What problems does the RAS science conceal?

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Author kfmin, ns, RAS. He taught at the institute. I will try to show the problems that are now relevant for me and my associates.

Education of cadres

This is a sore subject. I will try to show the shortcomings of the personnel training system, which are seen from the depths of the RAS.

School

1) Very extended training, today's school volume of knowledge can be crammed into a student much faster and free up years of life. A lot of knowledge is distorted, myths and legends are often taught in connection with the illiteracy of teachers and the game form of teaching. It is especially worth noting the dull cramming of facts for passing the exam.

2) Lack of frame rejection. Accordingly, the lack of incentives to study and the general consensus of schoolchildren is that we are already obliged to get a job at an institute and a job. As a result, very heterogeneous children leave school, you never know in advance what this student knows and what does not.

3) Greenhouse conditions. Schoolchildren think that everyone owes them everything, so there is no authority for them. They also do not understand the words "no" and "stop" at all. All warnings, and life in general, are perceived in a "playful way".

4) Poor knowledge of physics. Catastrophic ignorance of chemistry.

The university

1) Length of training. The amount of knowledge given does not correspond in any way to 6 years of study.

2) Destruction of the integrity of teaching. There are huge gaps in knowledge. For some specialties, some courses are taught, for related specialties they are completely different, respectively, a small amount of general knowledge, the absence of a common basis. Hence the complete impossibility of interdisciplinary research. Poor knowledge of physics. Terrible knowledge of chemistry, technology, industry.

3) Overloaded with boltological philosophical subjects. These subjects do not develop the student, but show that any questions can be ignored.

4) Learning to work with installations at the level of the most primitive operator. Complete ignorance of the designs of devices and their device. Accordingly, the lack of practical skills in experimental work.

5) A terrible load in the English language. The total number of hours of English (school + institute + graduate school), in my opinion, corresponds to the number of hours in physics. In general, it seems that the institutes train translators with in-depth knowledge of physics.

6) A strange structure of training - up to the title of bachelor (4th year), 90% of knowledge is given. The very title of bachelor is mysterious. We can take a bachelor's degree at a research institute only as a technique without the possibility of any growth in principle (now it seems that this is changing). For a person - a bachelor, in fact, both further education and professional growth are closed. If the bachelor was in a hurry, got into the masters and did not thunder into the army, then over the next 2 years of doing nothing, he receives a full specialist diploma. Accordingly, these students no longer remember what learning is.

7) No rejection. The first exam in a person's life is 1 course 2 semester. It is here that it becomes clear for the first time in 20 years whether this student is a complete moron. Further on in the 4th year, it becomes clear how good his grades are or whether he / his parents have good connections and whether he will get into the magistracy. And only in the research institute, the head of the work personally culls cripples, madmen, humanitarians, etc. from this laboratory. Nevertheless, all the rejected will receive diplomas and spread to the world, telling what physics is.

Research Institute + postgraduate study

Postgraduate education is very weak and generally one gets the impression that this is a tribute to tradition and political demands.

1) A graduate student is characterized by encapsulation in the topic. Namely: a graduate student comes and works on the same installation, or solves the same equation, everything else passes by him. Thus, graduate school is already characterized by ossification.

2) Physical courses are selected from the availability of teachers and are completely random. Taking into account the individuality of graduates and the gaps in their knowledge, these courses are ineffective, they are learned by a small percentage of graduate students.

3) Wild amounts of English.

4) A lot of philosophy. On the one hand, philosophy is a complete pseudoscience that corrupts graduate students. On the other hand, this subject is taught by such freaks that many graduate students come to understand what a person associated with philosophy turns into. Thus, the benefit of this course is that it weeds out morally unstable people.

Portrait of graduate students, integral:

1) Diverse level of education, knowledge of each graduate student is individual. So tolerantly, you can designate gaps, for example, the lack of a concept about the electricity that lives in the outlet. This means that further training is extremely individual, filling in the gaps, and very time consuming for the teacher. Accordingly, we physically will not be able to prepare the number of cadres more than just to replace those leaving.

2) Lack of fear. They just do not understand that a mechanical drive can break an arm, and high voltage can bang stupidly. They have no experience of working with dangers in general, and accordingly the words "not allowed", "dangerous" are not perceived. Students have an iron belief that "nothing bad will happen to me", "they are obliged", "they will save me."

3) A large number of random people who are generally not suitable for working with equipment. The need to reject abnormal and other morons with special needs.

4) Big requests. It sounds bad, but how else to characterize statements like "I am just starting to think about this question for 80 thousand a month."

5) Developed mythology. They live in a mythological world, and all the physics they encounter at work does not appear for them in reality. So a graduate student-experimenter, whose purpose of work is to increase the power of the laser, after work can buy a laser pointer with a "catalyst", about which "they told on YouTube" that it can burn buildings. Then come and ask why it doesn't work.

6) Internet as the most competent source of knowledge. You have to fight every hour for authority with some Internet freaks.

