The country’s Mars rover project with the European Space Agency is on hold. Russian institutions have been suspended from CERN, the world’s largest laboratory for particle physics, in Switzerland. A The prestigious mathematics conference has been moved from St. Petersburg to a virtual meeting, and Russian scientific journals are being banned from major international databases. High-profile scientific journals like Science and Nature do not reject research submitted by Russian scientists, but financial sanctions imposed on Russia can make it difficult to pay journal processing fees. Ukrainian researchers are calling for a complete boycott of Russian institutions and academics.
But while some academics welcome the broad support for Ukrainian scientists in the West, they believe that shunning all Russian scientists could be counterproductive.
“Closing all interaction with Russian scientists would be a severe setback to a variety of Western and global interests and values, including rapid advances on global challenges related to science and technology, maintaining non-ideological lines of communication across national borders, and opposing ideological stereotypes and arbitrary ones persecution,” read a letter published Thursday in Science magazine, authored by five celebrities Scientists from the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.
John Holdren, research professor of environmental science and policy at Harvard Kennedy School and science adviser to former US President Barack Obama, was one of the authors. He said he wanted to make sure the measures taken to punish Russian President Vladimir Putin and his regime were balanced.
“I really value collaboration in science and technology,” Holdren said. “My colleagues and I, who wrote this letter together, were alarmed by reports that widespread demonization and isolation of Russian scientists was underway.”
‘Deep Regret’
Germany has taken one of the fastest and strongest stances. On February 25, the Alliance of Science Organizations in Germany recommended freezing all academic cooperation with state institutions and commercial enterprises in Russia with immediate effect and no longer allowing German research funds to benefit Russia. A German-built space telescope making the largest black hole map in the universe has been shut down. The black hole hunting telescope, dubbed eROSITA, short for Extended ROentgen Survey with an Imaging Telescope Array, was launched in 2019 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on board the Spectrum Roentgen Gamma satellite, a joint Russian-German science mission supported by Roscosmos will. the Russian space agency. The DFG, which had funded more than 300 German-Russian research projects with a total volume of over 110 million euros in the past three years, suspended all of its research projects with Russia.
The science publisher Clarivate said in early March it had halted all commercial activities in Russia and closed its office there. Its influential publication database, Web of Science, will not include any new journals based in Russia or Belarus that have endorsed Russian Invasion. The database tracks citations – an important measure of scientific success – that helps scientists get noticed.
In the United States, MIT has ended its relationship with the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech). in Moscow, but stressed that it is proud of the research that the collaboration has produced over the past decade.
“This move is a repudiation of the actions of the Russian government in Ukraine. We deeply regret him as we have great respect for the Russian people and deeply appreciate the contributions of the many exceptional Russian colleagues with whom we have worked.”
Nature, a leading British publisher of scientific journals, said calls for a comprehensive and global boycott of all Russian research and for scientific journals to refuse to consider work by researchers from Russia are “understandable”. But it said it will continue to consider manuscripts from around the world.
“That’s because we currently believe such a boycott would do more harm than good. It would divide the global research community and restrict the sharing of scientific knowledge—both of which have the potential to harm the health and well-being of humanity and the planet.”
NASA has said it is still working closely with Russia’s space agency on the International Space Station, despite rising political tensions. On Wednesday, NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei will return to Earth along with Russian cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov.
Possible long-term consequences
Science has long been a cross-border endeavor, and many Russian scientists have close ties with their counterparts in the United States and Europe.
One of them is Mikhail Gelfand, a Russian professor specializing in comparative genomics and molecular evolution. Gelfand said his daily work had not been affected so far, but he expected some of his experiments to be affected stalled because international sanctions would make it difficult to get hold of some laboratory materials.
He also said he spends much more time writing letters of recommendation for colleagues and students trying to leave Russia.
A complete boycott of Russian scientists and institutions would be unfair, he said. “Unlike other actions, this will not affect the war; it will help the repressive regime tighten its grip on what is still alive in Russia and it will mainly punish the people who oppose the war,” Gelfand said.
Gelfand helped organize an anti-war letter, which he says was signed by more than 8,000 Russian scientists. It has since been blocked online by Russian authorities, he said.
In the letter to Science, Holdren and his colleagues said that while intergovernmental collaboration was “understandably on hold,” they stressed that “not all collaboration with Russian scientists should be.” Climate change and the Arctic are two areas where Russian scientific efforts are particularly important, Holdren said.
They also noted that many thousands of Russian academics and students “live and work in the West,” according to the letter, and many have criticized the Russian government.
“Certainly these Russians should not be lumped together with leaders of the Russian state. Rather, humanitarian precautions should be taken to ensure that when their visas and passports expire, they are not forcibly repatriated to not only isolation from their Western counterparts but also, very likely, persecution,” they wrote.
“Decisions made today in Western countries about how to deal with Russia and the Russians can last for a long time and ultimately be difficult to reverse. We sincerely hope that all future decisions about Russian scientists and Russian academic institutions will reflect a balanced assessment.”