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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsRussian secret service vetting Russian science papers
http://www.nature.com/polopoly_fs/1.18602!/menu/main/topColumns/topLeftColumn/pdf/526486a.pdf(I hadn't realized that the FSB has continued the old KGB practice of maintaining branches at all universities. Depressing.)
Since then, rumours have emerged that Russian universities and institutes are demanding that
manuscripts be approved before submission to comply with the amendment. The minutes from the Belozersky Institute meeting confirm this. Be reminded that current legislation obliges scientists to get approval prior to publication of any article and conference talk or poster, they say. They note that the rules apply to any publication or conference, foreign or national, and to all staff without exception. Scientists will need to seek permission from the universitys First Department a branch of the FSB that exists at all Russian universities and research institutes, says Viacheslav Shuper, a geographer at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow and MSU. He says that MSU geographers have been given similar instructions.
. . .
Letting bureaucrats decide whether any piece of science is a state secret is not just nerve-wracking, but also burdensome, he says. For example, at some institutes, scientists who have written papers in English for foreign pub- lication are obliged to translate them into Rus- sian for the sake of the security service. The changes are also bad for science, says Fyodor Kondrashov, a Russian biologist at the Centre for Genomic Regulation in Barcelona, Spain. The problem is that it appears that all scientific output is being treated as potentially classified, he says. This creates an unhealthy research climate with some scientists prefer- ring not to share information not to give a talk at a conference abroad, for example. I fear that the authorities will choose to apply this law selectively against their critics.
Sergey Salikhov, director of the Russian science ministrys science and technology depart- ment, told Nature that the government does not intend the amendment to restrict the pub- lication of basic research. He says that it is not ordering universities or security services to pro- actively enforce the law over civilian research.
But the amendment leaves interpretation to the security services and science administrators, who tend to be over-zealous, says Gelfand. Basically, anything new and potentially useful can now be interpreted to be a state secret, says Konstantin Severinov, a molecular biologist with the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, who graduated from MSU.
hunter
(38,302 posts)One thing about an effective patent system and enforcement (strongly tilted in favor of the oligarchy, of course) is that it does help keep these things a little more transparent.
Still there is a huge amount of research hidden by the U.S. government; dark things hidden by the simple method of huge corporations acting as government contractors. As a scientist or engineer working for these government contractors, you sign away your rights to publish your own research and innovation, and often require an official security clearance.
In addition, the giant chemical, pharmaceutical, aerospace, automobile, and energy companies have a propensity for shelving internal research that makes their own products look bad, for no other reason than that it might depress their Wall Street market value.
There are many different forms of oligarchy, and many different levels of corruption. The Russian sort is simply less sophisticated and more heavy-handed than the U.S. American sort.
GummyBearz
(2,931 posts)You are partly right. The motivations are different though. The big aerospace companies aren't trying to stop Russia from seeing their work... they keep it as proprietary information/"trade secrets" to keep an edge on their few competitors. Its all about business and $$
hunter
(38,302 posts)Different oligarchs running the show, that's all.
One thing nice about the U.S.A. is that I'm free to say anything I like so long as I'm ineffective.
As soon as I'm effective, bad things happen to me, starting with unemployment.
It's not a U.S.A. company, but it has it's origins in U.S. regulation... but there must be dozens of people at Volkswagen who know exactly how the emissions control cheat went down. But if they want to remain employable in the automobile industry, or any industry, they'll do exactly as the company lawyers say.
A case I'm a little more familiar with was the composites used in Lockheed military aircraft. They were proprietary, very secret, and toxic to workers. But very important to the useless, absurdly expensive planes they were building for the U.S. military. Years later, Lockheed is still building turkeys, but maybe they can bump their reputation with "small fusion reactors" and other unlikely proprietary nonsense.
I'm the sort of person who believes most everything should be transparent and Open Source, especially government, science, and technological development. The range of things that ought to be secret or proprietary ought to be severely limited.
Most forms of secrecy are extremely corrosive to a supposedly "freedom loving" society.
In my opinion, advancing human knowledge is incredibly noble. I got a PhD in engineering and try to publish as much as possible. Publishing at a large aerospace company required a lot of red tape, even though the work was just an incremental advancement. Every step of the process there was someone who wanted to "obfuscate" something so our competitors don't know what were doing.
Now I'm at a small commercial company with zero national security implications, but its even harder to publish. We are in a 2 front war trying to stay ahead of other companies that make similar products and giant companies that could easily squash us out of existence by throwing their money into a key product area. We can't publish a thing here.
It goes against my desire to advance knowledge, but that is what pays my bills. If they would build more university of california schools, and hire more professors, I could have the best of both worlds
dembotoz
(16,785 posts)not sounding very competitive to me
GummyBearz
(2,931 posts)Company A figures out a new innovation. They don't want company B to know it, as it gives company A the competitive advantage..
GummyBearz
(2,931 posts)I work in wireless systems world, so the example I can give is anything operating above 10 or 20GHz is supposed to be ITAR. This is ignored 99% of the time. Only once did I ever see anyone bring it up. So I guess we have similar rules, we just don't enforce those rules.
hunter
(38,302 posts)...you WILL run into obstacles.
Who needs radar when you've got cell phone networks, direct broadcast satellite television, GPS, and all those other handy sources of microwave illumination???
Shutting all that commercial stuff down in some world-at-war scenario in this very brittle 21st century world economy would be suicidal. "Hard" currencies and high finance would be the very first thing to die, and then what? Suddenly we're all living in a North Korea style economy or worse. Join the army, praise the Great Leader, or starve.
Mutual Assured Destruction no longer requires nuclear weapons.
Funny you brought up passive imaging. I did my phd thesis on passive millimeter wave imaging (W-band). Published 12 papers and didn't run into any obstacles at university. But when I went back to work it was very different
hunter
(38,302 posts)Secrets are corrosive.
GummyBearz
(2,931 posts)I hope my first experience is also my last. So far I am liking the commercial world far better, although they do like to keep their competitive secrets just as much. At least there isn't the chance of going to prison over them.
Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)It was on my list of things to post today...
hobbit709
(41,694 posts)hunter
(38,302 posts)Putin is like Avis car rental, number two and trying harder.