The Covid-19 pandemic has only further exposed how weak our country’s science and technology infrastructure and human resource pool is.

It has been over a year since the pandemic reached our shores and claimed the first casualty outside the Chinese mainland from which it originated and first claimed human lives but to this day, we are still merely waiting for vaccines to arrive from other countries who have sufficient means and talents to develop and produce said vaccines.

In fact, when the number of Covid infection cases in our country rose in 2020, we even had difficulty for just procuring the technology and supplies needed for mass testing or Covid case detection.

Government, even armed with its newly minted Universal Health Care Act of 2019 that supposedly broadens access to health care, services, equipment and supplies, simply didn’t have or did not appropriate sufficient resources, and especially, the talent pool needed locally to face the threat of such a pandemic. This reminds me of a joke that I Have been sharing to lighten my lectures in my social science classes since the mid-1990s. In those classroom lectures on the particular matter of Philippine science and technology and governance in, I have been pointing out that while he US, for instance, has its NASA, we Filipinos only have the pagnanasa.

Allow me here to underscore some basic situational concerns on the science sector to clarify issues which are really now not a matter to merely joke about anymore.

As an alumni of a science high school based in Manila and now a social science faculty in a state university, I have long been sensitized to and concerned about our nation’s efforts in the sciences, both in the natural and social sciences.

For instance, I am a personal witness to how we have lost and continue to lose our best young scientific minds to the irresistible pull of opportunities for further studies and work opportunities in foreign soil. This so-called “brain drain”, which first became most palpable under the Marcos years has been happening for decades because our government simply has failed to create the nurturing conditions for science and technology practitioners to stay and flourish in the country.

Quite Recently, in fact, in a Senate hearing sponsored by the Senate Committee on Science, Senator Bam Aquino reportedly highlighted the fact that the Philippines lacked at least 19,0000 scientists to realize and advance its national agenda on science for national development.

At least, The DOST is very much aware of this issue. In fact, that said Senate hearing was held precisely to push legislative action on improving the DOST’s Balik-Scientist Program or BSP), a policy tool and legacy from the Marcos era. The BSP is aimed at attracting Filipino scientists who are based abroad to come back home even for a while and serve in the country to help push and promote our national innovation, research and development agenda.

Now, from Where did the Senate hearing pull that 19,000 figure? I reckon that is an estimate based on a 2015 report from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) Institute for Statistics, which shows that among 157 countries, Israel has the biggest number of scientists per million population at 8,300. In Asia, South Korea is at the top in S&T with 6,900 scientists per million as of 2015.

Meanwhile, Singapore and Malaysia each have 6,700 and 2,100, respectively. They are the top two countries in Southeast Asia in terms of the number of scientists. For national growth, UNESCO has particularly recommended that a country should have the ideal ratio of 380 scientists/million population. As of that Senate hearing just a couple of years back, the country reportedly only had a ratio of 180 scientists/million Filipinos given that we have a population of about 110 million.

Do the math and we get a number of around 50,000 more scientists needed by this country and not just 19,000. Whatever the correct and real number needed is, clearly we need scientists more than Tiktok dancers reigning online or e-agnotologists in this country passing themselves of as woke vloggers (read:propagandissts).

But what do we mean exactly by “scientists here? In the simplest of terms, a scientist is one who is trained in and engages in systematic knowledge creation or claiming and dissemination. This would then include those either in the natural and social sciences.

To qualify further, the term would clearly refer especially to those with academic or college degrees and are involved in professional education and research work. More pointedly, those with PhD’s or MAs and MS degrees and are doing research and publication would clearly qualify.

To be even more selective and distinguished, scientists may be those who are referred to as academicians or are members of the National Science and Technology Academy, an exclusive professional organization comprised currently of only 101 Filipino Academics.

In this very elite group of learned Filipinos, most are in the natural sciences or STEM disciplines.

Unfortunately, in our country, to be a scientist, especialy a social scientist, is not a very fashionable calling. We need to encourage more of our young to go into the sciences. Obviosly today, among our so-called millennials and GenZ-ers, it is more attractive to be e-sports enthusiasts or online gamers or vloggers than to be scientists.

This must change. Pardon the pun, but to borrow and paraphrase an old Marcos regime slogan from the 70s, sa ikauundlad ng Bayan, Talino at Husay ang kailangan: “Mga kabataan, magpakahusay sa agham at maglingkod sa bayan.”

We need 19,0000 peculiarly intelligent Filinos, preferably with a heart to serve and help save the nation. As my Science High School’s slogan puts it: Agham Katotohanan, Bayan! Paglimian.