Failure in the "diary"

In the summer of this year, the “Diary of a session of the Russian Academy of Sciences” was published in the “Bulletin of the Russian Academy of Sciences” under the title “The Inexhaustible Path of Knowledge of the Brain.” The session was the main part of the program of the General Meeting of the Russian Academy of Sciences, which took place in December 2009. With some delay after the publication of the Diary, we became aware of its very unusual feature: in the Diary, which is essentially a verbatim report, one of the reports and mention of its author in the list of speakers. At the same time, mention of this report in the speech of another speaker was also removed. Even though a lot of time has passed, the case is so egregious that it still needs to be reported.

The “victim” was the head of the Department of Neuro-Optical Systems, Center for Optical-Neural Technologies of the NIISI RAS, Professor Dunin-Barkovsky. His report was an overview of research on neural networks ongoing in Russia. I listened to this report and can testify that it was a conscientious review, without any emphasis on the speaker’s contribution to this science and, in general, without any criminality that could be heard by a specialist from another field of science. The report was well applauded and did not raise any puzzling questions or sarcastic comments. At the end of the session, Academician V.E. spoke. Zakharov. He spoke about completely different, rather sad things related to the scandal around Petrik. But in his introduction he praised the scientific session, in particular, saying that the important topic of neural networks was raised in Dunin-Barkovsky’s report, that this is interesting, since the methods of theoretical physics are applicable to neural networks, and it is a pity that the topic was not sufficiently covered at the session. All that remains of this statement in the Report is an impersonal complaint about the insufficient coverage of the topic of neural networks.

The author of the Report in the “Bulletin of the Russian Academy of Sciences” is listed as G.A. Zaikin, who most likely did technical work and could hardly have cut out everything about Dunin-Barkovsky on her own initiative. This is usually done by order or at the persuasive request of some influential person. The reason is obviously not in the content of the report, but rather in the attitude of a hypothetical influential person towards the speaker. Who this person is and what the speaker did wrong has absolutely nothing to do with the matter. Even if the speaker is the devil in the mortar, even if the report itself is terrible, its erasure from the Report is a classic case of forgery, and a shadow falls, alas, on the entire publication.

We are accustomed to the fact that sometimes reviewers reject articles due to personal issues with the author. This is also no good. But to erase the report from the verbatim Report along with its mentions is generally... However, there is nothing new under the sun. In the old days, mentions of certain personalities were cut out even from printed textbooks, images disappeared from photographs. Of course, times have changed, everything is repeated in the form of a farce and only causes a smile with its shameful pettiness.

Boris Stern