The authors of two contributions to Nature‘s Correspondence page differ in their responese to the Editorial " In praise of the ’brain drain’" (Nature 446, 231; 2007).

Volker Hiene of the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge answers the question of how UK science flourishes despite the continual brain drain to California and elsewhere by highlighting “the compensating in-drain from the Commonwealth, the rest of Europe and elsewhere” (Nature 447, 28; 3 May 2007). He says: “Instead of complaining about the brain drain out, 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.”

Andrew Isaac Meso of Royal Holloway College, University of London, however, believes “that there is nothing to praise about the brain drain when it occurs en masse from the developing countries into richer, more developed ones with dramatically more power.” See his Correspondence, also at Nature 447, 28; 3 May 2007.