Antiheroes of Russian Science
Laureates and finalists of the Academician LIED Award – who are they?
Julia Korowski, XX2 century
Recently, at the fifth forum "Scientists against Myths", the most outstanding Russian pseudo-scientists were awarded for the second time as part of the Academician LIED anti-award. We believe that the country should know its anti-heroes, so we decided to tell more about the finalists and laureates of the LIE: who are they, what are they famous for, and what exactly did they do wrong? Experts – scientists, doctors and journalists helped us to understand the intricacies of pseudoscience.
Irina Ermakova
Winner of the anti–award "Honorary Academician LIED" - 2016.
Activist of the anti-GMO movement, Doctor of Biological Sciences, former employee of the Institute of Higher Nervous Activity and Neurophysiology of the Russian Academy of Sciences (defended her dissertation on "Compensatory-regenerative processes in intracerebral transplantation of immature nervous tissue"). Ermakova made a fuss with statements that GMOs allegedly harm animal health – but the results of the experiments were published not in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, but in a collection of conference materials. And the "article" in the serious publication Nature Biotechnology, which is mentioned on Ermakova's website, is just a letter to the editor. However, the fact that Ermakova has practically no publications in reputable journals did not prevent colleagues from criticizing her work for violations in the organization of the experiment and incorrect data processing. Ermakov explains the disfavor of the scientific community with the machinations of the GMO lobby.
The word to the laureate:
Alexander Panchin, Candidate of Biological Sciences, bioinformatician, member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Commission on Combating Pseudoscience, winner of the Educator Award comments:
Irina Ermakova has long been opposed to GMOs. She is also known for her ideas that men came from Amazons who were hermaphrodites, that is, bisexual. To quote her website: "It is possible that violent sexual crimes committed mainly by men are a manifestation of a complex of loss of generic function and, as a consequence, hatred of women who can give birth. The possibility of a sex change, as well as the fact that significantly more men than women want to change sex to the opposite, is probably also related to the origin of men from hermaphrodite women."
About GMOs, her position is uncompromising: according to Ermakova, GMOs can cause cancer, infertility and even a fictional "Morgellons disease", most similar to delusional parasitosis. And then she even said that GMOs are alien technology. Irina Ermakova's experiments, allegedly showing the harm of GMOs, were made with gross mistakes and criticized on the pages of Nature Biotechnology.
Grigory Alfeyev (Metropolitan Hilarion)
Winner of the anti–award "Honorary Academician LIED" - 2017.
Chairman of the Interdepartmental Coordination Group for the Teaching of theology in Universities. He believes that "religion should be taught in schools from 1st to 11th grade." In 2012, he spoke at a meeting of the Academic Council at MEPhI, after which a department of theology appeared at the Technical University (under the leadership of Alfeyev).
He headed the Joint Dissertation Council on Theology, which awarded the degree of "Candidate of theology" for work based on "personal experience of faith".
The word to the laureate:
"We have consistently defended the position of His Holiness the Patriarch on the need to develop theology as a separate branch of knowledge in which academic degrees are awarded. Intensive work allowed us to solve the issue. The corresponding order of the Minister of Education and Science has been registered by the Ministry of Justice and has already entered into force. At the workshops within our Interdepartmental Coordination Group, a proposal was developed according to which the industry will be formed according to the religious and confessional principle."
"Our task is to ensure that theological councils, regardless of which universities they open on, meet the same scientific quality criteria. This means further joint work with the Ministry, with the Presidential Administration, with the highest legislative bodies, including, possibly, in the field of rule-making initiatives."
"One of the features of our theological school (the name of the educational institution) is that it is focused on the standards that are accepted in the Russian education system today. And one of the priorities of our work is the development of theology as a science. Not so long ago, there was no such specialty in the list of scientific specialties in our country at all. Then, thanks to the joint efforts of not only the Russian Orthodox Church, but also other traditional confessions of our country, this specialty was entered by the Ministry of Education in the register of scientific specialties. And now we have actually completed the work on building the scientific branch "theology" in our educational system.
Elena Trufanova, PhD, Leading Researcher and Head of the Cognitive Theory Sector of the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences comments:
Science and religion are completely different ways of understanding the world, it is impossible to say which one is more important, they are simply different. Theology, in fact, using the external "form" of science, meaningfully belongs to the religious worldview.
