"The environment in which the same dragon has grown." How the degradation of scientific institutions pushed Russia to war

The co -founder of the Dissernet community, the physicist Andrei Zazakin read a report in Vilnius called "How to revive the institution of scientific reputation in Russia?" According to his thoughts, plagiarism in dissertations and trading by scientific degrees not only corrupted the academic environment - corruption in Russian universities is responsible for the rampant of obscurantism, which has become a prologue to invasion of Ukraine. "Mediazona" recorded the main theses of the report.

“Dissernet” calls himself “a free network community of experts, researchers and reporters who devote their work to the exposure of scammers, falsifiers and liars” in the academic environment. The community was founded in 2013. Over the years, it has discovered plagiarism in about 12 thousand dissertations and a forgery of data in two thousand. There were many officials among the authors of these dissertations.

So, in 2017, Dissernet sought deprivation of the degree of Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky. But then the majority of members of the Presidium of the Higher Certification Commission (VAK) voted for Medinsky to remain a doctor of historical sciences.

"Convenient channels to solve the questions." How the system of scientific certification in Russia works and what is wrong with it

The Higher Attestation Commission, which did not deprive the median degree, despite the fact that in its dissertations dozens of pages are copied from other people's work, formally the main of the institutions of scientific certification in Russia.

The issue of awarding and deprivation of scientific degrees is considered at three levels: the dissertation council, the expert council and the Presidium of the Higher Attestation Commission. Andrei Zazakin is convinced that this whole system does not work today.

“Each time, these are terribly large instances: in the dissolution of at least 20 people, expert council - 50 people, one session of the VAK Presidium - about 25-30 people,” he explains. “All this leads to erosion of responsibility, which creates convenient channels in order to solve the questions.”

According to the co -founder of Dissernet, often a statement about the deprivation of a scientific degree is considering the same dissertation council that appropriated it to an unscrupulous applicant.

“When the“ native ”council considers the application for the deprivation of the scientific degree, we see that he is about 2: 1 in relation to the dissertation to justify,” Slezakin schedule shows. - And this, of course, is complete nonsense, because the “native” advice considers the case against itself and decides whether to punish itself or not. But when there is no external pressure on the advice, on the contrary, in only one fifth cases it behaves dishonestly. That is, how many people who are ready to call white among our scientists who are ready to call? Answer: One fifth. ”

The corruption of individuals in the scientific environment is also an important part of the problem, but data on the trade in scientific degrees in the country indicate the corruption of entire advice, says Zazakin.

“In Russia, approximately 2,500 dissects, of which 300–350 were real advice,” he explains. - That is, this is the first hundred. That's exactly why the plagiarism is concentrated: if we dealt with accidentally deceived or accidentally deceived people, then plagiarism would be simply smeared with an even layer around the country. Dissernet discovered 12 thousand plagiats for about three thousand tips - well, you would have four bad dissertations for the Council. But this is not so: in some tips you will have several hundred fake dissertations, and in some - zero. ”

According to the researcher, out of 20 people in the usual dissertation council, no one reads the work except those who especially need it, ”and the commission is made by a commission of several, for example three, people.

“In the expert council, one speaker decides everything, and the rest have neither opportunities, nor strength, nor duties to delve into something,” Slezakin continues. - Sometimes they do not even have access to the materials! As, for example, a meeting of the Expert Council is arranged: the material is laid out - who managed, and took the material. According to it, he writes a conclusion. Imagine, if everything was arranged in court: there are a case who received the court, and a judge who likes or does not like any accused simply comes and takes his case. So, at least in some tips it was arranged that way. ”

The Presidium of the Higher Attestation Committee in the certification system “does not solve anything at all,” the co -founder of Dissernet is sure. According to him, members of the Presidium either do not allow to familiarize themselves with work in advance, the quality of which they should evaluate, or, "on the contrary, they give all a thousand sheets and offer to evaluate within one and a half minutes, while the speaker is in the case."

“We tried to start such a practice: before the Higher School of Higher Attestation Commission, we posted full materials of important cases on the Dissernet website, in which the battles could arise,” recalls Zayakin. - But it turned out to be completely useless. If the presidium is not waking up, then the ratio of votes will be, for example, this: ten - for the position of the authorities and zero or one - for the position of common sense. And if you try to wake the presidium, that is, to convey to it what nonsense they are going to bring to them and for which they will be invited to vote, the ratio of votes will be ten to five. With all the desire [in the Higher Attestation Commission] it is impossible to gain the normal majority of the votes of those who would belong to a decent science. The systematic cleaning of the presidium went on for many years, from there they removed those who really were for science, and replaced them with functionaries - chiefs, rector, directors. ”

The situation is complicated by the fact that the vote of the VAK presidium takes place in a closed mode, and even if a fierce struggle goes inside, it is impossible to publicize it.

