Transparent pool: a view from the outside

I read with interest the article “The Transparent Whirlpool of Akademintorg” , published in the 43rd issue of the Trinity Option. I am generally aware of the problems discussed in this publication: although I have been working in North America for a long time, I often visit home and maintain friendly relations with many scientists in Russia. Recently I had to discuss a publication in TRV with one of the fairly well-known Western specialists. This person represents a large company in the post-Soviet space - a manufacturer of research equipment (for obvious reasons, he asked not to mention his name and the name of the company).

According to him, everything is described correctly in the TrV publication, and not only his company, but also competing companies have to operate in similar conditions. What is most curious is that the situation in Russia represents a striking contrast with other countries of the former USSR. In Ukraine, Belarus and even Moldova, the procurement system seems quite understandable, transparent and generally close to the generally accepted one. A tender is announced for a specific technical task (which, of course, is now widely practiced in Russia, but the essence of the matter, as usual, lies in the details). The terms of the tender are posted on the Internet and brought to the attention of firms that can supply the required equipment. A commission is formed that negotiates with potential suppliers. Negotiations are conducted both on technical parameters, for example, the configuration of the device is specified and adjusted, installation conditions are discussed, etc., and on price, i.e. bargaining takes place. The composition of the commission is known, and the decision is made and signed by specific people. In countries such as Estonia (but not Ukraine), the commission includes independent Western specialists who are not associated with equipment manufacturers. When summing up the results of the tender, a justification is written, which is brought to the attention of all participating firms, so that each company knows what place it took in the competition and on the basis of what criteria the decision was made. In the opinion of my interlocutor, these decisions are often suboptimal: as a rule, in pursuit of price, factors such as, for example, the quality of warranty service, etc. are overlooked. But at least the selection criteria are presented to everyone, which makes it impossible for equipment to be sold at a price 1.5-2 times higher than similar offers from competitors. As a result, my interlocutor concluded, selling prices in the countries of the post-Soviet space are completely different than in Russia. As for Russia, the procurement system that exists in Russia is the most opaque among Eastern European countries. Contracts are concluded with the help of intermediary firms (“assistant firms,” as my interlocutor puts it), the methods of which can only be guessed at. “Probably, this is how the country is,” my colleague concluded the conversation quite in Russian, and at these words we laughed sadly.

As for my personal experience in foreign countries, it relates specifically to NMR spectrometers, about which quite a lot has been written in the TrV publication. Some clarifications need to be made here. NMR experiments are programmed and analyzed using many hundreds of computer instructions (both regular C programming language instructions and specialized macros). As a result, spectroscopists who are accustomed to working on Varian spectrometers are, as a rule, very reluctant to switch to Brooker spectrometers and vice versa. Here ordinary and natural human conservatism is manifested. In such a situation, it seems that one could assume that the outcome of the competition would, as a rule, be predetermined: a laboratory working on a spectrometer from the Brooker company would prefer to purchase a spectrometer from the same company in the future. All the more remarkable is the fact that in reality this is not the case. Commercial applications from Bruker and Varian are considered very seriously, and if one of the companies offers significantly more attractive conditions, then this company wins the competition, despite the inconveniences associated with retraining. I myself have witnessed this many times and was also a direct participant in this process. As one might easily assume, competition leads directly and directly to lower prices. For example, to meet a given budget, companies may offer to supply a customer with a magnet that the manufacturer had previously used for sensor testing for several years. The quality of this magnet is in no way inferior to that which just left the assembly shop. The price may differ by several hundred thousand dollars. Such examples can be given further.

Do “kickbacks” exist in the West? To say that nothing like this exists at all would not be entirely accurate. Lunch in an expensive restaurant, where a company representative treats a potential client, fits into the usual practice. One of my colleagues laughed and recalled an incident that happened to him while purchasing expensive equipment. That day he was late at work and returned to his car later than usual. Opening the car door, to his horror he saw a huge shadow approaching him from the darkness. Upon closer inspection, the shadow turned out to be a representative of one of the competing companies, on whose shoulder was a box with a coffee machine. Which was given to my friend as a souvenir worth several hundred dollars. But, perhaps, we can safely say that the matter does not go further than such “souvenirs,” and this example is rather an exception.

As a generalization, I would express the following thought. There are many talented, knowledgeable and dedicated scientists working in our field (spin spectroscopy) in Russia. Of course, the state of affairs in many laboratories is difficult, but there are opportunities for development. In my understanding, the main obstacle to the restoration and development of our science is precisely the kind of systemic problems that are described in the TrV publication. Capable and energetic lab managers are forced to spend their time and energy on solving “political” problems or simply dealing with trivial administrative issues, and this often has a detrimental effect on research work. To correct this situation, in my opinion, we need some structural reforms, which our state is quite capable of carrying out. Such transformations will take time, and, obviously, it is impossible to expect real returns from them earlier than in years, and by and large, decades. But, as you know, Moscow was not built right away, and I would like to think that gradually the necessary changes, including in the system of purchasing scientific equipment, will occur.

Nikolay Skrynnikov,
Associate Professor Chemistry Department, Purdue University, USA