Why is theology not a science? Because there are a number of criteria that the actual scientific research should meet. For example, one of the greatest philosophers of science of the twentieth century, Karl Popper, proposed such a criterion regarding what is considered science – falsifiability. This means that if we do not have, in principle, any opportunity to try to refute a certain theory that claims to be scientific, then we cannot consider it scientific. Because a truly scientific theory always allows for the possibility of refutation – for example, we can conduct an experiment that will demonstrate that our theory does not work, that it is wrong. Theology, from this point of view, is unfalsifiable – there is not even a hypothetical experiment so that we can prove that there is a God or that there is no God, or that one interpretation of the relation of the persons of the Trinity is true and the other is false. Accordingly, we have no choice between more or less successful theories, which means that there can be no development of such a "science".
The second point is that the scientific result should be intersubjective. This means that any other scientist or any other person with sufficient knowledge and technical means should be able to understand the proof or theory proposed by someone and be able to verify it. If we refer to the "personal experience of faith", then it is like saying "my heart tells me so" or "it seems so to me". A stranger's soul, as you know, is dark, so a study based on the "personal experience of faith" cannot be intersubjective.
And, finally, science is a universal social institution, the results of which should serve the whole of humanity, whereas theological research is always associated with a particular religion, that is, they are significant only for a certain social group – for example, the works of Christian theologians for Buddhists have no meaning.
The decision to include theology in the state system of academic degrees was absolutely absurd, I think it would be much more logical to award some similar degrees within confessional communities according to their own criteria.
Anatoly Fomenko
Finalist of the anti–award "Honorary Academician LIED" - 2016.
Mathematician, academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, earned the reputation of a pseudo-scientist thanks to the quasi-historical theory "New Chronology". Fomenko announces that world history has been falsified and offers to completely revise it. He believes that "the history of mankind with acceptable reliability is known only since the XVIII century," and "non-European civilizations" are younger than is commonly believed. Fomenko criticizes traditional dating methods, including dendrochronology and radiocarbon analysis, and declares that Veliky Novgorod was located in Yaroslavl. The "New Chronology" was criticized by historians, linguists, archaeologists, astronomers, physicists and mathematicians. The refutation of the theory was devoted to the collection "History and Antihistory", publications in the Bulletin of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the bulletin "In Defense of Science" and many articles. In 2004, Fomenko received the literary anti–prize "Full Paragraph" in the nomination "Honorary illiteracy" - "for particularly cynical crimes against Russian literature."
Word to the finalist:
"According to our reconstruction, the chronicle of Veliky Novgorod is an ancient metropolitan Old Russian region with the center in the city of Yaroslavl. At the same time, the city of Yaroslavl itself was the "Yaroslavl courtyard of Veliky Novgorod", or, as it was written in the chronicles, "Yaroslavl Yard". Sometimes Yaroslavl was simply called "Novgorod" in the narrow sense of the word."
"Above, we have already given evidence in favor of the idea that Japan was also colonized by the Rus-Horde in the era of the great = "Mongol" conquest. The military rule of the Samurai = Samarians = Samaritans was most likely the rule of the Horde, established on The Japanese islands after their conquest."
Comments Igor Danilevsky, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Chief Researcher at the Institute of General History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Head of the Center for the History of Private Life and Everyday Life, Ordinary Professor of the HSE:
Our "chronologists" (Fomenko, Nosovsky and followers – approx. XX2 CENTURY) prefer to refer not to sources and not to special studies, but to popular (and not always popular science) literature. But even in cases when they still quote sources or the works of professional historians, it is often not necessary to talk about correctness or scientific ethics.
Even when the authors simply retell a completely understandable and easily verifiable text, the reader receives (in their own words, however, referring to several generations of historians and chronologists who "tried to restore the true picture of the past" and did not pretend to world-wide discoveries) "by no means a story based on authentic ancient documents and unambiguously from these documents the resulting", and a rather free (or rather, simply perverted) interpretation of the source text.
It seems that the authors either do not understand what they have read (this is at least strange for an academician and candidates of sciences), or intentionally manipulate the facts, that is, they cheat. I don't know, maybe it gives someone pleasure, but to tell the truth, I'm not interested in reading "scientific" works, the authors of which are trying to trick you at every step.
