Dissergate - killing science in Russia
At the end of 2012, the Russian public suddenly became interested in the abundance of plagiarism in the theses of officials, politicians, legislators, and scientists and educators. From that moment on, a wave of scandals related to fake dissertations swept, which activists immediately dubbed dissertate.
At the end of 2012, the Russian public suddenly became interested in the abundance of plagiarism in the theses of officials, politicians, legislators, and scientists and educators. The fact of writing scientific dissertations for money by third parties using previously written master's and doctoral dissertations has ceased to be taken for granted. From that moment on, a wave of scandals related to fake dissertations swept across Russia, which activists immediately dubbed a disservice.
The first to "suffer" as a result of the dissertation scandal was Andrei Andriyanov, director of the Specialized Educational and Scientific Center of Moscow State University (MSU SUNTs) (Kolmogorov FMS), who had a PhD in Economics. Members of the FMS alumni club noted that the headmaster's dissertation thesis was not in the main libraries, and there were no articles in these publications.
In November 2012, the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation created commissions to check the Dissertation Council of the Moscow State Pedagogical University (MPGU). After some time, information appeared in the media about the presence of plagiarism in the qualification work of one of the leaders of Russian nationalists, Vladimir Tor. According to the conclusions of the commission, the university organized a “flow production” of fictitious dissertations. As a result of the scandal that broke out on February 1, 2013, Alexander Danilov, chairman of the dissertation council of the Moscow State Pedagogical University, was dismissed from his post.
At the end of 2012, the Deputy Head of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation Igor Fedyukin, who gained fame as one of the ideologists of the fight against plagiarism in dissertations, headed a commission to investigate such cases. As a result of her work, 11 people, including Andrei Andriyanov, director of the Moscow State University SSCC, were deprived of their scientific degrees. Several people were expelled from the Higher Attestation Commission of the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation (VAK), where all degrees are endorsed. It became a real sensation - before this happened no more than once every two years.
Actions aimed at detecting cases of scientific plagiarism have caused discontent among some State Duma deputies. At the end of May 2013, Deputy Minister Igor Fedyukin resigned, arguing that in this way he hoped to reduce pressure on the head of the Ministry of Education and Science Dmitry Livanov.
According to D. Livanov, every written off or simply poorly prepared dissertation is a bomb planted in the prestige of Russian higher education. “The prevailing atmosphere of tolerance for the low quality of education now does not allow counting on honesty and reputation mechanisms. We will have to maintain administrative pressure on the system for some time, maybe a short time,”the official said.
Mikhail Gelfand, a member of the commission of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation for the examination of dissertations, admits that the commission simply does not have time to check all suspicious scientific works. Now she has 80 of them under examination, so public activists are actively involved in the examination.
RESULTS OF DISSERGATE INVESTIGATIONS
According to RIA Novosti, the volunteers launched the Dissernet community website, where everyone can join in exposing fake dissertations. Among them are representatives of science, social activists and politicians. This work is headed by Andrey Rostovtsev, Doctor of Physics and Mathematics, Head of the Laboratory of Elementary Particle Physics at ITEP, former participant in the search for the famous Higgs boson using the Large Hadron Collider. The community hunts for "big fish" - plagiarists from the very top of Russia's political and scientific elite.
“This is not an idle question for us. Attitudes towards false dissertations divide society into unequal parts. Someone will say: well, a thesis was forged, and what's wrong with that? The main thing is that the person is good. But for scientists who have been writing their dissertations for years, this is a matter of principle,”says Rostovtsev.
The market for fake dissertations has evolved over the years, starting in the 90s, when Russian science fell into complete poverty and new, agile people who had no time to write, and a degree was needed to move up the career ladder, came into its ranks.
“Over the years, a whole network of“factories”for the production of fake candidates and doctors has been formed across the country,” writes well-known journalist and blogger Sergei Parkhomenko. - In the North Caucasus there are branches of the capital's universities, with all accreditations and licenses, the only meaning of which is to create dissertation councils ready to trade dissertations. There is no scientific education and no scientific work behind such a phony."
Despite the outbreak of dissertation scandals, you can still find firms on the Internet that write dissertation texts for money and help in their promotion and subsequent defense. They do not even hide the direction of their activities. The names of the sites speak for themselves: "DiplomVsem", "Dissertantam. Ru", "Zaochnik", "Dissertatus". Operators respond to inquiries around the clock.
But writing the text is only the first stage. Under the terms of protection, an applicant for a scientific degree must have a review from an opponent or at least one publication in a journal included in the VAK list. Naturally, not a single serious, self-respecting scientific journal, of which there are not so few in Russia, will publish fake scientific works. Therefore, demand creates supply. Recently, a lot of magazines have appeared in Russia that publish any work for money, without doing any verification of their originality.
The statistics are as follows: in 2001, the list of VAK journals was 640 titles, and in 2012 - 2267, that is, 3.5 times more. The publication costs 15–20 thousand rubles. But if it seems expensive to the client, then publication in a fake edition is offered, which imitates additional issues of real-life magazines. The circulation of such publications is low, only a dozen copies, since their only goal is to be presented to the dissertation commissions.
DISSERGATE: MORE STATISTICS
Rostovtsev says: “It cannot even be called plagiarism. After all, plagiarism is the theft of ideas or quotes. And then stupid copying of entire chapters! 50–70–90 percent is licked off.”