“Roughly speaking, in the era to Medinsky it was still possible to at least try,” says Zayakin. - And then it became worse and worse, and this struggle for voices lost its meaning until it completely lost it. As a result, the presidium became an apparatus for stamping [decisions] of the Expert Council, but periodically even began to spoil the decisions of expert councils. If earlier it was hoped that the Presidium will correct something in a positive direction, now quite often Vladimir Filippov, the chairman of the Higher Attestation Commission, turns the presidium without much work, and the decision to deprive the degree remakes to the decision to leave this scientific degree. ”

The Ministry of Science and Higher Education in Russia, according to Zayakin, “pretends to be not involved in this chaos and a mess”, and does not even follow the formal legality of the scientific certification of decisions.

From charlatanism to obscurantism. How academic corruption is associated with propaganda and war

“Having read thousands of dissertations, mainly in social sciences, and after listening to hundreds of speeches of economists, lawyers, political scientists, teachers, philosophers at the dissertation councils in justification of theft, we began to conclude that trading by scientific degrees is the smallest of evils,” the report said in Andrei Zazakin. - It is much worse, it is much more dangerous to rejection of rational thinking, or simply obscurantism, which many representatives of public and humanitarian industries are given out of scientific knowledge in their speeches, expert opinions and articles. The level of this obscurantist can be compared with how if the geocentric system of the world suddenly began to teach at the physical faculties. ”

Zayakin calls this a “hypothesis of uniform stupefy” of the social sciences and emphasizes that he specially investigated the texts of the dissertations of Russian humanities defended until 2014.

“Conspirological discourse begins to generate what will penetrate into state propaganda over time and become the mainstream from state television channels. This whole story about the injection of the so -called "Russophobic sentiments" in the countries of the former USSR, about the fact that liberals are enemies of the people, about the so -called "anti -Russian forces" and opposition to them - all this is monitored in dissertations much earlier than the unified continuous stream of state propaganda. “Russian pseudo-pseudologists resolved the Ukrainian issue for a long time,” says Zazakin and gives several quotes of dissertations successfully defended in the 2000s.

“The term“ Ukrainian fascism ”is justified due to the following considerations: firstly, it reflects the specificity of the phenomenon and prevents the reduction of Ukrainian fascism to“ universal ”, or abstract, model of fascism; Secondly, this term indicates the essence of the phenomenon, in relation to which the national, historical and socio-political characteristics are relevant. ”

From the doctoral dissertation of Alexander Prokhorenko “Philosophical Rossiyed Studies in the ideological polemic of the corruption emigration”, 2006

“The most perhaps the patriots-historians are most intended, understanding how deeply in recent years our domestic history has been distorted by“ scientists ”-frank Russophobes.”

From the doctoral dissertation of Konstantin Koltakov “Socio-philosophical analysis of the characteristics of the relationship of pedagogical education and society”, 2002

"The main feature of modern ideology in Ukraine and the dominance of Ukrainian nationalism of Galicia is the sense of anti -Russian."

From the candidate dissertation of Vadim Orlov “Political and legal foundations of the integration of the CIS states: problems, development paths”, 2002

References to the “Dulles plan” as a genuine document, mentioning the Bilderberg club as a powerful force that secretly affects world policy, love for the phrases “Orange Revolution” and “World Government”, reproaches in “Prophary of homosexuality” - Reservoin includes two dozen such cliches, the appearance of which in the past expert verification He calls the works of important "indicators of pseudo -nouses." According to the researcher, these ideologems issued for scientific terms primarily indicate a “lower character” and marginality of work.

“The dissertations [protected until 2014], pouring the terms“ anti -Russian ”,“ anti -Russian ”,“ anti -state ”,“ antipatriotic ”in context, which involves at least subnoculation and addiction, are measured in thousands,” says the co -founder of Dissernet.

In his opinion, this stream of pseudoscientific texts shows, "how much the Russian philosophical, sociological and historical community was already ready to swallow these works and subscribe to them." Zayakin finds it amazing that such dissertations could generally receive expert approval.

“Just this system of collective examination - it would seem that people should read [work] and give their opinion, and not only to hear - and it speaks of the involvement of a significant part of the community in aggressive discourse and the creation of fakes about Ukraine, even if these texts were written by representatives of the minority. But the rest read it and approved! And in this, of course, there is a terrible fault of the Russian socio-humanities, according to my estimates, the same dragon grew in this environment, ”Zazakin sadly states.