Conclusions: now humanities education. In science and technology, there are marginal people, the importance of science in the life of society is decreasing, there is a widespread mythologization. The staff is generally tolerant (in comparison with Ukraine and the Uzbeks), we will increase the replacement, but we will not be able to increase their number, for this it is necessary to change the entire education system.

Information problems

At present, almost all scientific groups are working under conditions of an information blockade. Causes:

1) Psychological. All have already been brought up in the tradition of "knowledge is capital". So you can't share them. We have strong competition! It is especially strong between adjacent departments.

2) Destruction of communication systems. Even if you want to discuss a problem, the only way to communicate is through personal contact.

Interestingly, against this background, publication in Western journals is not considered a loss of knowledge / capital, because "they already know about it."

Information flow to the department

In an amicable way, we need guidance on what to work on, early work results and standard knowledge.

The instructions on what to work on come only from the military, there are no other needs in the country. The Academy of Sciences has withdrawn itself, which is expressed in the introduction of a grant system - we ourselves have to come up with what is currently relevant for the country. Thus, 90% of the tasks we have to come up with ourselves, which leads to the following:

1) Formulation of tasks at the department level, which, coupled with complete ignorance of the industry, boils down to "it is necessary to achieve the generation of radiation at 6 nm." It is clear that such tasks are trivial and, in principle, cannot move science.

2) Picking tasks from the west "let's make such a thing for their accelerator and we will become famous."The state will willingly pay for this direction, not for itself, after all.

3) Old Soviet themes. They are all good for everyone, only they are often no longer relevant.

Availability of your information

1) Reference books / databases are available only in paper form since the times of the USSR, with oh-oh-very rare exceptions.

2) Soviet articles and books are available through paper libraries.

3) About half of the necessary articles are available via the Internet. Recently, books on the Internet have become inaccessible, copyrights have appeared on them.

4) Dissertation. Not available at all.

5) Abstracts, conference abstracts, abstract journals - do not carry information.

In general, the situation in terms of the speed of access to information is slightly higher than the level of the USSR, taking into account the decrease in the number of articles. The availability of information is less. Of particular concern is the restriction of access to reference data.

Availability of foreign information

1) Articles. There is Sci-hub, a GB website that works wonders. Without it, there will be irregular access to some magazines.

2) Books. No access available.

3) Databases. There is access, but not everywhere and not always.

In general, the availability of foreign information is higher than the Russian one, and the access speed is simply incomparable.

The quality of scientific information should be noted separately. Highest quality, proven and outdated information in tables and databases. There are a lot of interesting things in the old articles too. Modern articles contain very little information, they are more like advertisements. A very interesting question about copyright. Their appearance allows you to block any information flows.

The availability of information is the ability to sit down at a computer, download and read. When I work, I read a large number of articles related to the work topic. The introduction of any fee / the need for a 2-3 day search simply cuts out the direction data.

Information flow from the department

In an amicable way, information from research institutes should go to applied organizations for the implementation of knowledge and to the Academy of Sciences to develop new ones.

Nothing officially goes to applied organizations, I have no idea where they can find out what we are doing. Maybe they are reading our articles? In that case, I sympathize with them. The only information channel is personal contacts.

Reports go to the Academy of Sciences of what happens to them next, no one knows, there is an opinion that they, like dissertations, are simply thrown away.

Articles

The main information flow leaving the department is articles. The number of articles and the impact factor of the journals in which we publish is the most important factor in reporting.

So, you have to publish a lot of articles in "good" magazines. Hence, there are two mandatory decisions:

1) The obtained result is split into many articles that are published in various journals that are "good" at the moment. It comes to the point that I, the author of the article, do not quite understand what specific result this article was written about. Again, research activities are associated with the risk of failure, and in order to meet the standard, it is necessary to have a permanent source of articles. As a rule, the source of articles for the experimenter is banal measurements of something in an unexplored combination of conditions. For theorists, this is a computer simulation of everything. The results of such studies are known in advance and do not carry anything with them. In general, it is worth noting that the information capacity of articles (both ours and foreign ones) is extremely small. There is another side effect - theorists calculate faster, which leads to a gradual decrease in the proportion of experimental articles and the ousting of experimenters from the grant field.

2) "Good" magazines with large impact factors are all American, so we write there. Again, this is the custom to show off in front of the west. It is worth noting that lately they began to squeeze us there. There is not just a standard disclaimer of copyright, but a veiled collection of fees for the possibility of publication: the speed of publication is paid, checking of the English language, etc.

They try to send to Russian magazines either inferior, "fake" articles, or special cases (agreements, etc.). Oddly enough, these "fake" articles are more interesting than "real" ones.

A large number of articles is a guarantee of receiving money from grants, therefore, if a person accidentally falls out of the process of writing, then he himself will never return to science. He can only be taken on board and included in articles for nothing. Hence the simple consequence - half of the department is included in any article. This is an important condition for the stability of the department in scientific terms.

Conclusion: The most powerful information channel from us has been forwarded to the west. There is also a small inner channel with the military. There is a large share of pseudo-information, some already perceive this situation as normal. There is also an opinion that an article is an advertisement by which you, if necessary, will be found.

