CHALLENGES AND HOPES

AfrAbian neuroscientists nowadays do not contribute to neuroscience filed however it is unfair to belam them for this regression. When you ask any neuroscientist in the AfrAbia for scientific research, you are really asking an infant to participate in a marathon race!!!  It is very unfair for us to hold the neuroscientists responsible for greater than their size and for reasons related to the failure of the educational and research system. In America, for instance, there are more than four thousand universities, but the number of universities that publish scientific research does not exceed 800 universities, and therefore more than three thousand universities that issue bachelor’s degrees only and do not issue postgraduate degrees or scientific research. Do you know the reason?  The reason is that these universities do not have the foundations and the infrastructure with which they can demand the teaching members to conduct scientific research and publish scientific papers. If we compare with the AfrAbia world, we find that in most AfrAbia countries the best universities do not possess the capabilities and infrastructure mainly for scientific research and are like American universities that cannot Publish scientific research.

AfrAbian neuroscientists like other scientists in the world, are facing many challenges specially in the infrastructure for scientific research:

1. Researcher salaries:

Unfortunately, most neuroscientists in the AfrAbia world receive shameful salaries, the cost of living is not sufficient for one person, live alone, how about a neuroscientist who has a family and children. In American universities famous for publishing scientific research, researchers and teaching members receive high salaries and are considered among the highest salaries in society, and they have Plenty of benefits related to health, education for their children, and government facilities.

1. Large size of teaching on the neuroscience faculty:

If the professor in AfrAbian universities is forced to teach two or three courses per semester, how do you expect him/her to have time to follow up international research, conduct research and supervise postgraduate students?  In America, most of the senior researchers do not teach more than one course per year, in addition to that they do not conduct research with their own hands, but their administrative work is mainly related to obtaining financial support for research and indirect supervision of graduate students.

1. Number of postgraduate students:

In the AfrAbia world, the number of students who do scientific research is very small. The professor can hardly find a single student to work with him/her to conduct research and write scientific articles, and thus the professor is forced to work himself: herself in the laboratory, and this is certainly very difficult with a large teaching volume for the professor. On the other hand, in research universities in America, the professor does not work himself: herself in the laboratory and does not enter the laboratory in the first place, and has ten, twenty or even thirty postgraduate researchers, and Postdoc work in the laboratory to conduct research with the results and write the scientific papers themselves. You can imagine the difference in the amount of results that reach a professor in America compared to the results that reach a professor in the Arab world.

1. Physical and moral stimulation:

In the AfrAbia world, there is no material motivation for a neuroscientist to do scientific research, but on the contrary, that neuroscientist will do a special effort without any compensation and will get the same salary as other researcher who laughs and plays and does not do any scientific research. In return, in America the professor who publishes scientific research gets great privileges, such as a much higher salary, a larger number of laboratories, a larger number of students, as well as awards from the same university, government awards, and awards from various American companies (there are thousands of governments and private sector scientific awards that are given to researchers every year in America).

1. Availability of technical and technological capabilities:

American research universities contain enormous technical capabilities (hundreds of millions of dollars) so that in most cases the researcher does not need to send samples here and there to reach a specific device, but rather there are hundreds or thousands of devices in the same university for research, and there are many available technicians who are ready to help. Specialists work on these devices and their management and maintenance as well so that any device is maintained, and its problem treated directly without waiting for a long time. while in the Arab world the researcher begs here and there until reaches a specific device that is often outside the university, and in most cases the researcher does not find dozens of devices he/she needs.  In the university and outside the university, and even if the device is found inside the university, in many cases there is a problem with the device and it has not been well maintained, and the researcher must wait many years to be able to analyze samples or obtain results.

1. Quickly obtaining chemicals:

In American research universities, the researcher gets the materials he/she needs within a day or two, and if it is too late, it will arrive within a week, no matter how high the price, while in the AfrAbia world the researcher waits for months or years until the arrival of chemicals. I remember exactly when I was studying for a master in Menoufia medical school in Egypt, we have been waiting for more than eight months for the chemicals we requested to arrive (even if they are cheap).

1. Financial support for research:

In America, there are many financial supports that are available for finding the research.  There are thousands of government grants that go to universities (amounting to more than fifty billion dollars annually) and thousands of grants that come from American companies (financial support from companies to universities in America is estimated at more than 20 billion  Dollars per year) all go to faculty members in order to hire PhD students and Postdoc and conduct scientific research, and therefore in America most of the financial support for scientific research come from outside the university and not from the university itself. You can imagine the situation in the Arab world, where neither government supports nor support from the private sector. The private support is ridiculous and funny from the universities themselves, from where does the researcher get the money needed to conduct research? Furthermore, in America, most of the sources of support for scientific research come from the government and the private sector, and there is a great integration between these sectors and universities so that research is developed that will directly support the economy and industry in the country. While in the AfrAbia world there is a complete break between these three sectors, and each of them works completely in isolation from the other, and therefore most of the time the fields of research in universities are ridiculous and unimportant fields whose results do not constitute any benefit to the state and society.

1. Bodies that help establish, support and develop startups:

In America, every university contains a specialized body that helps the researcher to protect property rights and establish start-up companies if he/she has financially useful research results, in addition to the presence of several governmental agencies that help researchers in all of America providing the possibilities for establishing start-up companies, and the presence of thousands of businessmen and institutions. The private sector that provides grants and huge financial support to researchers who want to establish start-up companies based on their research results, and thus more than a hundred thousand start-up companies are established annually based on scientific research results from universities in America. So where is all this in the AfrAbia world? Do we have bodies in universities or outside the universities that help the researcher and provide financial, legal, and logistical support so that the results of our research are transformed into material benefit? Moreover, in America, the state reduces taxes on companies that support universities and support academic scientific research to motivate them to support universities, while in the AfrAbia world there is no government encouragement for the private sector to contribute to the support of scientific research.

With all these problems in the AfrAbia world, how we ask researchers specially neuroscientists to publish annually research papers in journals with high impact factor?  The infrastructure for scientific research in the Arab world is zero or below zero! Therefore, there is a need for non-profit organization like AfrAbia Society to encourage fund raising and collaboration between neuroscientists in AfrAbia.