fracturing. It is a fragmented state. The very collaboration that gave us Covid-19 vaccines in record time is now under siege by three corrosive forces: geopolitical mistrust, predatory publishing, and a funding system that rewards speed over substance.
First, the post-Cold War ideal of science as a neutral, borderless pursuit is dead. Sanctions, visa bans, and national security reviews are turning labs into fortresses. US-China research collaborations — once the engine of materials science and genomics — have plummeted. When we weaponise knowledge, we all lose. The next pandemic won't announce its nationality before striking. It will come as a big surprise.
Second, the publish-or-perish machine has metastasised into dysfunction. Researchers spend months wrangling with paywalled journals, while predatory publishers flood the zone with unvetted papers. The result? A reproducibility crisis that leaves us unsure which findings are real and which are statistical noise. We’re producing more papers than ever, yet genuine breakthroughs feel rarer. Unhealthy for science.
Third, the funding gap. Global North institutions hoard resources like medieval times. A lab in Nairobi or Manila can produce world-class data on infectious diseases — but without access to expensive reagents, high-impact journals, or simply stable electricity, their voices are muted. Meanwhile, prestigious grants favour safe, incremental work over the high-risk, high-reward ideas that actually move fields forward.
We designed this system for scarcity, but we live in an age of abundance. We have the tools — open-access platforms, preprint servers, distributed research networks — to democratise science. What we lack is the political will to break old habits. National academies still reward secrecy over sharing. And governments still treat research as a competitive sport rather than a global public good.
Science has always advanced through collaboration, not isolation. Our current challenges are human-made, and human can unmade them. We celebrated the rapid development of Covid-19 vaccines as a triumph of global collaboration. The core problem is simple but brutal: what is good for a scientist’s career — secretive research, flashy papers, competitive hoarding — is often terrible for science itself. Fixing this requires rebuilding our incentives and governance from the ground up.
But incentives alone are not enough. We have created a world where authors pay exorbitant fees, readers face paywalls, and predatory journals flood the zone with unvetted trash. The next pandemic will not announce its nationality before striking. We need a Science Shield Visa, established through Unesco: a rapid-response research visa for any scientist from a sanctioned or politically tense nation, allowing them to work from neutral hubs like Switzerland or Rwanda. Decouple science from trade diplomacy. Let climate and health data flow even when trade talks freeze.
Finally, we must address the North-South funding chasm. Here is a concrete fix: require that any large international grant — say, above US$5 million — allocate 20 per cent of its budget to equipment nodes in lower-income countries. Embrace shared protocols, remote training, and genuine partnership. Not charity, but capacity building.
None of this will work, however, if scientists themselves cling to the old prestige economy. A Nature paper still opens doors. An open dataset does not. So, the final reform is cultural: every senior scientist must mentor junior colleagues to value transparency over flash and replication over novelty. When a postdoc says, “I want to check that famous result from 2018,” the response should be “That is a career move”, not “That is a waste of time”.
The challenges are systemic. But the solutions are, too. We have built global science before — from the ashes of World War II, with the founding of CERN, the WHO, and the international geophysical year. We can rebuild it again. The only question is whether we start before the next crisis, or after. Let’s stop building walls. Let’s start building bridges. The next breakthrough is sitting in a forgotten dataset in São Paulo or a rejected grant proposal from Karachi. A discovery hoarded is a discovery wasted. Open the gates.
* Professor Datuk Dr Ahmad Ibrahim is affiliated with the Tan Sri Omar Centre for STI Policy Studies at UCSI University and is an Adjunct Professor at the Ungku Aziz Centre for Development Studies, Universiti Malaya.
** This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.
