The leadership of the Russian Academy of Sciences has decided to reorganize the work of the commission for combating pseudoscience, famous for its revelations about homeopaths, psychics, astrologers and inventors of perpetual motion machines. In addition, the commission for combating the falsification of scientific research has undergone a reorganization. They decided to transfer their functions to the expert council. The scientific community has already expressed its fear that there is no longer anyone left to fight the thieves of science. However, RAS RTVI assured that the commission would not be liquidated and that its members could work, but in a different format.
Commission optimization
After the September 2022 elections, which elected a new head of the RAS, Gennady Krasnikov, and updated the composition of the Presidium of the Academy, many pondered the fate of the RAS commission for combating pseudoscience, known for its high visibility of pseudoscientists. At the December meeting of the presidium, the decision to transfer the functions of the commissions for combating pseudoscience and falsification of scientific research to the expert council of the Russian Academy of Sciences went unnoticed.
This decision aroused the astonishment of part of the scientific community, who saw in it a decision to effectively liquidate the commissions in their former status, and joy, first of all, among homeopaths, including the commission for the fight against pseudoscience has done a lot of the job. of damage.
Anton Novoderezhkin / TASS
“To our knowledge, this resolution was adopted without discussion or invitation, or at least warning of the presidents and members of the Commissions. The reasons for the decision are not given. This is contrary to the traditions of the Russian Academy of Sciences, first of all, the tradition of a respectful attitude towards its members. It should be remembered that the Commissions made an extremely significant contribution, in particular, to the fight against pseudoscience, by stopping the projects of thieves, which saved the country’s budget hundreds of millions of rubles. On July 1, the Club asks the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences to suspend the said resolution on commissions and to hold an open discussion among the members of the Russian Academy of Sciences”, said in a statement from the July 1 Club, an informal community of members of the Russian Academy of Sciences, who in the summer of 2013 announced their refusal to recognize the reform of the academy.
Responding to a question from RTVI on whether the resolution meant the liquidation of the two commissions in their current form, Academician Stepan Kalmykov, vice-president of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said that the commissions were not not deleted. He explained that the reorganization was dictated by the desire to reduce the number of various commissions and councils under the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences, which currently number more than a hundred, and to strengthen the role of the Council of experts, giving him the functions of these commissions.
How will the commission operate in the future?
“Nothing fundamentally changes, except that the commissions will not work directly with the presidium, but with the expert council, which I also head,” Kalmykov said, confirming that this decision was not discussed with any of the members of the fees. He assured that the commissions would remain independent in their work and that many of their current members could join the new composition. “Absolutely no one has the right and can forbid them to gather and, therefore, to express their opinion. And there is absolutely no doubt,” he said.
Stepan Kalmykov Sergey Fadeichev / TASS
The Vice President noted that the work and documents of the Commission Against Pseudoscience evoke a purely positive attitude. “Especially in homeopathy, I agree with this memorandum, I have never been a proponent of such things, to put it mildly, controversial. I have a personal wish. We receive various correspondence several times a month, to which we are obliged to respond: I invented a new chemical element, the periodic table, a perpetual motion machine, etc. Sometimes they write not to the Russian Academy of Sciences, but to the President administration. Therefore, it would be a life-saving function to put these not quite sane people in their place scientifically and briefly,” Kalmykov added.
25 years of fighting against pseudoscience
The Commission of the Russian Academy of Sciences for Combating Pseudoscience and Falsification of Scientific Research was established in 1998 on the initiative of Nobel laureate Vitaly Ginzburg.
The main tasks of the commission are analytical and expert work aimed at identifying and countering the manifestation of pseudoscience, pseudoscientific publications, the preparation of recommendations for the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences on the fight against the propagation of pseudoscientific opinions.
From its creation and until recently, the commission operated essentially on a voluntary basis, without leverage and without separate funding.
Dmitri Dukhanine / Kommersant
During its work, the commission managed to score a number of high-profile “cases”. Among them are revelations related to the launch by Roscosmos of the so-called “gravitsapa” into Earth orbit, a satellite supposedly capable of moving, violating the laws of physics, the fight against inventor Viktor Petrik, who, on the basis of patents granted for him, wanted to obtain large-scale funding for the questionable quality of cleaning water filters, the fight against astrologers and psychics.
In addition to speeches and statements by members of the commission on individual cases, memoranda were also published – serious studies of important “areas” of pseudoscience.
The first was memorandum dedicated to dermatoglyphic testing – the practice of determining a person’s character and susceptibility to disease through fingerprints. However, the strongest was the second and last memorandum Committee on the Pseudoscience of Homeopathy.
This document was widely discussed in the press, and among scientists it was actively criticized by Russian manufacturers of homeopathy, the largest of which, the company Materia Medica, after some time began to call its preparations not homeopathic , but “active release”.
In 2018, at the initiative of the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the commission was divided into two separate commissions – to combat pseudoscience (CBL RAS) and to counter the falsification of scientific research of the KPFNI RAS.
“There was a constant continuous clamp”
The last high-profile performance by the fighters against pseudoscience took place in the fall of 2019, on the eve of the election of new members of the RAS, when the two commissions published reports on six dozen candidates who participated in the defense. theses with errors. borrowing, committing publication, ethical violations, and engaging in pseudoscientific activities. So, the list then included the doctor of biological sciences Sergey Savelyev, who claimed that women are not able to do mathematics, and that autism is schizophrenia, homeopath Inessa Minenko and doctor of medical sciences Sergey Sudakov , which claimed that rats were engineered next to severed heads the more experienced rats showed better learning ability. Based on the elements of these reports, 56 candidates were not allowed to participate in the elections, the commissions made additional enemies within the RAS and beyond its borders, their members were even accused of the death of one of the candidates for RAS membership.
Vlad Nekrasov / Kommersant
“We have to admit that despite our positive attitude towards the commission, there has been an excess of authority on the part of the commission. There are a number of questions and claims, but nevertheless, within the framework of the decision of our presidium, we must emphasize that the activities of the commission have been useful. At the same time, it is necessary to change the regulations on the commission. And this should become an obstacle so that the document intended for the members of the Academy does not become public knowledge any more”, declared then President of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Academician Alexander Sergeev.
“The changes that affected the commission a few years ago have, in my opinion, caused significant damage to its autonomy. There was excessive bureaucratization and it became more difficult for active members to engage in community service. The current situation, it seems to me, prevents us from responding effectively to social challenges and fighting against dangerous social delusions. Hopefully the situation will improve and the Commission will be able to openly criticize any manifestation of pseudoscience without censorship,” said Alexander Panchin, member of the Commission for Combating Pseudoscience, senior researcher at the Institute for Transmission Problems of information from the Russian Academy of Sciences.
As Academician Yevgeny Alexandrov, head of the Commission for Combating Pseudosciences, told RTVI, he learned about the reorganization of the commission through a letter sent by mail two months after the meeting of the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences from Russia. In early February, he personally met with the President of the Russian Academy of Sciences Gennady Krasnikov, discussed with him the work of the commission and announced his intention to leave his post, proposing a candidate for a successor.
“The fact is that recently there has been constant and continuous repression in all sections of society, including the Academy of Sciences. Therefore, what is said in words is one thing, but what is done is another. I have my doubts about these encouraging words from Kalmykov. As for the commission for combating the falsification of scientific research, I do not know what they will do with it, because it is only an enemy for them, because it is engaged in demystifying the false theses that many government officials have,” Aleksandrov said. .
