We have already told you how the “Dissnet” figures advise the Federation Council. And recently, students of the “School of District Anti-Corruption” together with “Groza” and T-Invariant studied the composition of expert councils at the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation. It turned out that more than 10 per cent of the experts who influence decision-making “on the most important issues of the ministry’s activities” are plagiarists and violators of academic ethics.
The Russian Ministry of Education and Science has several advisory collegial bodies – expert councils and commissions, groups and panels. Regardless of the name, these bodies are designed to assist and expertly support the state in making the right decisions. According to the internal regulations on expert councils, they are formed from representatives of federal public authorities, including constituent entities of the Russian Federation, public associations and other interested organisations. The Ministry of Education and Science does not set any special requirements for the members of collegial bodies.
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Ministry employees cannot have all the competences in the field of education, and for more effective work they need the help of the expert community. Expert councils should act as a link between society and the state, that is, they should include experts from thematic industries and independent representatives of the non-profit sector. But they are rarely found in advisory bodies under the Ministry of Education and Science. More often such councils include officials and education sector employees who are directly dependent on the state, and sometimes representatives of NGOs loyal to the authorities.
The official website of the Ministry of Education published information about the composition of eight boards out of ten. Five of the boards have violators of academic ethics – members of the Dissernet project. Every tenth acting expert of the Ministry of Education and Science defended a thesis with plagiarism or distorted data in scientific research. The Council for the Implementation of State Youth Policy has the most offenders – 10 people. In second place is the Board of the Ministry of Education with eight offenders.
Judging by the information from the “Dissernet” databases, there may be no violators of academic ethics in three councils of the Ministry of Education and Science: the Council for Digital Development and IT, the Council for the Development of Historical Education and the Commission for the Coordination of Work on the Development of Subordinate Normative Legal Acts.
For our previous study, one of the co-founders of Dissernet, Andrei Zayakin, noted that if no violations are found, it does not mean that there are none: “If we saw that, let’s say, about a hundred fake dissertations have already been produced at the Department of Economics at RSU, we did not study a hundred other universities in Moscow, but studied only RSU, one particular department, and found hundreds more [violations] there. Hence some selective effect,” Zayakin explains.- Therefore, certain scientific schools, universities, specialists are more widely represented and [studied] more deeply than others.
There is no up-to-date information on the composition of two more collegial bodies: the Interdepartmental Councils for Awarding Government Prizes in the Field of Education and Science on the ministry’s website.
Among the “experts” of the Ministry of Education and Science there are many who hold high government positions. The presence of scientific papers with blatant plagiarism or incorrect borrowings does not prevent many of them from not only accompanying the work of the Ministry, but also moving up the career ladder. One of them is the ex-governor of the Kaliningrad region, Anton Alikhanov. A discarded PhD thesis did not prevent him from joining the Russian Government as Minister of Industry and Trade and continuing to be on the Board of the Ministry of Education.
Anton Alikhanov. Photo: vedomosti.ru
The scientific works of Vladimir Gruzdev, honoured lawyer of Russia, chairman of the board of the Association of Lawyers of the Russian Federation and former governor of the Tula region, will amaze even experienced researchers. His work is almost entirely copied from a 1998 research paper: 168 pages out of 182 contain extensive borrowings. He is also a member of the Collegium of the Ministry of Education and Science.
Dissernet also found violationsin the composition of the Council for the Development of Teacher Education ofthe former rector of the Kant BFU Alexander Fedorov. Among his scientific publications there are articles with borrowings and mysterious authorship. In July this year Alexander Fedorov was detained on suspicion of embezzlement of funds in the amount of more than 18 million rubles and their embezzlement, committed by a group of persons by prior conspiracy. While in the SIZO, he expressed his desire to go to the SVO. Despite Fedorov’s detention, according to the 2019 documents, he is still on the council.
Alexander Fedorov. Photo: ru.wikipedia.org
Former Deputy Minister of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation Marina Borovskaya is one of the leaders in the number of violations among all the experts we checked in the course of our research: she has 14 violations. In addition to borrowing in her own publications, she has repeatedly acted as a supervisor of Dissertnet defendants. Thus, her mentee Pavel Avdeev was found to have large-scale borrowings in his PhD thesis. In 2018 and 2021, Dissernet applied to deprive Avdeev of his degree, but the Ministry of Education and Science twice refused.
