Funding protest hits Bulgarian research agency

摘要

Bulgarian scientists have never had much faith in their research ministry, but the outcome of this years grant competition has provoked a unprecedented storm of outrage. On 22 November, a detailed front-page report in the national newspaper SEGA presented a hair-raising list of allegations, ranging from large funding allocations to companies and foundations with no experience in scientific research, to alleged conflicts of interest involving geologist Rangel Gjurov, who chairs the executive board of the Ministry of Education and Science's Bulgarian National Science Fund (BNSF). Gjurov advocates an unproven corkscrew' theory of earthquake prediction.