Discussions

A.M. Kudryavtsev, corresponding member of the RAS, director of the Vavilov Institute of General Genetics of the RAS, made a blatantly fundamentalist presentation at a theological conference. He claimed that mutations are caused by sins, that human lifespans are shortening because biblical characters lived for hundreds of years, and that Russia is forced to war because people in neighboring countries have multiplied too much. «At first I thought it was a fake,» write without collusion in response to the obscurantism Acad. Alexei Khokhlov and bioinformatician Alexander Panchin. There is also a response from the head of the RAS Commission

Responding to Mikhail Sokolov’s points, Viktor Vakhshtayn continues his discussion of the obstacles that arise in transferring the results of sociological research obtained in one society to another.

Mikhail Sokolov has posted detailed remarks following an interview with Victor Vakhshtayn published by T-invariant. Spoiler alert: «Russian social scientists … do not need to abandon Russian material in the past by erasing it along with the part of their lives dedicated to collecting it. If you understand how the mental maps of the social sciences are arranged, … you can, hopefully, avoid such sacrifices.»

Prof. Andrei Rostovtsev listed the countries whose citizens, according to Dissernet, actively use the opportunity to receive academic degrees in Russia for falsified dissertations. China is in first place, followed by most Third World countries, and there are even some European countries on the list. And for instance, Tajikistan successfully sells Russian-language forgeries to Iranians.

The Nature web-site reports about an open letter of Ukrainian scientists with an appeal to the world scientific community to boycott Russian science. The Russian scientific diaspora is discussing the topic in the RASA group.

How should we perceive the new generation of AI systems, what to expect of them, and how will they change us? Scott Aaronson, an AI security specialist, talked about this in an interview to Sergei Nemalevich, a science journalist of Radio Liberty. It’s a good starting point for those who have not yet realized how serious things are.

According to the new Cochrane meta-analysis, the effectiveness of masks against the spread of respiratory infections has not yet been proven. However, they assess the reliability of this conclusion is low because the available research is inconclusive. Science journalist Ira Yakutenko explained in detail why this is the case. We can argue there until the proper research arrives.

Machine translation The other day it turned out, according to the Club of Academicians “July 1”, that in December 2022 the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences decided «to transfer the functions of the RAS Commission on Combating Pseudoscience and the RAS Commission on Counteraction to Falsification of Scientific Research to the Expert Council of the RAS». The leaders of the commissions were not even informed about this. In 2018, the RAS Commission on Combating Pseudoscience was split into two, severely limiting the right to public statements (only with the approval of the Presidium of the RAS). Now