"Dissernet" turned five years old

Mikhail Gelfand: "Academic degrees have become unfashionable. From the point of view of science, this is good"

Anastasia Dolgosheva, St. Petersburg Vedomosti

"Dissernet" is five years old this year. The best gift would be amendments to the Regulations on Awarding Academic Degrees. The community has been fighting for a long time for a controversial dissertation to be reviewed not by the dissertation council where it was awarded a degree, but by third parties.

The draft amendments have been submitted to the Government. We learned from Mikhail Gelfand, one of the founders of Dissernet, bioinformatics, Doctor of Biological Sciences, what we managed and failed to do over the five-year period, why plagiarists check foreign dissertations and how decent it is to force scientists to catch colleagues by the hand. But first, we asked the Deputy Director of the Institute of Information Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences for his opinion on the ongoing reform of the Academy of Sciences.

– Mikhail Sergeyevich, the FANO, from which scientific institutes groaned, was abolished, a separate ministry of science appeared... Is that good?

– I am one of those who believed that the Academy should be reformed: before the reform, the Russian Academy of Sciences was both the recipient of the budget, and the administrator, and the controller of distribution, and nowhere else are the national academies of sciences (except for the post-Soviet space) engaged in the distribution of money. It was necessary to change this. Another thing is that not the way it was done.

The construction, under which the FANO and the Ministry of Education and Science existed separately, was an anecdotal consequence of the incompleteness of the reform, which was started by Minister Livanov at the time. He wanted the ministry to be engaged in operational management in science, but the academicians reared up against him personally, and FANO was born as a kind of gasket – administrative powers were taken away from the RAS, but they were not given to the ministry either.

But if some bureaucratic permutations are treated by other bureaucratic permutations, then there is a "stuffing" that cannot be turned back. For example, the merger of the Russian Academy of Sciences with the Academy of Agricultural Sciences and the Academy of Medical Sciences, in my opinion, greatly lowered the level of the entire Academy.

- why?

– There are wonderful doctors with a scientific mindset, but in general, with all due respect, most doctors are not scientists. Doctors became medical academicians, as a rule, not for scientific merits, but for treating well.

As for agricultural sciences, not so long ago the Expert Council of the Higher Attestation Commission (Higher Attestation Commission. – Ed.) in veterinary medicine, I was considering a dissertation on the treatment of cows from endometriosis by acupuncture in the chakras. Well, it said "bioactive points", but "chakras" were also mentioned. It passed through the expert council with a bang, only the presidium of the Higher Attestation Commission managed to stop this dissertation.

To be honest, I am not very interested in watching all these processes right now... Even at the beginning of the reform, the Academy gnawed out a compromise for itself: yes, it lost the operational management of its institutions, but it was recognized as an expert function, and throughout science. But the presidium got carried away with the tug of war with FANO. He should have thrown this rope, and let the enemy get entangled in it, and grab a fresh clearing himself. But for this, in my opinion, the skills of the academy's leadership were not enough.

– Let's talk about interesting things then. "Dissernet" is five years old: is the activity on the rise or is it stalled somewhere?

– Undoubtedly, on an increasing scale.

Firstly, there is a significant quantitative increase in applications (for challenging dissertations. – Ed.) and the cases that we win.

Secondly, the community has no formal status, but de facto it affects the system of scientific certification. In particular, the Science Council of the Ministry of Education and Science consults with us from time to time.

Thirdly, other projects have grown up next to the "Dissernet". For example, Rosvuz is an anti–rating of universities with employees involved in the Dissernet. Rectors have addressed us before, "help us figure it out," but everything went into the sand. And now some measures are already being taken. Another project is on scientific journals: colleagues have created a "black" list of journals (with incorrect publications. – Ed.), and the editors are worried about their reputation, a lot of substandard articles have been withdrawn...

All these projects support each other. It happens that it is difficult for a "Dissernet" to get close to someone, because this person is well "anchored" in his university, but then magazines withdraw his scientific articles, and suddenly the gentleman turns out to be a "professor without articles".

Finally, we have more or less accustomed journalists to visit the Dissernet website when they write about new appointments. Now many people accompany the article with a remark: but "Dissernet" says something about this figure.

Well, some international activity has begun this year.

– Do you mean the proceedings with Tajik dissertations? And, by the way, why all of a sudden?

– This kind of story starts by accident. Some Russian dissertation council was digging up, as usual, and a sort of kublo was discovered... What are you laughing at? It's a term. From Dudintsev's "White Clothes"... Well, as a result of the excavations, these Tajik dissertations appeared: Tajikistan had an agreement with Russia, and the dissertations there were approved in our Higher Attestation Commission. As a result, President Rahmon, let's say, had a tough talk with his scientists.

By the way, it is useful to understand that there is also good science in Tajikistan.

Then Kyrgyz scientists looked at the Tajiks, decided, "why are we worse?" and asked: "And check us for plagiarism."

