Making the case for independent science

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s 16-year rule ended in the spring, when voters replaced him with Péter Magyar, who has pledged to undo Orbán-led initiatives that in the eyes of critics isolated and politicized science.

Albert-László Barabási, a lecturer at Harvard Medical School and distinguished university professor at Northeastern University, is a graduate of Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest and a visiting professor at the Central European University in Vienna. He recently penned an op-ed in the journal Science laying out a blueprint for how Magyar might proceed.

We spoke to Barabási about his proposals for Hungary and how politics can undermine research. The interview has been edited for clarity and length.

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Gazette: What happened to Hungarian science during the Orbán administration?

Albert-László Barabási: Hungary has a particular pride in science and in how many intellectuals the country produces, particularly how many Nobel Prize winners, which is close to a dozen. That includes two in 2023, one in physics and one in medicine, and last year’s literature winner.

The Orbán regime politicized science. Research institutions and national labs had traditionally been under the direction of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. About seven years ago, the government removed these institutions from the academy, saying they wanted to reorganize them to be more competitive. Virtually all scientists, including all members of the academy, were against the change, but it did not matter.

To their credit, the government attracted a well-respected academic back from Singapore to run the new institutions, and increased funding. They increased both salaries and the resources going to research projects, but they never managed to address the psychological break that resulted from stripping away academic control.

It did not end there. The Orbán government started a system that, on one hand, you could view as a positive. But on the other, the execution was politicized. They wanted to bring the Hungarian universities up to an international level and concluded, rightly, that the universities need new funding and independence. So, they created foundations that effectively made them into organizations that are independent of the government and then donated state properties — shares of major companies, land — into those foundations to secure the resources to expand and function.

In principle, this makes lots of sense. In practice, the boards were stacked with political appointees, so they were not independent. As a result, the EU protested and locked out these universities from the Erasmus program, which supports education, as well as from the European funding system. The few universities that did not undergo this transformation remained within the EU system, but, deprived of new funds, became deeply impoverished.

What was the impact on the quality of the country’s science?

Science is a collaborative enterprise, so no matter where you are in your career, undergraduate, Ph.D. student, postdoc, even faculty, you need to be able to collaborate and learn from international colleagues. The EU has created a framework for that, and Hungary had been successful at taking advantage of it. That framework was artificially cut — students couldn’t travel, faculty couldn’t collaborate — and the consequences will probably be seen decades from now, in lost collaborations, diminished impact, and productivity.

You outlined several steps that Hungary’s new leaders should take. First is re-establishing trust. What do you mean by that?

The Orbán regime lost trust by packing the university boards in a way that wasn’t transparent, and by removing the control of the research institutions from the academy. There is a need for a reset — and it is already happening. While the outcomes are uncertain, the direction is good. In my mind, the question is, will the universities retain independence and get the funds they need to thrive? That we can probably only assess later.

Another recommendation is to make reforms durable.

The independence of the research network is technically already in place and guaranteed by law. The question is whether the new government agrees with that setup or whether they’ll seek an alternative. It doesn’t really matter in my mind whether it’s controlled by the academy or by the government or whether it’s set up as an independent body. What matters is the independence of the researchers and the decision makers who fund the research.

Have the decision-making structures in the U.S. been damaged in a similar way, in your view?

We have seen evidence of the decisions of the scientific body being overturned by political appointees, both in the U.S. and in Hungary before the elections. Who gets funded or who does not get funded is no longer a decision left to the research community alone. When I talk about independence in the U.S., I mean restoring a system that for decades had no political interference. All that matters is if my research is of sufficient quality, not whether it is politically acceptable.

Hungary seems to be on the road to de-politicizing its science. How long is this road?

You could say six months: Put the laws in place, secure the necessary funding, and let it go. But the government has many other issues to deal with. There are issues with the healthcare system, the educational system, and outdated transportation. So how do you assign priorities? I was in Budapest in May at the National Academy meeting, and the new prime minister came and addressed the membership. He said that he intends to increase funding to the European norm, which requires allotting another 1 percent of GDP to innovation and science. If he lives up to those words, Hungary could open another golden era in science.