At this point, I should point out that Einstein published his work on special relativity at the age of 26. If it takes 50 years to earn a Doctor of science, the education system is chocking itself. By that age, scientists are too set in their ways to think up anything new (with rare exceptions).
Do you know that Einstain was recognized as crazy fag in his 20th and it took him next 20 years to improve his theory and make it real science before he was nominated as genious.
I strictly believe that one has to produce ALOT of theoretical AND practical knowledge before being recognized as scientist, which is not the US case. In US you write down your 100 pages thesis of nothing, partisipate in a couple of speak-about-everything-and-nothing-in-particular conferences and woah you are a scientist! The value of science is heavily and rapitly devaluating :-(.
Saying that Einstein was "recognized as crazy fag" implies that he was actually one -- which I strongly doubt is the case. Regardless, his 1905 paper on special relativity and his subsequent work (mostly performed within the next 5 years) fleshed out the vast bulk of his theory, and it remained virtually unchanged henceforth. The 20 years you refer to is mostly the time it took for experimental physics to catch up, and be able to experimentally verify the many consequences of his theory. Also, it is somewhat immaterial how long it took for him to be "nominated as genious [sic]" -- the fact that he was indeed correct in all the major components of his theory, a theory which broke so completely with most of physics prior to him, is evidence enough of his genius (which is not to discount Lorentz or Poincare in any way, who were certainly almost there as well).
With regards to your second paragraph (and your prior comment about scientists having to be >30 to be recognized as such and >50 (!) to become one in Russia), the evidence of the works produced by great scientists in the past hundred years strongly suggests that there is something wrong with that belief. Looking only at mathematics, for example, it is difficult to argue that Ramanujan, Godel, Hilbert, Grothendieck, Weil, Weyl, or Deligne (to name only a few), were not truly scientists before age 30 (by which time most of them had published some of their best works).
If the value of science is indeed going down in the US (a fact which is not at all clear to me), then there are lots of other possible reasons for it. But certainly not age.
I am Russian and I can tell you that it is spelled "A LOT". Anyway, you are overgeneralizing about the US education system. It is true that in many universities one can get away with writing 100 pages of nonsense for a PhD, that is not the case in the top tier schools. The entire system is premised on rankings, i.e. top schools produce top scientists who produce top results and get the most grant money. Lower ranking schools produce the "fat tail" of PhDs who are more involved with teaching, collaborating with the industries, going corporate, etc.
In the US, the unspoken assumption is that if one really wants to be a "scientist", they can become one, virtually independent of their ability. I guess the intention is that one's efforts should be harnessed productively vs. generating frustration.
This is a non-issue. 30 year old Russian scientists do science just like anywhere else. They just aren't called a particular word ("учёный") that the 50 year olds are. It has connotations of wisdom and experience, and this is probably why.
