Sir

We question the comparison made in your News Feature “¿Vive la revolución?” (Nature 436, 322–324; 2005) between Cuban government-funded science and a corporate research programme using a top-down approach that focuses on applied science at the expense of basic research.

Reality contradicts the common view that science is undemocratic in Cuba — and that it is democratic in the United States.

In our experience as collaborators with Cuban scientists, science issues are first raised in local communities, then discussed at local research institutes and universities, then passed to higher levels of national ministries and the Congress, and there winnowed and prioritized. This is an up-and-down system that offers individual citizens a high level of engagement with decision-making processes for scientific research.

Neither have we found basic research to be neglected. For instance, there is work in underwater archaeology, palaeontology, plant and animal geography and many other topics. Indeed, Cuba probably has a better record in funding basic research than most other Latin American countries.

Both publicly and privately funded research in the United States and Europe, on the other hand, is often determined by corporate or political interests. Much research in the public interest withers for lack of resources, in favour of projects that will lead to patents and profits. Increasingly in the United States, the results of scientific research are also distorted or ignored by federal policy-makers if the science is inconsistent with the prevailing political agenda.

We should be more thoughtful about the Cuban system and our own.

Other signatories of this letter: John Vandermeer Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Michigan Gerald Smith Museum of Zoology, University of Michigan Richard Levins Harvard School of Public Health