“And they threw caps into the air...”

On June 10–11, 2017, the next forum “Scientists against Myths - 4” was held in Moscow, bringing together more than 1000 people from different cities and countries. “I love listening to him,” the girl said to her neighbor during a speech by cosmonautics popularizer Vitaly Egorov. “Oh God, how cool he is,” another listener rejoiced at the doctor Yaroslav Ashikhmin who appeared on stage. “I read his blog all the time,” a third quietly remarked when bioinformatician Alexander Panchin gave a lecture. I walked around the back rows with a microphone - my job was to run up to listeners who wanted to ask questions to the speakers - and heard more than a dozen such comments. And not only from the fair sex.

The event itself began with the screening of another mini-film about Alexander Sokolov’s campaign on REN-TV. This time the popularizer decided to joke with journalists. So, he asked the artist Oleg Dobrovolsky to draw a gay penguinopithecus, and then showed the drawing to the correspondent and confidently said that people descended from Antarctic birds. By the way, I was the cameraman of this film - and it seemed to me that the journalist herself was not happy that she was working for REN-TV and that she had to record comments for Igor Prokopenko’s pseudoscientific programs.

After the screening of the film, Vitaly Egorov, aka Green the Cat ( Zelenyikot ) , gave a lecture . Just on June 10, 2017, the speaker turned 35 years old. And on his anniversary, the popularizer gave a fun and educational lecture on how the media promote various Martian obscurantism. All the sleep-deprived spectators instantly woke up, and a whole forest of hands rose in the back rows - just like in school, when the teacher promises an A for the best answer. But alas, due to the busy forum program, only a few could ask their question. The comparison with school, by the way, is not accidental: for the most interesting questions, the speakers gave popular science books as gifts.

The next lectures were given by explosion physics specialist Mikhail Bubnov and head of the laboratory of applied geophysics and volcanology at the Institute of Earth Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences Alexey Sobisevich (the former enjoyed speaking so much that he even composed a poem beginning with the lines: “When you look with a smile into of thousands a hall , You understand : the reward is found Here…" ). According to the organizers, these lectures were the most unusual for the event - at previous forums the presentations were mainly humanitarian. Nevertheless, there were no less questions for the speakers talking about the disaster in the ancient city of Mohenjo-Daro and supervolcanoes than for the Green Cat .

A short break began, during which the most occupied places were the bookstore (knowledge-hungry spectators bought books in stacks - one woman complained that she had just about to pick up Alexander Panchin’s Summa Biotechnology, when it turned out that all copies of the book had already been sold), a nearby KFC (the line for the restaurant started outside, and the waiters were wondering why a crowd of people were rushing for burgers and fries at noon) and a press wall, against the backdrop of which photographers only had time to take pictures of the guests.

The press wall depicted the scientific editor of the Anthropogenesis.ru portal Stanislav Drobyshevsky - the talented designer Irina Frolova painted him sitting on a dinosaur and armed with a Jedi sword. The funniest thing is that two steps from the press wall, Drobyshevsky himself answered questions from the audience - however, instead of a sword, he periodically held ancient skulls in his hands.

The second part of the forum featured archaeologist Pavel Kolosnitsyn, Egyptologist Maxim Lebedev and reconstructor of ancient technologies Nikolai Vasyutin. Pavel is the author of an excellent blog about archeology, posts from which regularly appear on the Anthropogenesis social networks. Particular fervor in the comments occurs when Pavel angrily criticizes black diggers. Even on the forum, one of the questions sounded something like this: “Black diggers are really bad, or maybe?..” As a competent archaeologist, Pavel answered that it’s really bad.

Talking about the speech of Egyptologist Maxim Lebedev, I will quote the forum photographer, who wrote a humorous blog post: “And as a girl, I could not help but react especially to Maxim Lebedev Ph.D., Art. n. With. Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, participant in archaeological expeditions in Egypt and Sudan... Oh Maxim... Oh man... The photo doesn’t convey it, but there is such... charisma. I'm missing. I sympathize and at the same time envy his students. Oh, well, it was also interesting about the tombs/pyramids.” On my own behalf, I will say that in our country I know only three Egyptologists who do an excellent job of popularizing their science. Maxim Lebedev is one of them.

Nikolai Vasyutin told in an interesting and detailed way how, with sufficient ingenuity, you can saw granite with copper and abrasive, like the ancient Egyptians. When the big break was announced, many spectators did not go to once again scare the KFC waiters with their numbers, but stayed to watch Vasyutin sawing a stone right on stage. Some were lucky enough to even participate in this process.

The first lecturer of the third part was machine learning specialist Sergei Markov, who spoke so interestingly and convincingly that even an Orthodox priest who was present in the hall later remarked in an interview: “In terms of content, I liked the speech about artificial intelligence most of all.” It also seemed to me that many spectators were happy to listen to the short report, told in a very accessible language. Even those who had never heard of a computer beating a human at Go liked it.

Alexander Panchin took the stage next. By the way, I had to catch a scientist and ask him to autograph several copies of “Summa Biotechnology” - so, different people came up to me twice and asked where I bought the books. In general, a life hack for sellers: you need to take more books about GMOs to the forums!

In his lecture, Alexander talked about belief in supernatural beings. A particularly strong reaction from the audience was caused by the mention of experiments in which believers and non-believers took part. “This speech seemed to me to be an attempt to get closer to an important issue - however, an unsuccessful attempt, although the topic itself sounded very promising,” the Orthodox priest later told us. “This is really my topic, I could talk a lot about such myths.”

All the other spectators liked the performance so much that during the break a dense circle of people formed around Sasha and actively bombarded the scientist with questions. “So, we have the next report soon, Sasha Panchin’s circle, please disperse,” Alexander Sokolov was forced to ask.

The last part of the forum was “medical” - doctors Yaroslav Ashikhmin and Alexey Vodovozov spoke at it. The first devoted his lecture to myths about medicines, the second to myths about toxins in the body. “Whose speeches did you like most at the forum?” — I asked the volunteer girls at the buffet table. “Those two doctors! The hall lay on them,” answered one girl. “Doctors, Sasha Panchin and an Egyptologist,” another smiled.

At the end of the forum, the organizer of the forum, Alexander Sokolov, asked those who came to the scientific and educational event for the first time to raise their hands. And - once again - a forest of hands shot up. “It warms my heart to see how many new people are joining our community,” Alexander exclaimed and encouraged everyone to come to the 5th forum in the fall. By the way, the second ceremony of presenting the “Academician VRAL” award (for achievements in the field of pseudoscience) is planned for the fall, so those interested can nominate candidates now.

In his commentary to TrV-Science, Alexander Sokolov noted that the idea of ​​holding large forums at which scientists would fight misconceptions came to him after the success of his first book, “Myths about Human Evolution.” According to Alexander, he realized that there is great interest in the topic, and such events are of interest to both science lovers and potential speakers.

hash tag #scientistsagainstmyths Read reviews about the forum on social networks using the .

From the editor : We will continue the discussion of the topics raised in “Scientists against Myths - 4” in the following issues of the newspaper.

Ekaterina Shutova, science journalist
Photos provided by the forum organizers