Translated material
Abstracts from the Higher Attestation Commission
For an external reader: you can find out about the structure and functioning of the Higher Attestation Commission (the highest certification commission) at the beginning of the publication of Alexander Muravyov 1 .
Now I am a member of the Higher Attestation Commission and his Presidium and at the same time the chairman of the RAS Commission to counter the falsification of scientific research 2 , which in the light of some recent events will have to build relations with the Higher Attestation Commission. Below - the fixation of my views on these topics.
VAK VS "Dissernet"
I have been working with the Higher Attestation Commission for 20 years, and Dissernet is not a matchmaker for me, not a brother or a colleague (without counting that in my youth I worked with my grandfather M. S. Gelfand). Nevertheless, almost from the moment of the emergence of “disserte” and his contradictions with the Higher Attestation Commission, his position was invariably more convincing to me.
The main reason for this is in the development of science established by the centuries of science to understand what types of argumentation lead to the correct idea of reality and which are not.
In a decent scientific discussion, the meaning of the personality (even more so - posts and titles) of a person who puts forward one or another thesis is negligible compared to the facts and rational argumentation. If in a mathematical dispute I will say that I am right, because I am an academician, and my opponent is a student, I will become a laughing stock in the eyes of my colleagues, even if in fact, I will be really right.
The decisions of the Higher Attestation Commission and its structures are an appraisal opinion of a group of persons sitting in closed mode, at best accompanied by motivating texts as an assessment nature. The main result of the work of Dissernet is not conclusions and assessments, but actually evidence that everyone can check. Here you have a scan, on the left-the text of the dissertation, on the right is the text of someone’s even earlier dissertation or article, please compare and draw independent conclusions. It is very difficult to challenge such an argument-except that these scans do not correspond to true texts, or find the correct link to the source somewhere, missed by the activist of Dissernet, but where are the objections that withstand an independent check?
I managed to attend many meetings when the opinions of the Vakov structures and “disserte” diverged sharply. In most of them, the decision was not made in favor of “Dissernet”, and I do not remember a single case when the argumentation of its opponents would look externally correctly and at the same time, with a further study, it turned out to be true. Of course, the talk that systematically arose that there is still a significant independent part in the dissertation work and there is even an element of novelty in scientific conclusions in this sense is not serious: after all, even if a person works honestly in production for five days a week, and on the weekend comes in pocket theft, then he is not clean before the law. Perhaps there were several situations when I humanly sympathized with the dissertations who did real useful work and cheated when it describes it, without properly dividing pieces of descriptions repeated in the dissertations of employees. These cases are more excusable if you do not tell that there was no formal violation.
On the other hand, I remember numerous situations when the will of the leading meeting “Dissernet’s Voice” M. S. Gelfand, shut their mouths, preventing the expert councils from objecting on false or obviously absurd statements, or refused to consider the material evidence ready for presentation, including for some reason ignored by expert councils. Perhaps this corresponded to some canons of bureaucratic subordination, but there was a thing that was unbearable for my “scentist” consciousness: official recognition of lies of truth and vice versa.
I believe that the written above explains not only my own attitude to the conflict, but also the fact that at present Dissernet enjoys significantly larger trust and moral authority among scientists not tied with a dissection sin than the Higher Attestation Commission.
The essence of plagiarism problems
There are two main streams of non -independent dissertations. The first is small -chip of amateur performances: authors, at their own peril and risk, who write off other people's works; shallow, but immoral pericide scientists who work as a factory of hack; The heads of the altatives, replicating the dissertations of their students, etc., as a rule, the Higher Attestation Commission shows proper principles in relation to this stream, unless a rather important person turns out to be a client.
