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It seems that the Sputnik V is slightly less effective than the most effective vaccines (Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech), but has some advantages as well (in particular it can be stored at higher temperatures, and it is cheaper), such that it is not clearly inferior.

How did Russia produce a vaccine of comparable quality to its competitors? I would've thought that money and talent are the two biggest drivers of quality research, yet Russia seems to be well behind its competitors on both these metrics:

Only other thing I can think of is luck, but I intuitively dislike luck as an explanation since it is applicable to many things.

I'm asking this on Academia.SE because it's more a question about research process than about politics.

Allure
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    International rankings tell nothing about quality of research at a particular place. They are usually a pr tool aimed at attracting more students (and more $). I am sure if you look at rankings designed in China there will be Chinese universities at the top, just like the Americans are there in the ones designed in the US (commonly seen in internet). – sleepy Apr 07 '21 at 07:30
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    @sleepy as I understanding there are three widely-followed rankings: Times, QS, and ARWU. All three of them are dominated by US and UK universities, even the ARWU, which is a Chinese ranking. There is a Russian list that places Moscow State University as one of the best in the world, but it was ridiculed for that reason: https://web.archive.org/web/20120427200649/http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=410253&c=1 – Allure Apr 07 '21 at 07:36
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    Overall R&D spending may not be the important metric here if enough of it goes into a single project. Regarding university metrics: they probably are a better measure of success (however defined) than of talent (of which there seems to be an abundance everywhere). – cheersmate Apr 07 '21 at 07:46
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    "implying that the best brains do not work in Russia": this is a non sequitur. You can have the greatest brain, but if you live in country with economic and social problems, sometimes at war with neighboring countries, you may not be able to express your brain much. – Massimo Ortolano Apr 07 '21 at 07:47
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    Regarding the aspect "money", the COVID19 vaccines are surely a special case due to their importance. Even if the per-capita spending is lower as far as overall research funding is concerned, they might have spent extraordinary amounts of money to develop an effective vaccine. – lighthouse keeper Apr 07 '21 at 08:02
  • A lot of R&D spending in this specific sector in thewestern world is performed in private companies. R&D spending in private companies must be performed at the astronomical commercial costs, not the public servant cost. If you discount for that, the gap between Russia and Western countries gets smaller.

    Then there is efficency, it is likely that one hour of work in a western company is more productive than one hour of work in a Russian institution. However, if the cost per hour is much cheaper, you can spend many more hours, getting to the same final product.

