Brain-drain: Is there a problem?

There is a growing worry in Russia concerning brain-drain. After iron curtain had fallen a lot of scientists from Russia and former soviet republics went abroad for working and living. It weakened Russian science a lot and as a result has a great impact on the current state and future of the scientific research in Russia. There were a lot of talks about brain-drain and how to avoid it, even a drastic action was suggested to oblige all scientists going abroad to pay a penalty for government if less then 10 years have passed since their graduation from institute, explained by the fact that education in Russia is free and thus someone who obtained it should work for Russian government. Last year some serious discussions were made how to return scientists back, which lead to rather contradictory and shocking letter from those scientists requiring privileged conditions and salary for them comparing with "local" scientists. For now a programme for collaboration of "local" and "drained" scientists is launched which concerns governmental grants support and some special conditions.

But is there a real problem? From one hand, yes, there is, because people go away and among them a lot of renown scientists. And there is a lot of criticism for government about bad conditions and finance for making science in Russia, very high level of corruption, low prestige of scientific profession etc.

But what I recently thought about is somewhat different. There were a lot of talks and actions during last 10-15 years about integration into the world scientific society and processes. This means that researchers will be travelling around the world working in different laboratories and institutions to share experience and knowledge through postdoc and fellowship programmes, and one of the countries involved in this should be Russia. And here we come to the interesting point. I didn't hear about foreign scientists having PhD come to Russian institution for a long period of time as a postdoc or a fellow. It's like a one-side diffusion: scientists from Russia go abroad, but no one comes in their place from a foreign country. And this is a real problem.

Just imagine football or hockey team, which loses its players for other teams, but do not buy other players instead simply trying to grow up new ones from juniors. This is silly. And in fact many promising hockey and football teams are sponsored by city and regional administration and by business and are able to sign a good contract with a solid foreign player to the joy of fans and club management. This is good for sports and ... there are no complains about sportsmen drain. And nothing like that is known about science in Russia. This is very interesting...

So why foreign scientists do not come to Russia for a long-term period (and maybe for entire life)? I think that the main problem is inappropriate salary, bureaucracy and corruption and until scientists in Russia don't have good salary and work conditions (just like many of Russian sportsmen do) none will come from abroad to substitute a "drained" researcher (just like many of foreign sportsmen do). We hear a lot about making innovations and building innovative business in Russia, many SMEs are being started on the basis of scientific results and achievements, many of them will perish, but hopefully some will stay and continue scientific research to demonstrate government and business that investing real money in science, and especially in fundamental science, is not only noble but also profitable (just like sports). Unless greed and corruption spoil everything...