Separately, he mentions the sphere of forensic examination, where the low qualification of the authors adversely affects the quality of the investigation and court decisions. The restoration of the institution of forensic expertise in Russia, Zapakin at the end of 2022 devoted his previous report .

“As a rule, people who do examinations claim to be considered specialists in a particular field, and can confirm the fact of specialization by scientists,” explains Zazakin. - It cannot be said that a scientific degree is everyone's private business. You received it at some kind of fence university and live to yourself. No, the scientific degree remains in general civil significance for the purposes of legal proceedings. ”

And now what to do with all this? The sanitation of science and education in Russia of the future

The corrupt science and pseudoscience give rise to conspiracy, aggression and propaganda, “sooner or later they come out of their purely academic reclusion and begin to metastasize to other areas of activity,” states Andrei Zazakin.

“And it is clear why: every person who wrote such a dissertation about, sorry, sans, Ukrainian fascists or malicious pharmacos, who sleep and see how to ruin Russia in the West, he has dozens of students and hundreds of students who listened to his lectures,” the researcher says. - And such a poisonous pseudoscience is contagious. Everyone passed through Russian universities and then carried this obscurantism into broad masses. Well, it is not necessary to explain further: how the notorious propaganda and aggression in our heads give rise to war, we are now reading news from Russia and are surprised at how all this can happen. Therefore, the pathos of my report is that the sanitation of science and education is necessary that in Russia the future, if and when it comes, what has already happened. ”

“Cleaning the sources of ideological infection” should be carried out in the early 1990s, when they were concentrated at the departments of ideological objects-scientific communism, dialectical materialism and the like, Slezakin is sure. “The fact that they were not cleaned then is a huge mistake of the reformers,” he said.

The co -founder of Dissernet emphasizes: it was not pseudoscience that gave rise to a war, but it became "one of the distant factors that greatly increased the likelihood of its offensive." Zayakin warns that if Russia has “another historical chance” in the future, an academic environment will require a thorough sanitation, and offers several measures.

Firstly, in the institutions of scientific certification it is necessary to get rid of "collective irresponsibility."

“These should be not faceless collective bodies, but specific professors who signed or substantiated a specific recommendation that risk with their own name and reputation,” says Zayakin. “Of course, all this should constantly be born.”

The reorganization of the scientific sphere, according to Zapatin, will require not only the democratization of universities and scientific institutes, but also the prohibition of teaching for scientists compromising themselves. In particular, for authors of dissertations and forensic examinations with identified plagiarism or falsification of data, he offers a lifelong ban on work at universities.

The supervisor, reviewer or member of the dissertation council, admits Zasakin, can accidentally “oversleep” plagiarism, but when this happens systematically, the sanctions should be the most strict.

““ Dissernet ”is already ready to prove who was associated with the trade of fake degrees at universities,” says Zazakin. - On a large array of data, we showed that the more plagiarism, the less scientific content. But this is a computer analysis, but it is necessary to verify the data through living people. It is simpler, cheaper and more reliable than trying to retroactively analyze the entire scientific heritage of scientists. And then to act in accordance with justice, the law, the principle of the inspectivity and other things that will proclaim in its decisions well, for example, the European Court of Human Rights. After all, there are people who are clearly and systematically participate in this, and there are those who participated by accident, sporadically and at some point! Although I do not really believe in the urge. ”

In the future, Russia will have to ensure a mass revision of decisions on the assignment of academic degrees, as well as the sanitation of regulatory acts.

“Some things are not decided by the replacement of bad people with good ones, they can only be resolved by the elimination of obvious conflicts of interests and obvious inconsistencies laid down in the structure of the organs that should be responsible for something,” says Zazakin. - No matter how and whoever the scientific degree was awarded, there should be a system that controls this. The university should be confronted with a choice: either this scientific degree is canceled, or it is faced with a possible abolition of the right to award academic degrees. ”

Interestingly, the percentage of false dissertations in jurisprudence and economics in Russia is noticeably greater than in other sciences, the researcher notes. This is due to the career advantages that a scientific degree gives in the civil service and, in particular, in power structures. “It is obvious that neither judicial, nor prosecutorial, nor police careers should depend on obtaining the degree of candidate of legal sciences,” says Zazakin. “That is, the influence of the dissertation on the general degree status is unacceptable and should affect a career only in the academic sphere.”

At the end of his report, Andrei Zayakin answered the question of why to discuss the future of Russian scientific institutions now - against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine and other “apocalyptic events”.

“Then, so that in Russia there is no anti -democratic relapse,” he believes. “Because only intellectually stable, not prone to obscurantism, conspiracyology or rejection of rational thinking, the country will be safe for its neighbors.”

Editor: Dmitry Tkachev