Fabulous pier

Last week, the Russian Foundation for Basic Research summed up the results of the mol_a_ved competition, which was spontaneously announced in the middle of summer (“a competition of scientific projects carried out by leading youth teams”).

Despite the short deadline for submitting applications in mid-summer, it was worth fighting for this grant, because funding for the group was promised at the normal foreign level, up to 3 million rubles per year. A somewhat abnormal situation has arisen when “children’s” grants are three times larger than usual “adult” grants in competition “a,” but we all understand that these are standard costs of the little-informed policy of “supporting young scientists at any cost.”

Two months before the end of the year, the results were summed up. The winners began a race against time, since budget funds will have to be spent in an extremely short time until mid-November, despite the fact that the execution of the contracts itself will take about a month. The first surprise was the division of the list of winners into two groups: those recommended for support in 2012 and in 2013. It is unclear whether the winners of the second phase will receive funds for two years or just one.

I personally had some questions regarding the criteria for determining the winners. When I read the list of winning topics, it seemed to me that the rules of the competition included some criteria that were not explicitly reflected in the announcement, such as compliance with “priority areas of modernization of the Russian economy” or “closeness to an innovative output.” I would like the competition rules to be formulated more clearly next time. Some decisions are questionable (I can only talk about the field of astronomy that is closer to me): the world-class group of Mikhail Revnivtsev (IKI RAS) did not receive a grant, but the topic “Modeling the process of stationary diffusion of cosmic rays within the framework of a fractal Galaxy model taking into account influence of boundary conditions" (for some reason in the section "mathematics, mechanics and computer science") by Vyacheslav Saenko from Ulyanovsk State University. Let the opponents of stupid bibliometrics not throw stones at me, but when the citation counts of scientists differ by literally two orders of magnitude (>2300 vs. 24 according to NASA ADS), this says something. Also, the winner on topics close to the declared one can only find two recent preprints in arXiv.org and one abstract of reports from a conference on cosmic rays. Was the fund's examination carried out taking into account some strange non-verbalized criteria?

However, “many are called, but few are chosen,” so the losers can only console themselves, for example, by reading the names of individual winning topics in section 06 (sciences about man and society). Three million rubles each were given to such topics as “Study of “academic emotions”: resources and limitations in education as a socio-cognitive practice”, “Study of human and social behavior patterns when choosing high-tech products brought to market by the innovation community” and - my favorite — “Humor as a means of facilitating the solution of mental tasks and problems.” A total of 90 million will be spent on developing approximately these topics .

M.P.

List of some topics supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research within the framework of grants they say _ a _ ved

• Development of a model of environmental safety of the population of the Voronezh region
• Research into interdisciplinary scientific foundations of social robotics in the context of humanities computer science
• Social and abstract-logical intelligence: dynamics of their relationship and psychophysiological correlates
• Development of a model for innovative environmentally sustainable development of the regional economy
• Information support and theoretical foundations for the formation of an environmental and economic strategy for reducing damage from vehicle emissions
• Genetic connection between the Meotians and the Circassians according to data on mitochondrial DNA polymorphism
• Comparative institutional analysis of innovative activity of corporations in the BRICS countries
• Contrastive corpus studies of Russian and French verbal categories in multivariate parallel texts
• The space of life activity of a vanishing ethnic group: the Yukaghirs of Yakutia in the 20th-21st centuries.
• Natural environment and agricultural development of the territory of European Russia in Early Modern times
• Dynamic modeling of financial restrictions on socio-economic development of the national economy.
• Modeling scenarios for the integration of foreign cultural migrants in Russia until 2030 (regional aspect)
• Research on “academic emotions”: resources and limitations in education as a socio-cognitive practice
• Study of human and social behavior patterns when choosing high-tech products brought to market by the innovation community
• Competitive development of regional energy cogeneration systems in the context of Russia’s integration into the world economic space
• A comprehensive psychological study of the mechanisms of stuttering
• History of Russian social thought: late prose of V.A. Zhukovsky as a complex problem (historiosophy, cultural studies, textual criticism, editorial preparation)
• Innovation and conservatism in the transitional eras of the Stone Age of Central and Northern Asia
• National models of self-organization of scientific communities: comparative analysis
• Humor as a means of facilitating the solution of mental tasks and problems
• The economic nature of poverty and the financial mechanism of social protection of the population
• Economic assessment of the impact of mortality from violent causes on the development of territories
• Extreme climate events in the Altai-Sayan region over the past 2000 years
• Cultural determination and personal individualization of the development of autobiographical memory
• Development and justification of effective mechanisms for technological modernization in a socially oriented economy based on mathematical modeling
• Perception of the Soviet Union and the twentieth anniversary of Russian reality by different generations: a comparative study based on reflective methods
• Transformation of temporary migration into permanent migration: methodology for assessing the scale and socio-demographic consequences for Russia
• Methodology for a comprehensive assessment of the socio-economic development of territorial entities and the effectiveness of public administration
• Trends in the development of modern world Russian studies: research paradigms, discursive genres and the use of ICT resources as a concept for the modernization of historical science and education
• Development of methodology and tools for assessing and forecasting the influence of national research universities on the innovative development of the region.