Staff

Lack of support staff.

In science, wildly ineffective personnel management. A large number of candidates regarding the number of service personnel, the lack of maneuvering forces, the desire to cover all areas can be noted. The roots of these problems stretch back to the 90s, when all the support staff were fired.

So, there is approximately one postgraduate student and one person of support personnel for one KFMN. The scientific department is practically an autonomous unit, therefore, everything should be carried with him. The support staff is mainly engaged in production (turners), accounting (responsible) and economics (estimates, procurement). Yes, the institute has its own services, but they solve their problems, they have their own tests and games. And then the kfmn appears on the scene - such a beast that it can replace almost all specialties, which is what is happening. Whenever necessary, KFMN are sent to the attack, they conclude contracts, hold tenders, buy metal, sharpen bolts, draw websites, shoot videos and participate in public hearings. At the same time, there is a sorely lack of time for research. It turns out that the strength is only enough to serve themselves.

Spraying on topics

For 30 people (~ 6 kfmin) we have ~ 10 topics for grants, for households. contracts ~ 3 topics, promising works ~ 2 topics, a total of 15 topics, which is 2, 5 topics per candidate. It is clear that one KFMN cannot fully deal with 2 large topics, therefore, from year to year, the topics are fragmented. A decrease in the number of topics leads to a decrease in salaries, which is unacceptable, therefore, there is a drop in the quality of research. Roughly speaking, the topic "Plasma radiation sources" is replaced by the topic "Spectroscopy of peacock feathers" (the names of the topics are real). Now the RFBR grant is the level of a good diploma, the RSF is the candidate's level. The intensified development of the topic is that the candidate is exempted from purchases and reports and only one topic is left. Then the research is carried out by one person, which is also difficult - at least in terms of consulting. Sometimes a group of 2 candidates is formed for research, then they bring together 5 topics and purchases with reports.

The multitude of scientific directions leads to the fact that research is scattered, and there can be no success anywhere. We can only lag behind in all areas. To be honest, there is a need to revise the existing topics and areas of research.

Organization of scientific work, the problem of theorists

In my opinion, the biggest problem of Russian science now is disunity and lack of connections, including interdisciplinary ones. There are practically no connections in one science, for example, it is already difficult to connect magnetism and spectroscopy, and even between disciplines, this is out of the question. Thus, no new connections between chemistry-physics-biology are being formed now, only old directions are developing. There are much more problems in the absence of communication between the experimenter and theorist.

Scientific competition has led to the fact that physicists are divided into two groups: experimenters and theoreticians, struggling in the field of writing.

The main work of a theoretician is to explain experimental results, create a theoretical model, and predict new results based on this model. The advent of computers, the fascination with numerical calculations and variability have led to the creation of universal theoretical models like the black box. In my experience, these models have the following general properties:

1) Lack of physical meaning, there is no visual interpretation of the processes.

2) The model, with the correct combination of input parameters, explains EVERYTHING, even erroneous measurements.

3) The region of applicability of the model is unknown.

4) The model does not predict anything.

5) The measured values cannot be supplied to the model, as a rule, models work with values from other models. For example, the model describes the coherence length (in HTSC), and the coherence length itself is introduced in another model and is an inexpressible derivative of a bunch of parameters, half of which cannot be measured.

6) The model is in the possession of the author and no one has ever seen it.

All this leads to the fact that theoretical works are not used by experimenters, and theoretical works themselves are reduced to advertising a model. Discussions with theorists are very difficult, since a computer model, if necessary, gives any result. Therefore, it is impossible to compare with experiment; accordingly, it is not possible to check the model. Also, theorists are more organized, practically mono-national, more pro-Western, have more weight and less need for money to organize work.

The main work of experimenters is the creation of installations, obtaining new experimental facts on them and their primary interpretation. As a rule, the experimenter is strapped to his setup, and is not particularly interested in processes outside the laboratory. Experimenters are fragmented and highly dependent on equipment, money, etc. This has two consequences:

1) Experiments are more time consuming and costly.

2) Experimenters work with theoretical models of the 60s.

The first consequence leads to the fact that experimenters are significantly behind in terms of the number of published articles, respectively, they are slowly being forced out of the grant field. In this situation, the leadership of the work is slowly transferred to theorists, they monopolize the right to express new ideas, which reduces the experimenters to techniques.

The second consequence leads to the fact that the models used by the experimenters are not entirely adequate and often experimental activity is reduced to an enumeration of options. It is clear that complex problems cannot be solved in this way.

This disunity does not allow for modern research. What can unite theoreticians and experimenters - perhaps very big, unjustifiably big money. Nowadays, buying a “tame” theorist is so expensive that it’s easier to conduct research without theory at all.

Conclusion: At the moment, the organization of science ended at the department (at best). In general, it is believed that science must organize itself "by itself", which has led to the impossibility of massing research in the necessary directions and the "parochial" nature of research. In general, there is chaos in organizational terms.