According to figures from the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), the Philadelphia-based institute that monitors scientific publishing trends, Chile produces more international papers per head of population than Argentina, and three times as many as Brazil or Mexico. Its government says that it spends 0.67 per cent of gross domestic product on research, far more than any other country in the region except Brazil, whose claimed expenditure is artificially inflated (see page A16). The main universities of Chile were not targeted for disruption by the military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, nor have they been forced by democratic governments to absorb impossible numbers of undergraduates. And according to at least one well-informed observer in the United States, Chilean neurobiologists come as close to top international standards as anyone else in Latin America.
For Chile's scientific élite in Santiago, however, the successes of the country's research base are less apparent than its failings. Perhaps it is the proximity of unfettered success — most were trained at the best research universities in Europe or the United States, and many still work with these universities — but they continue to see the cup as half empty.
