The departments of medical and agricultural sciences proposed to withdraw from the RAS again

The fate of the Departments of Medical and Agricultural Sciences was discussed on Monday during a meeting of one of the candidates for the presidency of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Gennady Krasnikov, with his voters in the meeting room of the presidium of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Krasnikov was asked what he thought about the rumors about the separation of two thematic departments from the Russian Academy of Sciences – medical and agricultural. According to one of the members of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, there is an idea to turn them back into the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences and the Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences, as it was before the 2013 reform.

– There is such a question, and it comes more from within the academy, from its members. I spoke with representatives of the Department of Agricultural Sciences, to a lesser extent – with representatives of the Department of Medical Sciences. After the reform of 2013, many of them were in a certain euphoria: the status has risen, the scholarship has risen … But in fact there is a problem. Thus, before joining the Great Academy of Agricultural Sciences, the Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences closely and fruitfully cooperated with the Ministry of Agriculture, and the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences – with the Ministry of Health, their representatives together were members of various councils and committees. Now they have lost that interaction.

That is, according to Krasnikov, this issue is serious, and academicians should approach it in the best academic traditions: discuss, weigh everything, and if there is a decision of the community, bring the issue to the Presidium. “In the meantime, we need to understand how the problem can be solved,” Krasnikov concluded his answer.