The development of teacher education under the Ministry of Education and Science is also handled by Viktor Basyuk, former Deputy Minister of Education of the Russian Federation, who has many borrowings in his own PhD thesis. Today Basyuk is vice-president of the Russian Academy of Education.
The Public Council at the Ministry of Education and Science is also rich in offenders. For example, Oksana Gaman-Golutvina, head of the Department of Comparative Political Science at MGIMO, a member of the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation and a member of the Expert Council of the United Russia party, has four times acted as an opponent of Dissernet figures, and she is also on the editorial boards of scientific journals with gross violations.
Galina Berulava, rector of the International Innovation University, is in a similar situation. Publications with violations, participation as an opponent and scientific supervisor for other figures – now part of her biography. In addition to the Public Council at the Ministry of Education and Science, Berulava has for some time sat on the Council for Psychological and Pedagogical Sciences of the Higher Attestation Commission (HAC) of the Russian Federation and on the Council for Higher Education at the Committee on Education and Science of the Federation Council. She is also editor-in-chief of the grossly misconducted journal Humanisation of Education, which published three retracted (withdrawn from publication) articles.
Rector of Synergy University Artyom Vasiliev has a large number of borrowings in his PhD thesis. We see the same in his scientific articles, one of which was retracted.
Artem Vasiliev. Photo: synergy.ru
Inna Litvinenko, an associate professor at Moscow State University of Economics, has seven offences, most of which are publications of scientific articles with borrowings. In July 2024, she joined the committee of the Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
You can study all the offenders in our table.
Drawing public attention to the problem of violations of scientific ethics norms is the mission of the Dissernet free community. And the efforts of the project’s participants often lead to the deprivation of academic degrees. But violators of academic ethics continue to be members of councils and commissions under the Ministry of Education and Science and have the opportunity to significantly influence the decisions made.
For example, ex-rector of MAMI Andrei Nikolaenko was deprived of his degree of Doctor of Economics in 2017 , after which he resigned. In April 2022, he became a member of the expert council on the implementation of state youth policy. There are other examples: Alexei Komissarov, a former minister of the Moscow City Government , was stripped of his PhD in economics, and Gleb Trubin, deputy chairman of the Tyumen Regional Duma’s Committee for Economic Policy and Nature Management , was stripped of his PhD in sociological sciences. Komissarov and Trubin are also members of the Expert Council of the Ministry of Education on the implementation of state youth policy.
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It is worth noting that Andrei Nikolaenko and Alexei Komissarov themselves wrote applications to have their degrees revoked as a result of a high-profile public campaign. In Andrei Nikolaenko’s case, Dissernet had questions about both his PhD and doctoral dissertations. For the PhD thesis, the deadline for filing a ZOLUS (application for deprivation of a degree) had expired and an application was filed for deprivation of the degree of Doctor of Economics. It took more than a year to deprive the candidate of the academic title. Several times the SAC for economic sciences failed to gather a quorum. In December 2017, Andrei Nikolaenko wrote an application for the removal of the academic degree and it was satisfied. Alexei Komissarov defended his PhD thesis in 2011. A few years later, Dissernet drew attention to plagiarism in his dissertation and one of the founders of the project, Sergei Parkhomenko, publicly addressed Komissarov with a request that he himself submit an application to the HAC to annul the defence of his dissertation and invalidate the diploma of Candidate of Economic Sciences issued to him. Komissarov recognised the fairness of Dissertnet’s conclusion and agreed to write a statement.
These cases are rather exceptions to the rule. The majority of Dissernet members do not react to the comments and if they are deprived of their academic titles, it is not of their own free will. This state of affairs only emphasises the need for public control over compliance with the rules of academic ethics. All the more so since the above-mentioned figures have nevertheless become members of expert councils.
T-Invariant continues to follow the work of the advisory collegial bodies under the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation. You can become part of this campaign and send an appeal tothe Ministry of Education and Science, which we have created.
In addition, the “Neighbourhood Anti-Corruption School” has sent the following requests to the Ministry of Education:
- to provide information on the procedure for the formation of expert councils in the context of the qualification requirements for candidates;
- information on the composition of the interdepartmental council for awarding prizes of the Government of the Russian Federation in the field of education/science and technology;
- on the compliance of members of expert councils deprived of scientific degrees with the requirements to their qualifications.
Text: Sasha Angel, Ekaterina Sukhareva
Ekaterina Sukhareva, Саша Ангел 24.09.2024