     – EarlGrey Apr 07 '21 at 08:35
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    This question conflates university spending with industrial innovation in a specific field. The two need not be well correlated. It's the same case for Indian pharmaceuticals also, which are thriving (and also have come up with a comparable vaccine), without many universities making it to the top lists. – AppliedAcademic Apr 07 '21 at 09:18
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    I am voting to close because this is about the content of research. – Anonymous Physicist Apr 07 '21 at 09:23
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    Also, this question seems to be "Why are completely unrelated things uncorrelated for small sample size?" And why single out Russia and not mention China or India? I'd say Cuba is the real outlier, with 2 phase 3 trials running. This question will not be answerable until all the vaccine projects have succeeded or failed, which will take quite a while. – Anonymous Physicist Apr 07 '21 at 09:34
  • This is a question about vaccine development not Academia. – user2705196 Apr 07 '21 at 11:55
  • And to answer the question: developing a viral vaccine is not an impossible to solve very difficult problem. The classic (non RNA based) approach is technically quite straightforward. And also does not require enormous resources. For example, (even for the somewhat novel delivery vector vaccine now known as Astra Zeneca) Oxford started working on the vaccine in Jan '20, had a vaccine by March '20 (probably earlier), and started clinical trials in April. It is the testing and guaranteeing that a vaccine works and is safe that takes up the majority of time and money!! – user2705196 Apr 07 '21 at 12:10
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    Just to make sure: I don't want to belittle the achievement. Making and producing a COVID-19 vaccine is huge obviously. But it mostly rests on prior fundamental research and an understanding how everything works. The actual final step is of course exciting and we all witnessed a great race in which years of clinical trials got reduced to mere months. But there's nothing even remotely weird about Russian or Chinese researchers producing a working vaccine. – user2705196 Apr 07 '21 at 12:17
  • @user2705196 maybe there's nothing weird about Russian researchers producing a working vaccine, but how did they make a vaccine that is about as good as the one made by people who are presumably 1) smarter and 2) better funded? – Allure Apr 07 '21 at 12:29
  • @AppliedAcademic if that is the case, then some kind of statistic showing that Russian vaccinologists are not less talented than their competitors in other countries would answer the question. – Allure Apr 07 '21 at 12:31
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    @Allure: Plenty of that history is easily accessed via a Google search, eg. https://www.google.com/amp/s/theprint.in/science/covid-vaccine-sputnik-v-isnt-an-exception-russia-has-a-history-of-radical-medical-experiments/480093/%3famp – AppliedAcademic Apr 07 '21 at 14:38
  • @AppliedAcademic that link doesn't say Russian vaccinologists are as talented as their peers in other countries however. It only says Russians are more willing to participate in trials of the vaccine. Since that doesn't actually affect the efficacy of the vaccine (only the speed at which results are gathered), I don't see how that answers the question. – Allure Apr 08 '21 at 02:20
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    The answer to this question, unfortunately, cannot be other than political. There is nothing extraordinary about the research processes. It is necessary to study the history of Russia, or rather the USSR, in terms of public health and education. Then your doubts will be cleared. Something similar happens with Cuba. Almost any country can have the basic resources and money for this, the key here is: State policies. – eniel.rod Apr 08 '21 at 04:29
  • @Allure- indeed. My objective was to indicate to you that a wealth of information is easily accessible through a regular search that may expand your perspective on this issue. As such, I don't think the question stands because it is based on an unsupported premise. I could give more examples, but I unfortunately don't see a way to do that without getting political. :) – AppliedAcademic Apr 08 '21 at 06:04
  • @AppliedAcademic what search terms do you use? Using terms such as "how good are russian vaccinologists" returns nothing relevant; furthermore searching Web of Science core collection for papers with the word "vaccine" published in the last five years finds tens of thousands of papers published with US funding, 4055 acknowledging NSFC funding, 2793 with European Commission funding, etc, and only 153 acknowledging Russian funding. I am not convinced the premise is unsupported. – Allure Apr 08 '21 at 06:13
  • @AppliedAcademic Further analysis: the 153 papers acknowledging Russian funding have a h-index of 15, with an average of 5.43 citations per paper. Comparatively the 9898 papers with NIH funding have a h-index of 113 and an average of 13.12 citations per paper. I am not convinced the premise is unsupported, in fact it seems more supported than unsupported. – Allure Apr 08 '21 at 06:22
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    @Allure- I am saying that the research spending and research output in form of journal papers is not necessarily correlated with the establishment of a robust industrial operation. This is essentially what vaccine development and production is today, not predicated on advances in fundamental science, like say, the findings at CERN. I think another commenter tried to make the same point. As for search terms, your query is rather loaded and I suspect will only lead to Quora-type discussions. Just search for 'russia vaccine history'. – AppliedAcademic Apr 08 '21 at 06:28
  • @AppliedAcademic are we talking about the same premise? In my case, I am referring to the statement "the best brains do not work in Russia" in the question, or "Russian vaccinologists are less talented compared to their peers in other countries". – Allure Apr 08 '21 at 06:43
  • @Allure- no, I am talking about what I stated in my first comment, namely, "This question conflates university spending with industrial innovation in a specific field. The two need not be well correlated." In other words, you can't judge how robust an industry is based on the corresponding research spending or academic output. I can see that there would be a correlation in countries with strong industry-academia links, but this is not the case everywhere. – AppliedAcademic Apr 08 '21 at 07:06
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    Sorry for the necroposting. I happen to have relatively close insights about Russian vaccinologists and scientists in general. Do not be fooled by the average spending: some of the best brains still very much work in Russia. In the West, you might have 1 brilliant lab, 19 good labs and 80 a-okay labs out of 100, whereas in Russia it could be 2 brilliant and 98 worthless ones. Most ratings poorly reflect the research capabilities of Russian institutions, too, especially the most well-funded ones (those dealing with matters of "national interest" - military-related research, gas&oil...). – Lodinn Jan 09 '23 at 07:49
  • The key aspect people in the West sometimes (often?) fail to realize about Russia is that "common sense" often does not work. Russian scientists have obtained some prominent results, sometimes years before their Western colleagues, even after the fall of the USSR (side note - it is mostly fields that have survived since that are doing well)... Only to do nothing then. If you achieve a strong result in the West, the industry picks it up in no time. In Russia, unless the state specifically intervenes (in which case, it might get classified), it never makes it to the general public. – Lodinn Jan 09 '23 at 07:56

1 Answers1

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Ranking or spending money is only secondary metrics how to evaluate and compare performance e.g. among universities or countries or continents.

But I think fundamental is society, it's history and its attitude. I had opportunity to live and experience research in "western" country institute for couple years. This experience may apply to general research as well as to hunting vaccine competition:

  • Oh your idea is great, let try and start
  • we give you some time and administrative support to enhance the idea
  • big pharma as well as small startups are close to university labs, so it's not hard to do quick experiments, trials, prototypes. Some networking events, conferences are common.
  • you're good in what you're doing, we're among the best in the world

Now back in "central & eastern" european country usually underestimated. I now experience this attitude:

  • Oh your idea is interesting, but somebody (from western countries) already works on this issue
  • administrative support? Write proposal by yourself and we will only evaluate if the 'quota' was not reached so you won't compete with "more preferred" teams.
  • usually big pharma or small startups are not close to university labs - if yes, that is "conflict of interest" and you "try to sell knowledge to nasty rich companies"
  • there are better teams in the world in the topic doing what you do.
  • you did unappropriate public critical comments about our dean, prime minister, president, ..., so forget for support

So as a result I can guess that in countries and societies from first group ("western") there are e.g. 20-50 teams trying different approach despite their political or other context. 2-5 succeed, the others that fail - they are not usually prosecuted but gain valuable experience. Some earn money and pay taxes, some become rich and invest again to western business and all society in general profits.

I guess that in countries and societies from second group ("eastern") only 2-5 teams try to make vaccine, other were disqualified by any point mentioned above. If 1 succeed despite condition - it is big success! Congratulation to Sputnik V! They earn money, probably pay taxes, some become rich and invest where? Do they rather to emigrate to west, not to be imprisoned like Navalnyj or Khodorkovskij? What about the other teams that do not succeed - are they prosecuted?

So in case of western approach - the luck is just statistical success rate.

TJK
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