Linden Academies

I received a letter with beautiful official letterhead, which stated that in commemoration of my services to science, I had been elected as a full member of the New York Academy of Sciences. Wait congratulations. Firstly, this was 16 years ago. Secondly, I did not accept this election.

No, I am not Perelman, I was not offended by the hypocrisy of my colleagues and did not become proud, considering my discoveries above all awards. I respect the opinion of the scientific community. But the reward must really be a reward, the honor must be a real honor. In the attached description of the Academy, I saw that it consists of 20-40 thousand people. Therefore, they are not the most selective scientists. Further, it turned out that anyone can join, even schoolchildren. In addition, I was offered to buy my diploma for $40, and if with a gold edge and in a frame, then for $100. In addition, I need to pay about $130 a year in membership fees, and voluntary donations are also expected Academy. Well, multiplying 130 dollars by 20,000 - 40,000, we get an income of 2.6-5.2 million dollars. I am absolutely sure that this fund is used by a small group of people (it is quite possible that they actually spend it on the needs of science - conferences , prizes), the rest participate in financing this bunch in exchange for signs of prestige - the title of full member of the Academy of Sciences and diplomas with gold edges.

This public organization was formed in 1817 by a group of New York doctors, first as the Lyceum of Natural History, then it was transformed into the Academy and expanded its composition and its tasks, primarily to support science in New York. Prominent scientists agreed to be honorary members of it (they were members of many organizations). Later, the Academy realized that a resounding title had its own price in the market, and began to use it shamelessly.

Since I was not sure that there was financial abuse, I politely declined the election, citing the difficulty of paying membership fees in foreign currency. Which was true, since at that time the ruble was not freely convertible, and the amount of 100 dollars was too much for a Soviet scientist. But others considered it justified to sacrifice such a sum in exchange for signs of prestige, especially later, when the ruble began to be freely exchanged for dollars, and several thousand rubles began to be spent easily and freely... Not by scientists, of course (for them even now this is a large sum), and more pseudo-scientific figures, not noted for outstanding scientific activity, but often settled and successful in the lap of cutting the budget, funds, grants, government orders, etc. These desperately need high-profile titles to open the doors to government institutions, and who will figure out which academician is kicking the door - real or fake. Simply scammers joined, as well as various freaks - pseudoscientific maniacs, with panaceas for all diseases and water purification from atomic pollution.

And now at Voronezh University there is a whole group of professors who head departments and are members of the New York Academy of Sciences: V.M. Akatkin (philology), I.I. Borisov (philosophy), M.D. Karpachev (history), A.S. Kravets (philosophy), A.D. Pryakhin (archaeology), V.S. Rakhmanin (philosophy), I.S. Sharshov (economics). All of them are called academics, and, presumably, in New York they are well acquainted with their works. Directly a branch of American science in Voronezh.

But these are not all academicians from Voronezh. There are also academicians of the International Academy of Sciences of the Higher School (V.V. Gusev, professor, candidate of sciences), Ya.A. Ugai (prof., doctor of chemical sciences), Russian Academy of Natural Sciences (RANS) - the same A.S. Kravets, S.G. Kadmensky and others, the Russian Academy of Humanities - the same Akatkin, Karpachev, Kravets, Pryakhin, Rakhmanin, Sharshov, and Pryakhin - also in the International Slavic Academy of Sciences; geologist Bocharov - at the Russian Ecological Academy: another group - at the International Academy of Informatization, others - at the Academy of Commercial Sciences of the Russian Federation, at the Academy of Science and Practice of Production Organization of the Russian Federation. Moscow and St. Petersburg universities are older than Voronezh, but can hardly boast of such a constellation of academicians!

I took Voronezh University only as an example. You can take many others.

The fact is that we have an incredible number of public academies, amateur and self-proclaimed. There is the Russian Academy of Engineering, the Academy of Military Sciences, the Moscow Academy of Natural Sciences, the Academy of Nonlinear Sciences, the International Academy of Informatization (a certain Yuzvishin, an academician’s diploma cost $1000). Now there are more than a hundred of them, each with hundreds of academicians, many with more than a thousand. Academies began to be organized by neo-pagans and other sects (Academy of Trinitarianism). Books by these academicians are published with forewords by the same academicians.

When freedom of public organizations was declared, many scientists took advantage of this. The first impulse was a noble desire to contrast the ossified and affected by cronyism, nepotism and corruption of the state Academy of Sciences of the USSR with non-state organizations of scientists, similar in name and functions, but free from corruption and state mortification. Everyone knows how senior party leaders, whose published works were limited to editorials in Pravda, and heads of institutes favored by the authorities, entered the Academy of Sciences, while talented scientists were immediately rejected as ideologically alien to the proletariat and the party.

In addition, unlike the Union republics, Russian science did not have a republican academy, and with the collapse of the Union this became intolerable: a self-proclaimed republican academy was formed, which was soon merged with the All-Union Academy, seriously lowering the overall level of the academy.

Under these conditions, the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences and the Russian Academy of Humanities arose. At first, it included mostly serious scientists, but in the bustle of democratic enthusiasm, no one bothered to develop a serious selection and filter procedure, and very soon it turned out that, not being bound by such a procedure, each of the new academicians pulled behind him his supporters and friends, those - their own, and very quickly these organizations turned into shapeless masses of pseudo-scientific people, not at all preoccupied with scientific tasks.

