More on brain drain

There are two reactions to the article on brain drain I featured here a while ago. One assumes the conventional wisdom position: brain drain is bad for developing countries. One praises brain drain and promotes open borders when it comes to science.

My reaction for the conventional wisdom one:

Setting just opinions aside the main argument is that causation does not equal correlation in the case of medical doctors emigrating from Africa. That is, it may be that the health system of countries that do not force their foreign-trained doctors back is good for a start, and that's the reason health professional are encouraged to stay abroad. This might make sense if you assume that in host countries the guys hiring do care about the guests' basic medical education, and assume that how well the system at home does is a signal for such basic skills. This does not sound too convincing to me, since guest students have the time to prove themselves during grad years, up to the standards of local professionals. The whole argument fails to convince me since academics grading foreign PhD applications often complain about how hard it is to compare basic education programmes from different countries. Maybe I am overlooking something?

My reaction for the praise on brain drain:

I cite:

...we should be encouraging the brain drain in. All PhD research studentships could be open equally to anyone in the world. Even those who then go back to their home country make a contribution in addition to the work they have done here: in a few years' time they start sending us their best output as PhD students or young postdocs, and the cycle repeats itself, with some of the new crop staying on

I agree with this paragraph but it does not fit the core of the discussion in my view. The point is not that the ones that go back harm the developed country at which they educated (surely they do but that is not a big issue of brain drain, compared to how poor countries are harmed). The point is that the ones that stay abroad do indeed help poor countries from the diaspora.

Then the respondent says:

If all the New Zealanders with good scientific jobs around the world tried to return to New Zealand, the country would burst!

I'd say New Zealand is not precisely a developing or underdeveloped country. This brings me to my take-home message. I think the situation is very country and context-dependent. I stick to praise brain drain when the developing nation in question has a very weak research system. Moreover, the main message is far from being "brain drain is always good" (black or white conclussion?). I believe brain drain is mostly good, but above all I'd say : education and migration policies based on conventional wisdom should be revisited on the basis of data, we have the data and the techniques so why bother speculating.