Abstract

On the 13th of February 2001 about 1.500 Italian scientists went to Rome to manifestate their disappointment for drastic cutting in funding for biological research. The "protest of Italian scientists" was a successfull event, and the media devoted front page attention for a couple of days. In the paper I show that, paradoxically, the protest's success shows how deep in Italy the crisis of scientific research is. Commenting on professor Viano's paper, I hold that Italian scientists have been compact in protesting because they wanted to react to a general cultural "milieau" which is hostile to science and scientific research, especially when devoted to the biological field. This "milieau" is the consequence of various trends, which are deeply rooted in Italian culture: Catholic thinking, branches of Green perspectives which are nowadays politically relevant, and some trends of continental philosophy which are traditionally critical towards technical advancements. My conclusion is that given such premises there are serious doubts for the future of Italian research in biology.