Among the members of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences are the notorious G.P. Grabovoi, who resurrected the dead and was convicted of fraud; his colleague P.P. Garyaev, the founder of the occult “wave genome theory”, who claims that shaking the air with speech affects DNA, etc. and that it can be used to heal the sick; A.E. Akimov and G.I. Shipov - discoverers of “torsion fields”; V.A. Chudinov - decipherer of Russian writing in the Stone Age around the world; IN AND. Petrik is the owner of a joint patent with Speaker Gryzlov for nanofilters for water, which was handed to the state for a colossal sum of trillions of rubles, but does not purify water, etc. The apotheosis, which showed the decline in the scientific level of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, was the award of the title of academician to Ramzan Kadyrov, who had not in the least glorified himself in the field of natural sciences.

And none of the academicians of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences resigned their title of academician of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences! This means that it is not science that is important to them, but the crusts themselves, regardless of their connection with the scientific community.

“If you go deeper into history,” said academician B.V. Rauschenbach, then a cohort of “immortals”, i.e. academicians, appeared in France during the time of Richelieu, and at that time forty people were members of it. Our Academy of Sciences - the former Imperial, former USSR - was created at the request of Peter I, albeit after his death. It must be said that at all times, the Russian Academy has always tried to maintain a decent level, so that, if possible, at least not fools would gather there. But fools also want to become academicians, so, taking advantage of our current confusion, they began to form their own academies at the vocational school level, which I call “cat” academies. Energetic people who understand

that they will never be elected to the Academy due to a lack of, say, gray matter, they invented academies of natural sciences, academies of unnatural sciences, academies of zoology, sociology... Thus, they all seem to become academicians and sign documents and letters “Academician is such- then..”, which, to put it mildly, causes a smile, since the Big Academy does not take them seriously. Only full members of this Academy of Sciences can be called academicians, and “cats” can call themselves full members of such and such an academy.” And the academician sarcastically adds: “They themselves are uncomfortable seriously being called academicians, but among themselves they gladly call each other that, simply shaking the air with their so-called title, and even pay to be “academicians”! We at the Academy receive a salary, and they pay their academies only to sound. One day they happily informed me that I had been elected a member of some “cat academy” and demanded 100 rubles. for the ticket and for the entry. Naturally, I didn’t pay anything and didn’t receive any documents, but it’s much clearer, everything is clear.” (Rauschenbach B.V., Postscript. Literary entry by I. Sergeeva, M, “Agraf”, 2002, pp. 281-282).

This is a common phenomenon. Against the backdrop of a colossal decline in the level of our science and our higher education, which is associated with a radical reduction in funding (money is spent on other things) and miserable salaries for researchers and professors, we preferred a virtual “getting up from our knees”, in words. All pedagogical institutes were called universities, all schools were called academies, all vocational schools were called lyceums and colleges, and so they raised science. And almost all scientific societies are, of course, academies of sciences. In terms of the number of academicians, we are now ahead of the rest. But citations in prestigious foreign indices have not increased, but, on the contrary, have fallen to the level of African countries, and there have been no more discoveries eligible for a Nobel Prize. There were only a handful, and they remain so. And the world “Millennium Prize” in mathematics was awarded to Grigory Perelman, who retired from the Mathematical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences and lives on his mother’s pension.

Countless academies have turned out to be fake in the sense that there is no scientific authority behind their membership. Only diplomas that can now be printed of any type and in any quantity. In my opinion, the fact is that there are titles, titles and awards that, in order to have weight and for normal functioning, must be protected from unfair copying and imitation. These are the titles of Hero of Russia, People's Artist, Professor, Academician. The introduction by any society of the title of Hero of the new Russia would inevitably be confused with the main one and devalue it. A professor is a professor, and there cannot be a professor approved by the municipality of even a very prestigious settlement, say Rublyovka. Professor Rublevki is nonsense. An academician is only one who has been elected to the large Russian Academy of Sciences. Branch state academies (including agricultural, medical, pedagogical, etc.) should provide titles that would be sharply different from the titles denoting membership in a large Academy (say, endo-academician or second-academician, etc.); all other Russian academies are not academies at all, but scientific societies. And it’s time for them to take off their pompous names.

This would undermine the puffing up of people in search of material gain and would stop the malicious use of fake diplomas, which cannot be called fraud simply because they are actually issued by officially recognized academies. The fraud is hidden here: it is in the very existence of scientific societies that have proclaimed themselves academies and thereby equated themselves to a state institution, since it traditionally has great privileges in our country and guarantees the high scientific rank of those involved.

These are like badges, very similar in appearance to orders. They are usually forced to remove them. And this is not a violation of democracy, but merely a defense of order.

Standing in the long corridor of St. Petersburg University, lined with bookcases and memorable images of scientists, I look and cannot remember which of them was an academician and who was not. And I will say as a consolation to the members of the disavowed academies: it is important to be a scientist, it is not necessary to be an academician. Somehow I will get over the fact that I was not an academician. Mendeleev was not an academician - he was promoted in the elections. And Propp was not an academician. And Dyakonov was not there. Let's let our descendants decide which of us is of what rank. For some a statue in a university corridor, for others a bust, for others an oil portrait, and for others oblivion. I'm afraid that the most magnificent collection of academic titles will not save you from the latter.

Lev Klein