As soon as groups like ours appear on the ground, something starts right away. For example, the vice-mayor of Bishkek refused a degree without waiting for any claims. At one time, the deputy of the Moscow City Duma, Vladimir Platonov, withdrew his Doctor of Law degree when an application was already written for him.

Or there was, for example, a minister in the Moscow government, Alexey Komissarov. In general, a decent man, almost everything was clean in his dissertation for a PhD in economics, but when he became a minister, they "helped him finish writing" and framed him. He withdrew his degree. That's fair.

– What prevents a fair consideration of each application?

– The first barrier is that there are "untouchables": for example, as it turned out, some ministers.

The canonical example of the second barrier is the diss council of the Moscow Pedagogical State University, chaired by Professor Danilov. Several dozen controversial dissertations passed through him, and Danilov not only headed it, but was also the deputy chairman of the expert council of the Higher Attestation Commission on History. Until the Ministry of Education and Science dissolved the council in 2013.

The third barrier is that the application for the deprivation of the degree is sent to the same dissovet that awarded this degree.

– Why is this the way it is?

– I asked Dmitry Livanov about this: he was a minister at that time, I was a member of the Public Council under the Ministry of Education and Science. He had, for example, such a consideration: it is necessary to give the council the opportunity to correct its mistake or justify itself.

But it doesn't work. The diss council is dissolved in case of two violations, we usually deal with councils that have far more than one sin on their soul, and if they recognize the first one, then they will not live long – so why admit it? Moreover, the expert councils of the Higher Attestation Commission do not seek to punish dissenters who do not admit their mistakes: experts have to check everything in conditions of time shortage, it is not paid in any way, so it is easier not to dig deep.

There are interesting statistics. The native dissovet almost never satisfies our applications for the deprivation of an academic degree. And someone else's diss council, to which the case is sent, if the native is dissolved, agrees with us in 80% of cases.

Now it is proposed to exclude the norm for sending a dissertation for revision to the native dissovet, but so far the decision has stalled at the government level.

– I think there is another barrier. Indirect. I have heard how members of diss councils (and "strangers") were outraged: why are we scientists forced to catch someone by the hand?!

– This is cowardice. Garbage from the apartment can not be taken out, but then it will stink.

This is actually just another problem. It's hard not to turn into such a professional plagiarist hunter. For example, I purposefully make sure not to get pleasure from these revelations. This is an occasion not to triumph, but to comprehend.

If it's completely cynical, then we must admit: "Dissernet", among other things, cleans the site from smaller crooks for crooks who cannot be caught. For example, some write dissertations to order, but new, formally clean. For completely different money, since there are no write-offs. There is a wonderful person who writes doctorates in pedagogy, we know who it is, he introduces the same meaningless formula into each of his work with a sort of "Faberge stigma", and it can be seen in the dissertations of quite high-ranking officials. But you won't find fault.

– You told me why something is not working. And why, with all that, does something still work out?

– Firstly, I think the effect of your clearing works, the purity of which you want to preserve, and the question is how wide a clearing you consider your own. For some, this clearing is generally a Russian science. For others, it is a native diss council, where outrages are unacceptable. For the third – their own field of science, and what's going on in others – I don't care.

Secondly, the Vakov authorities understand that sometimes we insure against terribly funny nonsense...

– For example?

– Well, there was a story... However, it is not connected with the "Dissernet", but with me personally.

There is a concept of nostrification of diplomas (recognition of foreign educational documents. – Ed.). This is done more or less automatically. And here I am sitting at a meeting of the Presidium of the Higher Attestation Commission, a lady who defended herself at the University of New York in economics of the Kurgan region is being nostrified. It was strange to me that the University of New York is so interested in the Kurgan region. I dug around – it turned out that this New York University is located not in the USA, but in Canada, there is no campus, it is such a correspondence "diploma factory". It's very convenient: you get a degree there for a little money, and then you automatically nostrify with us and become a full-fledged Russian candidate of sciences. I made some noise... In general, this hole was patched up.

Here we were talking about successes... I was told a story about the director of a large combine, who stopped printing "Candidate of Economic Sciences" on business cards. Academic degrees have become unfashionable. From the point of view of science, this is good. Awards and indicators of professional status cannot be traded, because otherwise the status itself is devalued. What is the coolness of a man in a maroon beret, if such a beret will be sold on every corner?

In addition, people suddenly began to write critical reviews of abstracts and dissertations, which was not the case before, to submit reasoned applications for the deprivation of an academic degree themselves, without a "Dissernet". Previously, we were told all the time: well, why do you catch plagiarists, if everyone already knows that they wrote off? But I had hope: Dissernet removes the low-hanging cherries, analyzing only the obvious cases, and people will see how it works and start acting themselves, which to some extent will resume the work of reputation mechanisms. It seems that this hope is justified.

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