David Cyranoski and Keiko Kandachi, Tokyo The older you are, the more funding youget, according to figures released earlier thisyear by Japan’s highest science and technol-ogy body, the Council for Science and Tech-nology Policy (CSTP).

Now the CSTP has set up a committee todebate what measures, if any, should be takento redress the balance and increase financialautonomy for young researchers. It is sched-uled to report back in March.

The figures were compiled from all sevenof Japan’s grant-giving agencies for the fiscalyear 2001; the first time such a complete surveyhas been done. They reveal a marked imbal-ance, showing that 71% of the money goes toresearchers aged 45 or over, with those over50 getting more than half of all grant funding.

The issue isn’t confined to Japan: figuresreleased last year by the US National Insti-tutes of Health (NIH) revealed that principalinvestigators aged 40 and under got only16% of the 6,961 competitive research grantsthat it awarded in 2001.

For some, this pattern is out of sync withthe age at which researchers are most pro-ductive. “We need to shift more funds tothose younger people,” says Masahiko Aoki,an economist at Stanford University and aspecial adviser to the CSTP’s review commit-tee. He points to data on the CSTP’s website

that suggest that most Nobel laureates dotheir prizewinning research in their thirties.

But Japan’s bureaucrats are not convinced.An official at the education ministry says thatthanks to programmes set up five years ago,28% of the ministry’s grants for 2001 went toresearchers under 40. Even officials at thehealth ministry, where only 2.4% of lastyear’s 1,400 grants went to researchers under36, were unconcerned. The ministry’s grantsare “mission-oriented” and not intended “togive young people funds to be creative with”,says one official.

Hiroo Imura, chairman of the CSTP committee and the former president of KyotoUniversity, sees the real issue as whether asmall, established group of older scientists

gets too much funding. “We think it’s impor-tant to avoid giving several governmentgrants to a handful of researchers,” he says.

Immunologist Kimishige Ishizaka, who isanother adviser on the CSTP committee andwas formerly at the La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology in California,blames both universities and funding agen-cies for this effect. Neither steps in to ensurethat researchers are not overextending them-selves or duplicating research, he says.

But like Aoki, Ishizaka thinks that the realproblem is that young researchers cannot beindependent, and he blames Japan’s briefapplication forms, which usually describe aresearch plan in just two pages. “You can’t tellwhat’s unique or how the proposed projectcompares to others,” he says. “It’s impossibleto evaluate on this basis.” So decisions arebased mainly on past records, which favoursolder researchers, Ishizaka explains.

Although figures show that Japaneseunder 40 are relatively successful at gettinggrants (27% compared with the NIH’s16.3%), the average grants are only 33–50%as large as those received by their older col-leagues. Ishizaka says that Japan should breakdown some of its larger projects and spreadout the money because the grants awarded toyoung researchers are often too small to sup-port truly independent research. ■

news

680 NATURE | VOL 421 | 13 FEBRUARY 2003 | www.nature.com/nature

Hints of age bias spur calls for grant reforms

Civil war leaves Ivory Coast research in tattersMarieke Degen, Munich The civil war raging in the Ivory Coast iscounting scientific research among its manyvictims. Fighting and looting in what wasone of Africa’s wealthier nations have leftinternational projects on health, agricultureand the environment in disarray.

When conflict between rebel andgovernment troops erupted five months ago,foreign researchers working in disputedregions had to leave their scientific stationsfor their own safety. For some, the work thatthey left behind may never be recovered.

Last September, a team led by EduardLinsenmair, an ecologist at the University ofWürzburg, Germany, had to abandon itsbiodiversity studies in the Comoé NationalPark. The group has since heard thatgovernment troops have impounded theresearch station’s cars and motorcycles.

“We learned that all of the buildings havebeen broken into and looted,” Linsenmairsays. Some of his projects will now berelocated to Benin, Burkina Faso and Ghana,but a lot of the data have been lost, he says.

Others have been a little more fortunate.In September, when rebels took over Bouaké,

the Ivory Coast’s second largest city, the 30international researchers at the West AfricaRice Development Association (WARDA)were evacuated. They left behind one ofAfrica’s most important rice gene banks. Butsome of the team returned on 17 Decemberand recovered some 6,000 samples of recentlydeveloped rice varieties, says WARDA’sdirector, Kanayo Nwanze. The association isnow moving some of its operations to Mali.

Yasmin Möbius and Tobias Deschner fromthe Max Planck Institute for EvolutionaryAnthropology in Leipzig also returned totheir project in December. But they foundthat irreversible damage had been done.

Möbius and Deschner had been studyingchimpanzee behaviour in the Taï NationalPark. Because the chimps are used to humans,they are easy prey for poachers. Soon after theresearchers left the station in September, threefemale and three young chimps, includingrare twins, were killed for food.

“We returned voluntarily,” says Möbius.“It was important for us to ward off furtherattacks on the animals.”

The situation in the national park stayedcalm until 3 January, when fighting broke out

near the Liberian border. The researchersreturned to Abidjan, but left for Germanyafter fighting in the capital intensified.

A peace plan to end the war was discussedin Paris on 24 January, but has been rejectedby supporters of President Laurent Gbagbo.“The war is a catastrophe,” says Linsenmair.“All we can do is wait and hope it will end.” ■

Uneven: grant funding in Japan by age for 2001.

010,000

20,000

30,000

40,000

50,000

60,000

>70

60–6

9

55–5

9

50–5

4

45–4

9

40–4

4

35–3

9

30–3

4

<30

¥ million

SOU

RC

E: C

STP

© 2003 Nature Publishing Group