What has happened to the community of physicists in Cuba (Physics Today, September 2006, page 42) is a good example of how scientific research and the lives of scientists can be manipulated by authoritarian and inept politicians.
The article shows very clearly how Ernesto “Che” Guevara, Fidel Castro, and a few others without any scientific background have determined the direction of physics research in the country. After so many years of arbitrary political decisions, as the article says, “an estimated 200 physicists left the country, and an undetermined number sought better economic conditions in fields other than science.”
The same politicians have dictated the economic, financial, industrial, journalistic, artistic, and literary lives of Cubans. As a consequence, censorship, prohibitions, and repression have dominated Cuban political, economic, and cultural life during the past 47 years. It’s difficult and demoralizing to live in a country where all people, scientists included, are under the control of a totalitarian regime.
