And cites Grisha Perelman as an example
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin participated in the annual meeting of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) in Moscow yesterday. He and RAS President Yuri Osipov clashed over whether all science or only breakthrough areas should be financed. He won the argument. Special correspondent Andrei Kolesnikov reports.
Vladimir Putin revealed yesterday that in his time he engaged in scientific and industrial espionage and was very distressed that the results of that work hadn't been used in the economy.
The Russian Academy of Sciences is a unique place. It is perhaps the only place in Moscow where there is a long and winding queue to the men's room and no queue to the lady's room.
Several days ahead of the annual meeting the organisation which brings together Russian scientists from abroad wrote to Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev, and the RAS President, Yuri Osipov, to express concern about the "onslaught of aggressive charlatans" in science and politics.
The RAS has a Commission for Combating Pseudoscience and the Falsification of Scientific Results. Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov recently branded the Commission's activities as "obscurantism" and called for dissolving it.
Scientists (especially those who work abroad) have a systematic approach to things, and they found out that Boris Gryzlov is a scientist himself and even has some inventions to his name. One of his inventions was made in collaboration with Viktor Petrik whom the RAS Commission severely criticised for engaging in pseudoscience which the Commission is called upon to fight. The authors of the letter linked their counterattack on Viktor Petrik and Boris Gryzlov's attack on the Commission.
The academicians had a lively discussion about the letter during the meeting, and especially during the breaks. The letter was passed from hand to hand among the audience. The academicians, knowing that the leader of United Russia was about to join them, preferred to discuss the topic in whispers.
When I saw the great scientist Ruslan Khasbulatov (the former Speaker of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR who never got over the tanks firing on the Parliament building in 1993) I asked him for his opinion about the activities of the Pseudoscience Commission.
"Pseudoscience should be tackled by science, and not by a Commission," Ruslan Khasbulatov said.
"Do you do real science or pseudoscience?" I asked him.
He sighed: "I do what has been left for me to do. That's what I do."
Other scientists in the room could have said the same. For example, I spotted the former President of Kyrgyzstan, Askar Akayev, who was obviously trying to keep a low profile. The Academy of Sciences is an ideal place for this purpose. You can work for decades without being noticed.
Before Vladimir Putin arrived there was a stormy discussion underway in the auditorium. The Academy's Secretary was being questioned over why he had said that the United States spent 0.48% of its GDP on education while academician Sobolev had published President Obama's report which cited the figure of 3%. The Secretary fought back insisting that 3% is the amount spent on all of science and 0.48% only on fundamental science." Obviously, the Secretary was no pushover.
Nevertheless, the attack continued. RAS President Yuri Osipov read a message from the Secretary of Russia's Security Council Nikolai Patrushev explaining why he could not attend the meeting in person. The message drew enthusiastic applause from the audience.
The Director of the Academy's Siberian Branch, Alexander Aseyev, dwelt on the achievements of his facility. He was particularly proud of a nano-wire bimolecular sensor and was enthusiastically telling the audience everything he knew about the subject.
Before Vladimir Putin appeared there was a theatrical ten-minute pause in the proceedings. At the sight of the prime minister, some academicians rose to their feet. Some hesitated so long that by the time they finally decided to stand up their colleagues had already sat down. I thought perhaps they would continue taking turns standing and sitting through the end of the meeting.
The prime minister immediately headed for the podium. He spent a long time telling the audience what kind of money they could expect from the state (the amounts turned out to be suspiciously large, dwarfing (relatively) the announcement of the US President: the Russian prime minister said that the country spent 10% of its budget on science and science-related matters).
The prime minister admitted that science did not always reciprocate.
"Thanks to the Quasar-QVO complex created at the RAS our GLONASS system improved qualitatively, he said. I believe we can be proud of the progress of this project. We began it simultaneously with our European partners. I even proposed working on it together: they refused, they are doing it alone..."
The prime minister said that the outcome – for the Europeans – was lamentable:
"We have 25 satellites in orbit. There will be 29-30 by the end of the year. That is global coverage. They have only two so far, if I am not mistaken. But they have some advantages which are connected with electronics and scientific support... We need your help on that."
Yuri Osipov gave a short nod. Message received.
"At the same time such a substantive criterion as the number of publications in prestigious scientific journals puts our scientists in 14th place, the prime minister continued. It is on a par with the Netherlands and Brazil... Not a bad company, but if one recalls that we were in 7th place in 1995, this indicates a negative trend. We should all work together to reverse it."
Yuri Osipov nodded again, more emphatically this time.
The prime minister then concentrated on explaining his idea that a "competitive nucleus" should be formed in domestic science and that resources "should be concentrated in priority areas".
I had a feeling that the academicians were not very pleased with that part of his speech. They want all the projects, schools and areas of research to be financed.
"And broader use should be made of the mechanism for distributing funds among the programmes of the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences and its branches by tender."
That went down with the academicians rather better.
"An assessment of their performance, Putin said, should lead the RAS to financial and perhaps organisational conclusions to redistribute money from weak teams to strong ones and, if necessary, reorganise the scientific structure".
That seemed not to go down very well with the academicians. But the prime minister was already talking about salaries, which would grow, and the houses that would be built on RAS-owned land.
