At the general meeting of the Russian Academy of Sciences, officials heard sharp criticism against them

“What I see at the Academy now impresses me,” one of the corresponding members of the Russian Academy of Sciences said on the sidelines of the General Meeting of the Russian Academy of Sciences, which began on Tuesday at Leninsky, 32. Recall that this was the first general meeting after the election last fall, Academician Gennady Krasnikov, President of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The MK correspondent attended the meeting and learned about what really can impress, as well as about the problems that scientists still have a lot of.

Of course, everything cannot be smooth in our science, if only because for many years it has been under unprecedented pressure from the bureaucracy. And this problem spilled out in the first minutes after the start of the meeting.

After welcoming speeches were made by Deputy Prime Minister Andrei Belousov, First Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Alexander Zhukov and Minister of Science and Higher Education Valery Falkov, Gennady Krasnikov asked Falkov to convene a meeting in the near future about the problems accumulated with the scientific fleet.

However, the scientific director of the Institute of Oceanology. Shirshov RAS Robert Nigmatulin decided to outline the problem publicly. He took the floor directly from the audience, expressing emotionally everything that was boiling over.

“For more than a third of a century in our country, the development of science, education, health care and culture has been allocated half as much funding as a share of GDP. Plus, the wrecking reforms that come from you all the time. And this will create the most serious problems for the next decade.”

Nigmatulin, who is a professor at Moscow State University. Lomonosov, noted that there is a degradation of education – he sees this in those young people who are now coming to the university. He also complained that science is weakening in the country and mortality has increased: “It (mortality) is now higher than under Soviet rule!”.

At the end of his speech, Robert Iskanderovich reached the long-suffering scientific fleet. “Your ministry is delaying the allocation of resources that have already been allocated from the budget! he turned to Falkov. “As a result, the expedition season will probably be eliminated this year.”

Nigmatulin also voiced one very remarkable detail. It turns out that recently the relevant ministry began to require mental health certificates from employees of institutes. This, apparently, greatly offended scientists and academicians. According to Robert Iskanderovich, this has never happened, and it is not clear why such a requirement has arisen now.

It should be noted that no one interrupted the rather abrupt speech of the academician, as happened before. Falkov, Krasnikov, Belousov, Zhukov, as well as Minister of Health Murashko, all listened to Nigmatulin carefully, and then it was Krasnikov’s turn to report.

Reminding the audience (by the way, the Great Hall of the Russian Academy of Sciences was packed to capacity) about the growing role of modern fundamental science and high-tech industry, Krasnikov began to consistently report to his colleagues on the work done since his election as President of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

As he promised, from the very first days of his presidency, he began to restore the authority of the Academy, to raise its status. It must be said that this was already noticeable by the representative guests, who had not been in such a composition at the General Meeting for a long time.

If earlier the Academy’s expert function was limited to the analysis of research topics and their results, now, according to Krasnikov, the organization is actively involved in the development of documents related to strategic planning aimed at the country’s technological sovereignty.

All this is good, but academicians also wanted to hear from Krasnikov how he solves pressing social issues: after all, ten years have passed since the last increase in their scholarships … “The increase in scholarships for members of the Russian Academy of Sciences is planned from January 1 next year,” the time of the speech, the President of the Russian Academy of Sciences, referring to the decision on the allocation of budgetary funds. In addition, according to him, active work is underway to attach members of the regional branches of the Russian Academy of Sciences to institutions with regular medical care. Moreover, this has already been done in a number of regions.

Scientists would also like to abolish the division of institutions into categories, which was introduced not so long ago, but which did not serve our science very well.

“You understand,” the director of one of the institutes told me during a break, “a low category is like a stigma that is difficult to wash off. Although, if the direction in which this or that research institute works is important, it could bring more benefits than an institute with the first category, but they cut funding for it, do not update the instrument base.

Krasnikov, even in his election program, spoke about the need to abolish categorization. The President of the Russian Academy of Sciences proposed a new assessment mechanism: instead of categorization – rating: “The rating will not be static, everyone will see their place in it and will have the opportunity to improve it.”

In conclusion, the President of the Russian Academy of Sciences singled out a number of the best scientific papers over the past year, selected by the thematic departments of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

For example, the Institute of Applied Mathematics. Keldysh developed a new method for reconstructing the electrical and functional structure of the human body based on magnetic measurements. Scientists have made a complete separation of the electroencephalogram into signals from the brain and noise produced by physiological sources outside the brain (that is, other organs). This is very important for diagnosis.

at the Institute of Computational Mathematics. Marchuk created a climate model of Russia from 1 to 5 years. Institute of the Russian Language. Vinogradov created the National Corpus of the Russian Language, a searchable electronic online corpus of Russian-language texts, both written and recorded public speech and private conversations. The total volume of the corpus exceeds 1.5 billion word usages.

According to the Institute of Psychology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, which recently conducted a survey of Russians, 89% of respondents are informed about the Academy and follow its activities. 71% of respondents trust academicians, which is 4% higher than last year. In the associative series with the Academy of Sciences, the population has the words “pride”, “hope”, “respect”. Agree, this is unique in our time, which, however, obliges scientists to continue to comply.