Anatomy of science: continuity, which is no longer

This article was published by me at the request of Hemdall , which, due to some features of Habr, cannot yet do it himself. But I do it not just out of the goodness of my heart - I personally agree 100% with the foregoing, except that, in my opinion, the author draws too optimistic conclusions. However - to judge you.

Good all the time of day!
')
The heated discussion about how Phobos-Grunt was built clearly shows that most readers simply do not understand how the transfer and development of knowledge in science is organized and what follows from that. And since most of Habr, as I observe, very young readers who do not have the necessary understanding of how things are arranged, I will allow a small reminder.

First, I will describe simple, but, as a rule, conditions in science that are not very clear to many:

• it is impossible to teach anyone instantly to any knowledge;
• it is impossible to teach anyone by jumping and skipping the stages of the process of studying science from the beginning to the top;
• The role of mentor in science plays a much greater role than in many other activities.

The path to science, surprisingly, begins with enrollment in the university of the student. In the process of learning for several years to a basic level, the teaching staff forms its own opinion about each student and his potential, abilities and desires based on the attitude to study, to work performance, social activity, etc.

Students receive the necessary amount of basic knowledge and various (often quite complex) tasks that “weed out” those who have neither the desire nor the ability to science. For them, as a rule, science ends immediately with a bachelor / master’s degree. For a small part of the remaining and having a desire to make a scientific career, the path is to graduate school.

Not everyone who wants to take graduate school is taken, but only those whom the supervisor of studies agrees to take to himself. In graduate school, the present training of the chosen science begins in a certain direction (completely specific studies, surveys, expeditions, etc.), since graduate students carry out scientific research under the guidance of a mentor, obtaining the necessary scientific experience, knowledge and developing their own authority by publishing the results his work in scientific journals for obtaining reviews on them from other reputable scientists.

Then, a few years later, after defending a master's thesis, which should already be quite serious scientific work (always with the original scientific theme, novelty and practical significance), having reviews of the practical results from other reputable scientists, the graduate student becomes a real scientist.

Having defended his thesis, the few remaining former graduate students themselves have become supervisors, choosing their own graduate students from among the students. But at the same time, they continue their studies and scientific career in doctoral studies, receiving another academic degree - “Doctor of Science”, on the basis of the defense of the next, much more comprehensive “doctoral” dissertation.

It is very important to understand - this system works by continuously transmitting and developing knowledge from the more knowledgeable and experienced to the young and less experienced . The presence of a significant number of students in a mentor is very important - since people initially have different abilities and in the learning process for very many different reasons, very, very many are eliminated. Science is not for many.

At the same time, there is a very important point: a young scientist or a graduate student who does not have significant knowledge and experience is simply not able to accept knowledge from an elderly, very experienced scientist who has a serious outlook on understanding the complexities of the far from obvious interrelationships of certain knowledge, facts and conclusions. Therefore, by the way, in the preparation of any dissertation, formal consultations are required of various reputable scientists, i.e. in fact - the exchange of experience and clarification of understanding of the most important and subtle points.

Now, recalling "how it works," you can try to state what actually happened in our science and how it should end.

Lost generations

For understanding below is a graph - as in the 90s, due to the change in the social system and the destruction of the USSR, the number of scientists decreased:

Number of research workers (researchers) conducting research and development in the USSR and the CIS, thou.

Basically, the reduction has affected graduate students and candidates of sciences. For reasons of inadequate funding, a decline in prestige, the elimination of research laboratories and institutes, they massively went into business and other branches unrelated to science.

Older scientists mostly remained in science, but the influx of graduate students was just miserable. Subsequent educational reforms by a consistent and constant decline in educational standards effectively deprived our science of the influx of sufficiently trained young people. Rather, the level of training of students in modern universities, with very few exceptions, has gone down to the level of graduates of Soviet specialized secondary schools.

The system of knowledge transfer failed - the younger generation of scientists disappeared from it. And this failure has been going on for 20 years . And all these years, the best specialists with the richest experience and world-class knowledge are retiring, leaving abroad and cannot transfer either their experience or their knowledge here - for the almost complete absence of those to whom they can be transferred.

The state policy of all these 20 years has been to ignore science as such, because of its uselessness in the “raw material superpower”, and apart from loud declarations about “nano-innovations”, practically nothing is being done to support science. Accordingly, we are consistently losing ground even in industries that were previously considered exclusively by ours - space, aviation, and nuclear power. Not to mention the developing modern ones - robotics, alternative energy sources and computer technology.

There is nothing even to say about other branches of science - nothing can fill up the failures the size of whole generations. Even if we consider the “fantastic” option that tomorrow all the places will be completely filled with young scientists - there is no time to prepare them to the level of those who retire. It is physically impossible to prepare an outstanding scientist without a long practical work experience and selection under the guidance of an experienced mentor.

What does all this eventually lead to?

Everything is very simple - with the departure of the old scientists, the scientific directions headed by them and the schools will stop and die , because there is no one who can catch up with them the “baton” of knowledge transfer to the next generations. So, our science as such will disappear altogether, it will remain in very, very few areas, and most likely it will develop in isolated cases.

What can be done with this? The answer is nothing. The train is long gone.

Unless to save the archives and the work of scientists, maybe to create arrays of knowledge storage, maybe some neural and expert systems. So that later future scientists could get acquainted with the systematically accumulated experience and knowledge and use them in one form or another. But even for all this, a state decision is needed - i.e. government GOAL for years to come and next provision for its achievement.

In the meantime, our state has no meaningful goal, respectively - there is no science policy, and there is practically no desire to develop science either.

Therefore - we count on the worst hoping for the best. And the rescue of the drowning is the work of the drowning themselves.

Thanks for attention.

And again, on my own behalf: I beg you not to give hasty assessments in the comments, but try to find weighted and worthy counterarguments.