One of the latest disclosures of Dissernet is borrowing from the dissertation for the degree of Candidate of Legal Sciences of the Governor of the Tula Region Vladimir Gruzdev, made at the Department of Administrative Law of the Moscow University of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. It turned out that most of this work was copied from Pavel Vostrikov's doctoral dissertation in 1998 entitled “Organizational and legal problems of training, retraining and advanced training of civil servants”.
Here is what journalist Sergei Parkhomenko says about this dissertation: “This dissertation contains 182 pages. Of these, 168 were torn out in one piece from one someone else's work. The remaining 14 are distributed as follows: title page - 1 pc., Table of contents - 1 pc., And then "Introduction", either written by some unknown enthusiast specifically for this work, or trampled from some outside, third source, which has not yet been found. Terrible pity!"
Well-known academicians and even the leadership of the Academy of Sciences have already been involved in the dissergate. In particular, according to the newspaper "MK", we are talking about a member of the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences, until June 1, held the post of vice-president of the Academy, Gennady Mesyatse. For a long time he worked as a member of the Higher Attestation Commission (VAK), and from 1998 to 2005 he headed it. As the publication notes, the direct duties of the Higher Attestation Commission, among other things, include the issuance of conclusions of the Ministry of Education and Science on the presentation of future doctors and candidates for defense at the request of the dissertation council. It was the period from 1998 to 2005 in the Higher Attestation Commission that coincided with the largest number of scandalous defenses.
DISSERGATE: "ANALYSIS"
The scale of unbridled theft on the basis of Russian science is striking. But it is also striking that this has become a habitual norm of life for the intellectual elite of Russian society. Why has this phenomenon grown to such unprecedented proportions?
“Nobody expected that someone would check it,” says Andrei Rostovtsev. “Moreover, many of the dissertations were written back in the 1990s, when there was no Internet, and no one could have imagined that their texts would be available. That we are going to sit in a simple cafe and in a minute catch them forgery."
Where is the elementary social shame? Why should we keep the law only under the sword of Damocles' reckoning? However, reckoning is no longer frightening, because social fear has also been lost in Russia. It is not for nothing that at a time when the country is shaken by a series of revelatory scandals, a brisk trade in fake diplomas and degrees continues on the Internet.
In the West, with its developed skin mentality, the situation is different. Even an honored professor will be fired with a "wolf ticket" if plagiarism is found in his work. A system has been debugged for checking scientific papers for borrowing. In the United States, you cannot pass an exam at a school without a thorough check for plagiarism, and if a student is caught doing it, then he will never see a serious university, as well as scholarships in the future. Instant and unavoidable repression ensues - and an indelible stain for life. It is a shame to write off and steal here, because the value of a developed skin society is strict observance of the law. The law is not just an entry in a document. Here it is a clear guide to action, and no one would even think of breaking it. This is a feature of the developed skin mentality.
In Russia, the mentality is urethral-muscular, contradictory to the skin one, therefore, the skin vector at all times remains undeveloped in Russia, archetypal, when it is normal to steal whatever it is - five kopecks on the market or the fruit of someone else's intellectual labor.
In pursuit of momentary goals, we are losing Russian science, which was once the subject of our pride. Russian scientists have always been valued in the West. But what is happening now can be called sabotage, undermining the integrity of the state, only it happens from within, from the citizens themselves.
There is a dangerous tendency when dissertations are increasingly ceasing to be scientific works. In modern Russia, they provide an entrance to the highest circles of power and business. This is a definite step in a career, not a scientific research work. At a certain moment, an official, politician or legislator pays for the next academic degree, and this allows him to rise one step up.
The prestige of the scientific work itself is being lost. If money can buy any scientific title, then why pore over it for years? This strikes first of all on scientists - carriers of the anal vector, real professionals in their field, painstakingly doing their work in various research institutes. They lose the motivation to conduct real research, and the country loses genuine scientific results that could serve the public well.
Students write off their diplomas, candidates write off their candidates, doctors - doctoral. The system of higher education and science in Russia is discredited at all levels. Russia is losing one of its main priorities - science. And it's not about underfunding and embezzled grants, but about purchased titles and unpunished plagiarism.
We live in the information age. The Information Quartel is at its peak. In order to correspond to the time, it is necessary to fully develop the vectors of this quartel - sound and visual. The carriers of these vectors must become the intellectual elite of society, which will lead it on the way to the society of the future. What do we see in the realities of Russian life? Moral and moral degradation of the intellectual elite, the actual extinction of a quartet of information that was once elite in Russia.
The head of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation Dmitry Livanov admits the existence of many problems in his field. "It is necessary to return the normal meaning to such concepts as" universities "," professors "and" doctors of sciences ", - emphasizes the minister and speaks of the planned large-scale personnel changes in the field of higher education. "We need to make sure that the most talented come to us, because we want our children to be taught by the most talented teachers who have achieved something on their own and can pass on their knowledge."
Unfortunately, all these good messages may remain unfulfilled without knowledge of the mental mechanisms that govern society and man. Only system-vector psychology can provide tools for the development of the sound and visual vector, the intellectual elite of society, help them get out of the state of laziness and degradation; to set the correct priorities in society, based on the natural, natural mentality of the nation; to point out to each person the place in the social process where he can maximally realize himself for the common good.
The article used the materials of the agencies RIA Novosti, RBC.