A more difficult problem is the existence of dishesing factories, that is, the tips selling the statement of linden dissertations (and, possibly, working in conjunction with their manufacturers), and their support at higher levels of the certification system. Stolen texts are just the weak place in which they can be tracked. These factories themselves are not interested in the content of the text - they love their customers not at all for this and they would be ready to confirm at least a rewritten telephone directory, at least a pack of toilet paper, at all to do without a dissertation volume. But the design ritual requires that there is an interwoven pile of paper, on the first page of which it is written that this is a dissertation, and inside-words that should be somehow linked to its topic for the sake of caution. And if the company is respectable, with ties, and guarantees the passage of the case both at itself and at higher stages, then before the terrible “disserter” in the manufacture of such a stack, one could limit themselves to the easiest way - reciting from any other people's text on about the same topic (of course, in compliance with minimal precautions). With a healthy certification system, this would be impossible, therefore, there is any massive appearance of written off dissertations missed by one or another advice is a symptom of the disease. It is almost impossible to catch them in conspiracy or in the process of paying for services, but the literally coincided text is a possible place for a puncture.
At the same time, according to my impressions, in order for the entire certification system to begin to give a systematic failure, it is completely optional that most of its members (including the leadership) themselves participate in the work of such bad structures or have direct material benefits from them. No, specific participants or their direct conscious assistants can make up a relatively small percentage of actors of the system, and then the mechanisms of departmental or scientific-confessional solidarity, considerations of monopolism, mutual assistance, memories of their own small sins and other social tools that provide unacceptable tolerance are included.
Currently, the statistics on the written off dissertations have improved greatly, which, however, only suggests that it has become more thoroughly working, in compliance with computer detection, with the replacement of words with synonyms, with artificial typos, etc. Remembering the texts of the past times, I think that the fabrication of the dissertation could take two or three days, now Less than days in five to seven, you can’t do. However, all the same, this business should remain very profitable, and it is not difficult to assume that it blooms on the same plots as before, if they were not properly eliminated. I leave the conclusions to the reader.
My story
In 2006-2014, I was the chairman of the Expert Council (ES) in mathematics and mechanics. Coming in this capacity at the meeting of his section of the VAK Presidium (where I reported/commented on the affairs of our council), I was surprised at the regularly arising about the terrible problem of written off dissertations. In our science, everything was immeasurably well -fearing - perhaps not because mathematicians are so good and honest, but because it was much more difficult to compose and rehearse the defense of the candidate in mathematics (and even then to portray a connoisseur) than doctoral in many other sciences, and this does not attract anyone.
In these discussions, the problem of plagiarism seemed to be insoluble, in any case, it was solved by obviously ineffective means that are reduced to the wrapping of formal requirements for the formation of the case (which, of course, hits honest dissertations much more than for customers of factories, where these things can be put on stream). In general, I got the impression that the problem is very complicated, and I was glad that her solution was not included in the circle of my immediate duties. But somewhere around 2014–2015, information about the activities of Dissernet began to spread, and I was glad that the problem seemed to be able to solve, if not completely, then it was incomparably more effective than before. What I saw later is difficult to interpret differently than that, that the solution to this problem was actually not a sincere goal of the existing VAK system (considered as a single organism with its internal logic and ways of making decisions) - in any case, in terms of dissertations passing through solid “firms” or tearing the interests of serious people.
In 2016, I got into the Higher Attestation Commission and his presidium. He accidentally ended up at a meeting of his social and humanitarian section and became a witness to the discussion scenes with the participation of M. S. Gelfand, who represented the point of view of Dissernet, and opposed him with the defenders of the painted dissertations, representing one of the ES. Since the public triumph of lies oppresses me very much, I concluded about the need to go there regularly. Soon, Natalya Mikhailovna Novikova, who had previously been to my deputy in the ES in mathematics and also entered the Higher Attestation Commission, joined us.
The fact that we saw there has already been said, and this can be easily found on the Internet. In particular, the most terrifying sin of scientific work is not a theft, but a fake of results. Accordingly, the mortal sin of the certification system is an excuse for a deliberate fake. Regular observation of this fall greatly acted on my nerves. One of the textbook examples is an acquitted dissertation for the economy of the production of energy-saturated plants (that is, simply rapeseed), in which the tables of parallel studies on poultry farming were copied (with all numerical data), and even the gross income of rapeseed was calculated in the heads. This example is far from the only one, see Section 4 on the Dissernet site 3 , a significant part of the material of which I watched with my own eyes.
