Comrade Talal, a brilliant scientist at a major US medical school, wrote me this: (I cite with his permission): "(BTW I was aware of the phenomenon, which really took flight with the opening of
KAUST. A colleague in the same area as mine opened a lab at KAUST. The material
rewards, I understand, are far more substantial than the miserly $72K mentioned
in the Science report).
While the scientific enterprise is the product of human labor, and of course can be commodified, it remains a fact that you cannot buy scientific prestige the way you buy a car or a piece of equipment. Ideally, you have to grow it indigenously, or short of that, you have to support it with a native infrastructure that is able to internalize whatever excellence one imports. In a larger context, a Saudi culture that is not fundamentally knowledge-oriented cannot develop world class universities, period. This is a culture that only this year put a Lebanese man on trial for witchcraft. They can import expertise, they can export Saudi trainees who may turn into world-class investigators, but they cannot develop cutting-edge universities in the absence of other societal institutions that enable the function of such universities. As we both know, the Saudi universities in question are more like bubbles that are insulated from the surrounding culture, and vice versa. Even as a trickle down, such investment is of questionable value."
While the scientific enterprise is the product of human labor, and of course can be commodified, it remains a fact that you cannot buy scientific prestige the way you buy a car or a piece of equipment. Ideally, you have to grow it indigenously, or short of that, you have to support it with a native infrastructure that is able to internalize whatever excellence one imports. In a larger context, a Saudi culture that is not fundamentally knowledge-oriented cannot develop world class universities, period. This is a culture that only this year put a Lebanese man on trial for witchcraft. They can import expertise, they can export Saudi trainees who may turn into world-class investigators, but they cannot develop cutting-edge universities in the absence of other societal institutions that enable the function of such universities. As we both know, the Saudi universities in question are more like bubbles that are insulated from the surrounding culture, and vice versa. Even as a trickle down, such investment is of questionable value."
