A “gerontocracy” has been established in Russian science: the average age of a scientific candidate is 51, and that of a doctor of science 64, to write “New news”. The publication gathered expert opinions on the reasons for this trend.
Domestic science has a conservative structure, explained the director of the Center for NTI and II MSTU. NE Bauman Vladimir Nelyub. “More basic science means more mature scientists. New directions, such as digital material science, AI are the young generation of scientists, graduate students, candidates and even PhDs in science,” he said.
CEO of M&S Decisions, Director of the Center for Mathematical Modeling in Drug Development, Moscow State Medical University. Sechenov, Kirill Peskov called the problem that “aging” scientists not only do research themselves, but often direct the process.
“In the West, it is quite clearly regulated that after a certain age, one cannot occupy managerial positions. Please be a respected teacher, supervise student work, participate in scientific research: your expertise, your knowledge is really needed. But others should organize the process,” Peskov is convinced.
Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Director of the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Anatoly Petrukovich noted that the “reduction in age” of Russian scientists is largely due to “the failure” of personnel that occurred in the home sciences in the 1990s.
“In the 2000s, the situation has already started to improve, at least many institutes already have young scientists under 30 and up to 40, but it takes time to close this gap and compensate for the damage to science in the 1990s,” I agree with Petrukovich Olga Martynova, head of the Laboratory of Human Higher Nervous Activity at the Institute of Higher Nervous Activity and Neurophysiology of the Academy of science of Russia.
In addition, Martynova and Nelyub point to the exodus of young Russian scientists abroad, explaining this by the lack of financial prospects and opportunities for the commercial implementation of developments.
Political scientist, lecturer at Moscow State University named after MV Lomonosov, Artem Kosorukov called another reason for the “leakage” of young scientific staff the lack of “a well-thought-out model of support and promotion young scientists in scientific organizations” – in particular, the problems of resolving housing problems, “an opaque mechanism for career development in established scientific teams” and “regulated mechanisms for the selection of applications” for grants and public funding.
