EDITORIAL

NEW TIMES, OLD SONGS

A few months ago the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) was reviewing the work of its recently-created Commission for the Struggle Against Pseudoscience and Falsification of Results of Scientific Studies.¹ Having heard and discussed a report by E.P.Krugliakov, Full Member of the Academy and the Chairman of the Commission, the Presidium approved of its activities, supporting the conclusions and proposals of the speaker. The main troubles of the present situation in the country that disturb the elite of Russian science are uncontrollable pseudoscientific publications in the mass media, emergence of "public academies", and penetration of pseudoscience into the RAS itself.

Dr. E.P.Krugliakov called on his colleagues to "crush the Hydra of pseudoscience!" "The place must be made too hot for the ignoramuses who dare to speak in the name of science!" Both the President of the RAS, Dr. Y.S.Ossipov, and members of the Presidium who spoke after Dr. Krugliakov, have supported his approach to the questions under discussion. True, Academicians A.L.Yanshin and E.P.Chelyshev expressed their concern that in the heat of the struggle against pseudoscience one could "throw out the baby with the bath-water... [that is] obscure or unstudied phenomena that could be easily regarded as non-existent." But their colleagues have paid little if any attention to this warning.

The impression gained from this discussion is rather joyless. Seemingly, the Russian academic elite still cannot understand that they are now living in a different world as compared to that before 1991. A newspaper under capitalism differs radically from a newspaper under socialism ("a collective organizer and propagandist") and the Academy of Sciences itself also differs. Retaining its functions as the center of pure science in the country, it is already deprived of the share of the controlling and ideological functions that had been delegated to it by the Party and State authorities of the former USSR. There is absolutely no sense in trying to persuade newspaper editors to inform the readers in their publications only about "scientifically proved" facts. At present even the official mass media do not care a hang for what had once been academic censorship of some questions (the UFO problem included), to say nothing of privately owned journals and newspapers. Just as much, "alternative academies" will also be created, irrespective of the RAS's opinion of this process and with very different intellectual standards (as may be predicted and as one can already see)—from definitely high to, alas, extremely low.

The question whether it is for bad or for good is rather meaningless. This is an objective fact and objective facts have always been the air of true science. The former Soviet system of institutionalized science had many advantages (as compared with the Western one) and no less disadvantages. When the State owns everything, such a structure as a state-maintained Academy where the interests of the State and of Science are brought into concord of a sort is certainly an advantage. Hence the great successes of the USSR in physics, chemistry, cosmonautics, and some other fields of knowledge and technology. But the evident asymmetry of this concord (the State elite is "more equal"), coupled with the absence of the freedom of speech, is a big shortcoming that repeatedly led to failures in mastering advanced scientific directions of research (Lysenkoism instead of conventional genetics; defining cybernetics as a "reactionary pseudoscience"; the Chernobyl disaster; etc., etc.)

It does also seem that members of the Russian Academy of Sciences worry seriously that they will have to share with "public academies" the budget means allocated to science. All these propagandists of pseudoscience have, in the view of Academician N.A.Plate, one and only one purpose—"to grab a slice of the budget cake". Games with scientific degrees and diplomas are, of course, also blameworthy, but infringement upon the holy of holies cannot be tolerated at all!

Thus, everything appears to be clear: reactionaries from the Academy are dreaming to bring back the past, where they had both more power and more money. Many Russian enthusiasts-ufologists are treating the activities of the Commission on Pseudoscience in just this way—the more so, that ufology was also kicked, even if briefly, in E.P.Krugliakov's speech. One cannot say that these reminiscences were completely lacking in the academical discussion around "pseudoscience". All these "Hydras" and "the place must be made too hot..." are certainly echoes from the past bearing rather emotional than informational content.² But it would be utterly unfair to reduce the problem to a sort of historical nostalgia. It is in fact both deeper and harder-to-solve.

First, the question of funding "normal" scientific studies in the current economic situation in Russia and (to an even greater extent) other CIS countries is very important and far from having been solved. But pseudoscience is hardly the main obstacle for that.

Second, a monopoly on truth, as has been more than once demonstrated by history, is no guarantee of correct decisions. The system of checking for high quality of scientific results developed by science is one of its most significant achievements, but taken alone it is not always sufficient to choose between competing theories, much less between competing research strategies.

