AT WAR AND WITHOUT WEAPONS: THE GLOBAL PANDEMIC AND THE DISMANTLING OF SCIENCES IN BRAZIL

Abstract

The community of researchers and scientific staff in Brazil has suffered restrictions of all kinds: of a political nature, with attacks on university autonomy and interference with research promotion agencies; economic, in view of the cuts and contingencies affecting the Education and Science and Technology ministries; and even ethics and morals, because of the insults given by public authorities that accuse the scientific research environments as places of “turmoil”, denying them due social relevance and in the name of an agenda of customs that imposes neo-Pentecostal fundamentalism on agendas properly scientific; all this in times of global pandemic has demonstrated the notable lack of preparation of the federal government for the adequate confrontation, in defense of the most vulnerable extracts of Brazilian society, historically removed from power structures and neglected by social rights. Due to the public's disdain for science, by the public authorities who should manage the sector, there are basically two questions: to what extent regular investment in research could contribute to the fight against Covid-19 and what motivations lead to government policies that compromise the achieving the necessary results. This work aims to analyze the correlation between science dismantling practices in Brazil and the subsequent inability to face the diverse evils that result from the world pandemic and among which the health crisis is not its only and exclusive dimension; in a specific way, we intend to diagnose the budgetary, physical and material conditions with which the public institutions in charge of these researches have worked. For this, the descriptive and exploratory model is adopted, in order to give an account of initial impressions about the problem theme, since we are still in the middle of the crisis that we intend to analyze. The investigation of public data that inform the scale of the crisis and that allow measuring the lack of resources for the development of science in Brazil, will demonstrate (so we intend) the correlation between divestments in science and the growing vulnerability of the subordinate social strata to the most harmful effects. of the pandemic