Is it possible to buy a title?

Less than half of the applicants for the title of academician from the RAS list can, with a clear conscience, be called scientists. State Duma deputies, heads of large companies, and even the Minister of Agriculture want to be academicians. It must be said that something similar has always existed, but from the moment they began to actively build a vertical, and the bureaucracy desperately grew fat and expanded, the interest of major officials and businessmen in all sorts of titles and regalia grew rapidly. And demand, as we know, creates supply.