One of the important components of this quality control system—the mechanism of selection of scientific ideas—works sometimes "too symmetrically", cutting off both ends of the frequency function—"too silly" and "too original" ideas. That is the reason why scholars even in rich countries, where science is financed much better than in the Community of Independent States, feel the need to form alternative scientific communities, whose research standards combine the "ban on silliness" with permissiveness as regards innovative ideas. Such is, in particular, the Society for Scientific Exploration established in the USA some twenty years ago.

Certainly, to combine rigorousness with openmindedness is not so simple; it is far easier to throw up one's hands tragically, appealing to crush the "Hydra of pseudoscience". But in Academician A.L.Yanshin's warning about the "bath-water" and the "baby" one can see much more true scholarly erudition and culture than in all these lamentations.

Does all the above-said mean that there exists no pseudoscience at all? Certainly not—although, to my mind, it is not worthy of this name, being thereby promoted to a higher rank than it deserves. One certainly can take out a patent for the discovery of the "informationally-energetic multi-manifestation on Earth and in near space of a non-human intelligence"³ — but has it anything to do even with pseudoscience?..

On the other hand, the social roots of "true pseudoscience" are extending not only into what "pseudoscientists" "wish for, but are not capable of", but also into what "true scientists" "are (perhaps) capable of, but do not wish for". Participating in the discussion on pseudoscience, Academician A.S.Spirin appealed to his colleagues "to popularize scientific achievements interestingly and in a simple form—that alone would be the best way to struggle with pseudoscience". This is a sensible idea indeed, but even more sensible would have been another appeal: study everything unknown in the scientific way, and not thrust your heads into the sand. The refusal of science to investigate those real phenomena that are poorly "caught" by the "nets" of scientific theoretical notions and research equipment (such as UFOs and psi-phenomena) is the best possible nutrient medium for pseudoscience. After all, amateur ufology in the USSR started with attempts to draw the attention of established science to this phenomenon. Its negative reaction to these attempts led eventually to the formation of an "alternative community" with, to put it mildly, rather loosened cognitive standards.

The reader may make an objection: a negative reaction, surely? But judging from the paper "History of State-Directed UFO Research in the USSR" by Yuliy Platov and Boris Sokolov published in RB, 1999, Vol.5, No.3-4, there had been carried out in the former USSR a gigantic official program of UFO studies?! That's certainly so. I can also add that this paper has just been published in Russian in the Herald of the Russian Academy of Sciences (2000, Vol.70, No.6, pp.507-515). This work should not be underestimated at all. Some Russian enthusiasts-ufologists gave it an immediate hostile reaction, taking no trouble to look more closely into its contents. At the same time, substantial criticism has also been expressed — particularly, in some RB readers' letters. In this issue of the Bulletin we are publishing two letters of this kind—written by L.M.Gindilis and P.N.Rybalko. There will appear other ones in the forthcoming RB issues and we certainly hope to publish in due course a reply from the paper's authors.

In closing—a few words about a paper that opens this issue of the Bulletin—"The Moonshaft", by Antonin T. Horak. Generally speaking, this is just another "story" about an enigmatic find and, also, a reprint (which appear in our periodical only exceptionally). However, the Scientific Council of RIAP has agreed that the paper is important and informative enough to draw our readers' attention to it. Possible existence of such an enigmatic artificial structure not somewhere in Amazonia, but in the Tatra Mountains, not far from the state frontier between Ukraine and Slovakia, does certainly merit notice, and the idea to commence a search for this structure can hardly be regarded as fantastic. If several anomalistic (and perhaps also—why not?—scientific) research bodies united their efforts and resources in this affair, I can suppose a tangible result would not be too long in coming.

Notes and references

¹See: Established Pseudoscience: A Discussion at the Presidium of the RAS. — Herald of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 1999, Vol.69, No.10. For short, we will designate it below as Commission on Pseudoscience.

²"The Hydra of counterrevolution" is a popular expression from the epoch of the Civil War in Russia (1918-1920), and "the place must be made too hot for the German invaders"—that from the epoch of the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945).

³That's not a fantasy. This patent was granted on June 14, 2000, to Dr. V.G.Azhazha, Full Member of the International Academy of Informatization, by the registration body of this very Academy.

— Vladimir V. Rubtsov 

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