Of course, the main character in our group was M. S. with his loud voice, a quick reaction and involvement in the affairs of the “disserternet”. My excessive delicacy and compliance with the norms of table reading at these meetings still make up the subject of my discontent. Nevertheless, three people are much more difficult to call a random psycho, and I am sure that our presence with Natalya Mikhailovna was useful. Indeed, in my impression, after a while, optimistic changes began to occur in the atmosphere of the section. Although the members, obedient to the chairman, during voting, were still the majority, over time, more and more of them were convinced that it was not painful to tell the truth and could not even be scary, and support for lies and plagiarism in the presence of an alternative possibility expressed more and more moral discomfort; The more active part of the section was gradually getting rid of a sense of hopelessness, and the results of the vote more and more deviated in our direction, approaching the middle mark. And here it was adopted a resolution prohibiting the members of the VAC Presidium to attend meetings of "non-core" sections for them.
O "Specialists"
This was accompanied by a slogan that specialists should judge the dissertations. The slogan, of course, is true, but it is not related to this situation and to the administrative decisions adopted on its basis, and even contradicting it in the fact of application.
The first argument explaining the irrelevant of this slogan in this situation was already with A. Muravyov. The sections of the VIK Presidium themselves consist of specialists of various profiles, and it turns out that a professional chemist cannot evaluate a dissertation on pharmacology, and a dentist and a pathologist can because they belong to the same biological section of the presidium (and the chemist is “natural-scientific”). Similarly, as Muravyov writes, “ a dissertation in a mathematical economy can be more understandable to mathematicians than lawyers or historians sitting together with economists in the section in humanitarian and social sciences .”
What is even more interesting, in the fact of application, this decision turned out to be a directly contrary to the slogan. The fact is that, as part of the social and humanitarian section of the Presidium of that convocation, there were many decent and competent economists: member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Kuznetsov from IMEMO, Muravyov from the St. Petersburg branch of the Higher School; The dean of the economy of Moscow State University Auzan often came there (which was not included in the Presidium, but only to the Higher Attestation Commission itself, but not to let it go to the section - that would be too much). On controversial issues related to dissertations on economics, they all voted in principle, almost always supporting Dissernet, and not the expert advice of the Higher Attestation Commission in Economics. It would seem that if you follow the principle proclaimed above, then the rest of the presidium during the vote should have focus on the opinion of its specialized specialists. But no, the justification of all the “heads of rapeseed” was poured over over and over again by the VAK leadership to count the votes of lawyers, teachers and literary critics.
But this is not even the point. Unfortunately, the level of the problem and the concept of “specialist” in many of these cases are completely different. It is not necessary to convene a consultation from “specialists” - a textilesman, couturier and a designer - when it is about the fact that the king is naked.
The “specialist” convinces you that only the initiates can judge the merits (absent) outfits of the king, or justifying the heads of rapeseed, is not a specialist, but the coffin is welded. When robbing the almshouse, it is necessary to call a specialist in crackers, and not in charity.
Or imagine for a moment that you have stolen a car, you contact the police, and there you are required to describe the device of the internal combustion engine-after all, if you do not know it, then how can you say something about the car without being a specialist?! Would you think about a sinful thing, getting acquainted with such fantastic logic that such police officers are in informal relations with the kidnappers?
Not later than on July 5 of this year, arguing at a meeting of the Vacation Presidium on the fake of the dating of books, our, as it were, the main expert - V. M. Filippov himself - said that it is extremely difficult to reliably determine the fact of such a fake. And I, most likely, would also not have coped with such a task (or coped with great difficulty), even if it was about the book in my scientific specialty. But the professional “librarian” of the highest level (for example, a member of our commission V. A. Glukhov, who was not allowed to a meeting of the Presidium a week before), can solve this problem in two accounts.
Therefore, if we talk about the participation of “specialists”, then, of course, it is necessary to keep in mind specialists precisely on the content of the issue under consideration. If we are not about scientific content, but about the falsification of the publication of books-then a specialist bibliograph; If the search for primary sources is a source. And as experts are called by the ability to believe their eyes and not to remain silent that the king is naked, I do not know, but without them nothing happens at all.
Victor Vasiliev, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Facebook.com/victor.vassiliev.351/posts/2888915534482933
1 facebook.com/muravyev.hse.spb/posts/680946879032114
3 dissernet.org/publications/o_ec_vak_po_economicheskim_naukam.htm