I’m going to link to one of my favorite online comic strips today, but for a serious reason: Piled Higher and Deeper (PhD), a tongue-in-cheek look at the life of a science graduate student, has detailed the author’s detention by British authorities as he was trying to get into that country on a lecture tour. Here’s the first of the three installments.

This tale doesn’t fall into any of the predictable stereotypes: The artist is a white male with no criminal record who was detained by immigration officials after leaving the U.S., not while trying to get in. But some of it is predictable: He wasn’t told why he was stopped nor why he was let in. It was a random irritant in the name of “security” - so don’t ask questions.

The third installment of the comic says he has heard from lots of research schools that this happens all the time, particularly if the lecturer/grad student isn’t a white guy - and that it is beginning to stifle some cross-border research.

I’ve always thought that one of the best things of science is the way it comes closer than any human practice to the dream of all people working together for a common goal. There are plenty of tales of scientists helping each other even when their respective countries were at war. It’s a shame if the world’s post-9/11 paranoia is harming this.

Tags: research