Translated material
Rally of Russian scientists
More details about the promotion:
www.dayte-uchenym-rabotat.narod.ru
It is recommended to bring white coats to the event as a symbol of belonging to the scientific community.
Permission from the Moscow City Hall to hold the event has been received, but we recommend that you follow the latest information on the website indicated above.
In February 2011, scientists in our country were faced with the fact that from now on the purchase of any instruments, reagents and consumables, regardless of their cost, must be planned several months in advance. The reason was the adoption of a product nomenclature, which, together with Federal Law No. 94 (94-FZ), led to the need to spend all budgetary and extra-budgetary funds without exception (including grants won through competitions and provided in the form of subsidies; money from private firms, international organizations, etc.) through the tender procedure. This situation clearly showed that the officials who made these decisions were completely devoid of any idea of how the exploratory research process worked. Obviously excessive control over the expenditure of extra-budgetary funds (after all, the implementation of scientific contracts and grant agreements is already controlled by the organizations that provide money for them!), nevertheless, does not in the least prevent dishonest pseudo-scientists, together with officials, from “cutting” budget money - but honest researchers do are finally deprived of the opportunity to do competitive science. While our colleagues in other countries receive the reagent they need within a maximum of 2-3 days after ordering, our purchase procedure now takes several months.
As expected, in practice, all this led to the fact that at the end of summer (when grant money finally arrived in the accounts of scientific organizations), huge queues of orders formed in the procurement departments of large universities and institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences. They paralyzed the work of these departments and led to the virtual impossibility of purchasing the goods necessary for conducting experiments. Scientific activity eventually came to a virtual standstill. Despite the cries of scientists for help (to which the authorities eventually paid attention) and even attempts to partially solve the problem (for more details, see [1]), in most scientific organizations the situation remained critical.
This example clearly shows the incompetence of government officials who pronounce slogans from high stands about the upcoming grandiose technological breakthroughs and expect the emergence of an innovative economy in our country - and at the same time do everything to make it impossible to do science in Russia. However, their indifference and incompetence are even more clearly demonstrated by the decisions taken in the field of organizing science financing.
It is clear that in the context of the global financial crisis and the recession in the Russian economy, it is difficult to expect the government to increase financial investments in domestic science. It can be assumed that, despite all the talk about the need to build a “knowledge economy,” in reality those 300 billion rubles. [2], which are planned in the 2012 budget for science, is all that the budget is capable of. However, 300 billion is not a small amount of money if you spend it wisely. Unfortunately, the government's policy in distributing this money is far from reasonable. On the contrary, at present there is real chaos in this matter. Instead of distributing funds according to the rules accepted throughout the world - by holding adequate, transparent competitions with the evaluation of applications and reports according to scientific criteria, the Ministry of Education and Science is constantly coming up with more and more new ways to shove government money into the pockets of officials and those who have joined the called "scientific functionaries". Crazy amounts of contracts for more than dubious “development forecasts”, billions of dollars injected into pseudoscientific projects such as Petrik filters or “space gravitsap”, shameless lobbying of their interests by “scientific heavyweights” “close to the feeding trough”, for whom, when receiving money, administrative resources have long replaced professional ones qualifications - all this against the backdrop of insignificant and constantly declining funding for the few active scientific groups remaining in the country causes justifiable indignation among scientists. It is obvious to any modern researcher that science is done not in directorates and rector’s offices, but in small scientific groups, which must be directly financed. Distributing money in “large chunks” followed by distribution according to a hierarchical principle leads to deliberately inefficient spending of public funds.
World experience shows that the most effective form of financing science is a grant system, in which money is divided between the direct implementers of projects (i.e., small scientific groups at the laboratory level and below, which are the “workhorses” of modern science), and the evaluation of applications involves a large body of qualified anonymous experts, and the success of the project is judged by its scientific results (level of publications, patents). All this makes redundant competition documentation (which now takes hundreds of pages for Ministry of Education and Science competitions) unnecessary. The problem of absurdly linking the work of one group with the work of the entire institute is eliminated (now it is impossible to submit more than one application from an organization to competitions of the Ministry of Education and Science, and the expenditure of funds by one scientific group is tied to purchases made by other groups from the same organization).
In our country there is also positive experience of this type of grant system: federal scientific foundations (RFBR, RGNF), Presidential grants and Government grants (“mega-grants”). The most numerous and popular among scientists are RFBR grants, for which thousands of research groups at universities and academic institutes across the country conduct their research. This system of distribution of funds has shown its effectiveness: almost every scientific article contains a mention of a RFBR grant, the origins of almost every innovative development is a project that was once supported by the RFBR, and in terms of the “cost per article” parameter, RFBR grants are several times more effective, than all other methods of financing domestic science - and this despite the modest size of grants (the average size is about 360,000, compare with multimillion-dollar contracts concluded for some competitions of the Ministry of Education and Science) and the constantly decreasing share of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research in the total state expenditures on science. The effectiveness of RFBR grants has been repeatedly recognized not only by scientists, but also by high-ranking officials. However, the share of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research in spending on science is decreasing from year to year (in 2011 it amounted to 2.6%), in 2010 the budget of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research was reduced in absolute terms, and every year the question arises of an even greater reduction. This situation cannot but cause outrage.
In connection with all of the above, at the rally on October 13 we are going to demand from the government:
1. An immediate (within two weeks!) solution to the issue of non-competitive spending of funds from grants, scientific government contracts and economic agreements.
2. A significant (many times!) increase in the budget of state scientific foundations (RFBR and RGNF) already in 2012, with increased transparency in the examination of projects.
A special feature of this action will be that under the slogan “Let scientists work!” Representatives of several organizations and informal associations of scientists will come to the rally: the RAS trade union, the Initiative Group of Young Scientists, the Initiative Group of students, graduate students and employees of Moscow State University, the Council of Young Scientists of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Council of Young Scientists of Moscow State University. This consolidation should show the authorities that scientists are able to unite and defend their rights together. It is recommended to bring white coats to the event as a symbol of belonging to the scientific community.
Permission from the Moscow mayor's office to hold the action has been received, but we recommend that you follow the latest information on the action website [3].
(The text is published on the Initiative Group website).
Initiative group of young scientists
2. http://trv-science.ru/2011/09/27/nauka-v-proekte-byudzheta-2012/