Need for crosscultural empathy in scientific endeavour

Here is a French scientist's account of the high handedness with which an outstanding Japanese primatologist was treated  by his western counterparts.

http://www.emory.edu/LIVING\_LINKS/OurInnerApe/pdfs/WithoutWalls.html

Though the article is nearly six years old, there is scope for reassessing the situation in 2007 and checking whether the understanding is any better

now. Indian scientists who have an excellent command over spoken and written English may not have felt this complex mix of antipathy and lack of understanding to the same extent, if at all, but the reassessment can do no harm.

Regards. Partha