The historical and geographical "discoveries" of our authors are a consequence of ignorance in the field of toponymy and etymology (which, by the way, is not at all a disadvantage for a specialist mathematician), as well as complete disregard for the texts of the sources on which they supposedly rely. The demographic discoveries of A. T. Fomenko and his comrades in the field of the history of our country are no less impressive. Historical figures are destroyed and multiplied by the arbitrariness of "chronological" mathematicians without any scruple, heroes – just in order to fit into the scheme – are called executioners, murderers are victims, and vice versa. Conscience is not mentioned here for the sake of a red word. After all, we are talking about our ancestors. Mathematics has no moral side. But it has a history. Identifying the righteous with the scum, the historian risks offending sometimes not one person, but the whole nation. Only having completely lost moral guidelines, one can freely operate with human lives and destinies – even in the past.
Igor Prokopenko
Finalist of the anti–award "Honorary Academician LIED" - 2017.
Journalist, TV presenter, Deputy General Director of the REN TV channel for documentary and journalistic projects, winner of six TEFI awards. In the programs "Territory of Delusions", "The most shocking hypotheses" and "documentaries", he tells quite seriously about reptiloids, aliens, flat Earth and other pseudoscientific theories. He publishes books on conspiracy theories, "secrets of evolution", immortality, "unknown civilizations" and insidious pharmacists.
Word to the finalist
Comments Evgenia Timonova, author and presenter of the popular science program "Everything is like animals":
"The author of a film about a flat Earth, as well as a series of pseudoscientific books published in a total circulation of more than 500 thousand copies. Winner of the 2017 TEFI Award in the nomination "The educational program"" (quotes the dossier of the anti–prize of the LIAR - approx. XX2 CENTURY). What upsets me most about the situation with Prokopenko is not even that he turns the very idea of popularizing knowledge and common sense upside down. It is not that the natural property of scientific theories to change gradually under the influence of new data, the conservatism of the scientific method turns into a paranoid "scientists hide!" in its presentation, discrediting the image of science in the eyes of a public far from it. Not that his videos and texts are weapons of mass intellectual destruction, hitting the most defenseless in terms of education and critical thinking layers who take these Bollywood militants at face value. It's not that he slipped from a good documentary once into a fiery trash. After all, he is an organic product of the existing system. The fact that a cow gives not only milk, but also manure, is normal. It's not normal when they try to feed someone with this manure. That's why the saddest thing in this situation is that such misuse of the product is encouraged and legitimized. The fact that in 2017 Prokopenko is making films about a flat earth is, of course, a little strange. But the fact that the committee of the main prize in the field of mass broadcasting declares it the best educational program, that's a little scary.
Olga Kovekh
Finalist of the anti–award "Honorary Academician LIED" - 2017.
Therapist, activist of the movement of "HIV dissidents". Advises HIV-positive people on health issues and dissuades them from treatment. Denies the existence of HIV, hepatitis B and C viruses and the benefits of vaccination, advises treating tuberculosis with badger fat, and cancer with lemon juice.
Word to the finalist
Elena Orlova-Morozova, Candidate of Medical Sciences, infectious diseases doctor, Head of the outpatient department of the Moscow Regional AIDS Center, Medical Director of the AIDS Foundation, comments on this.CENTER:
HIV-deniers deny the existence of the human immunodeficiency virus or a direct link between this virus and the development of AIDS leading to death. To make it clear – it's like a dispute about whether the Earth is still round or flat. Doesn't this seem like a wild argument to most people? So the theories of HIV deniers are also wild. The direct activity of Koveh, a person who calls himself a doctor and is photographed in a white coat, is much more harmful than it may seem. There are people who trust her and blindly believe. She's putting these people in mortal danger. Koveh calls for the rejection of treatment of HIV infection - a disease that leads to death without treatment. People under her dubious leadership stop being treated. The worst thing is that they stop treating their children. Both of them subsequently die of AIDS. This might not have happened if they had not been influenced by Koveh and others. The fact that the topic of HIV dissidence was raised by many media outlets and attracted the attention of those who can make decisions is very good. It's time to start talking about the course of HIV-deniers in the legal field.
Also read about the Academician LIED Award on the <url> website.
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