"All the more so because today, Putin said, the Academy has more than 330,000 hectares of land. This is good land in terms of value. The government has requested that necessary changes be made in the legislation. According to these changes developers will be required to sell a certain percent of apartments to members of the Academy at low affordable prices. Approximately, 30,000 roubles per square metre."
There was lively buzz in the audience, so lively as to drown out the prime minister's words of thanks for the contribution the Academy was making to the development of Russia. Apparently the contribution Putin had just made to the Academy members outweighed their own contribution.
However, during the break the academicians complained that the prices would be way too high for them and that not an inch of land should be given to developers.
"What are you going to do with this land?" I asked one of them.
"We'll build ourselves," the academician replied. We'll set aside all our work and start building."
While I found the first part of his statement believable, I could not say the same about the second part.
So, overall the reaction was rather one of alarm rather than jubilation.
Yuri Osipov delivered his report whose key message was that the Zeidel problem about the volumes of non-Euclidean tetrahedrons had finally been solved.
The RAS president spoke about vital matters and would not be distracted by details:
"For the first time we got an authentic picture of the White Dwarf. And perhaps the White Dwarf will turn out to be a black hole? I don't know... Time will tell."
Who else, apart from the president of the RAS, could sum up the meaning of a piece of academic research so succinctly, in three sentences?
Yuri Osipov then moved on to applied science. He said work on the Atlas of the Kuril Islands had been completed and that this was a piece of work which undoubtedly had geopolitical implications. Osipov mentioned the "monograph on the new polycentric role of the United States and Russia in world politics." Apparently this was meant to indicate to the prime minister that science could be very helpful to the authorities.
The authorities had to reciprocate. Yuri Osipov explained to the prime minister that the lag in some areas of research is not reason enough for cutting off funding.
"We need fundamental science that covers the whole spectrum of research," he said without explaining whom he meant by "we."
However, one could not help noticing that Yuri Osipov openly challenged Vladimir Putin who said that, on the contrary, financing should concentrate on breakthrough areas of research.
Admittedly, Yuri Osipov's was not the last word.
"Of course we understand very well that the question that worries all of us, the country's leadership, the scientific community and the whole country, is the question of efficiency."
And Vladimir Putin went on to make a revelation:
"You know, when I served with another agency... in my previous life... (as intelligence agent in the GDR - A.K.) there came a moment... and I remember it well, it was around the late 1980s... and I think many of you would agree with me... you surely felt it yourselves... when our own developments and those obtained by special means from abroad were not used in the Soviet economy. Even the equipment required to introduce them did not exist."
If I am not mistaken, this is called industrial and scientific espionage. That is, when they do it, it is called industrial-scientific espionage. When we do it, it is called scientific and technical intelligence. Yes, it was practiced not only in the USSR, but to this day not many people would so casually admit to having been engaged in it.
"So we worked and worked in this area obtaining information but to no avail," Vladimir Putin went on. We asked: 'Where are the results? Where in the economy are they?' There were none. It was impossible to introduce them. "
A hush settled over the audience as everyone wondered what the prime minister was driving at. Could it be that he told the story simply to make the fact be known?
"So, the country's leadership, the economic agencies, our major companies have to keep up with the latest innovation and technology," Putin concluded his revelation in a thoroughly innocuous manner.
The prime minister, glancing at his notebook in which he had jotted down Yuri Osipov's remarks, agreed that "that of course would cost money".
"But Grisha Perelman whom you all know (a St. Petersburg mathematician – A.K.) did not ask for any money and just published his work on the internet (proof of Pointcare hypothesis – A.K.) and signed it: Grisha Perelman. Where does the money come into this? He actually turned down the money. We tried to compensate him somehow... but he turned down even that."
The prime minister gave a reproachful look to Yuri Osipov as if to suggest that the RAS president should follow Grisha Perelman's example.
"Yuri Osipov is showing us a table, I know it very well, the table of how funding should increase... What is most important is to concentrate the available resources in the main areas and not to spread them too thin."
The prime minister thus reacted to the RAS president's remark that everyone who does science should be financed.
"As for mutual mistrust between the authorities and academic science," Vladimir Putin continued, "I am not aware of any. Perhaps this is wishful thinking on the part of those who want there to be some kind of mistrust, but there is none. This is an absolutely specious claim."
Thus Vladimir Putin again took the side of the Minister of Science and Education, Andrei Fursenko, whose relations with the academicians are sensitive, to say the least.
The prime minister ended on a philosophical note. Perhaps he believed that there was something he could discuss with these people even after the death of Mahatma Gandhi:
"You know, I think each of us is criticised from birth until death. Over the past ten years I have been criticised so often that I have grown tired of reacting. Yes, this is life," the prime minister sighed. "More important are the things we do when we are criticised... In general this may be right. A fish is in the river so that another fish can be on the alert."
At that moment he sounded almost totally sincere, I thought.
"But of course there are critics who have made a profession of it," he continued, his words now sounding utterly sincere. "However, one should take it calmly. There are people who either earn or want to earn a living by this. This is their profession. Why pay attention to it? Academician Laverov has said that you have invented a drug that stimulates brain activity. Lets give that drug to the critics; perhaps they will calm down a bit."
He himself, though, sounded very agitated.
Andrei Kolesnikov