Corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, director of the Institute of General Genetics. NI Vavilov Alexander Kudryavtsev said at a theological conference that in the past people’s life expectancy reached 900 years. Mutations that cause genetic diseases, which he associates with both original and “personal” sin. Furthermore, he said that the Earth is only capable of feeding 5 billion people and therefore there is now a struggle for arable land – including by military means. To assess his statements, and also to say why in Russia people stop fighting pseudoscience, RTVI asked the head of the RAS commission for combating pseudoscience, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Evgeny Alexandrov.
Evgeny Alexandrov is a Soviet and Russian experimental physicist, full member of the Russian Academy of Sciences at the Department of Physical Sciences, doctor of physical and mathematical sciences. Winner of the State Prize of the Russian Federation in the field of science and technology. Head of the Commission of the Russian Academy of Sciences for Combating Pseudoscience.
Can “biblical” views be considered the norm for a modern Russian academician?
This is a shameful fact, and I will tell it at the next meeting with the President of the Russian Academy of Sciences. It is absolutely outrageous that such a person holds the position of director of the main institute of the Academy.
Sergei Kiselev / Moskva Agency
As for his opinions, I will tell you only one case. When we elected the former president of the Russian Academy of Sciences, I was on the counting committee. At that time, I got a call from a TV station and asked, they say, what do you think about the flat Earth hypothesis? What can you say about people who believe in a flat earth? I said that I really sympathized with them, and nothing more. They are sick people. And the most scandalous thing is that such medieval nonsense is broadcast by federal television.
To be honest, I have never met such academicians. This is my first case.
Indeed, there are people who claim to be sincere believers – and in our department of physical sciences there are. But this faith is never based literally on the Old or the New Testament. It is the belief that we don’t yet know something very important.
There is no scientific side to the statements of Alexander Kudryavtsev. Just read the Bible, because that’s where it’s all written. All believers know that the Lord created the Earth in seven days, and that was about 6,000 years ago. But science has come a long way since biblical times and knows how many years the Earth has existed, when a person appeared as a species, etc. And it is absolutely incompatible with the mythological accounts of the Bible. Yes, it is now customary to treat the church with politeness, but what does science have to do with it?
I confessed several times that I was an atheist. At the same time, we must admit that a large number of members of the Russian Academy of Sciences, when asked “do you believe in God”, will now say that they do, because recently the Orthodox religion is essentially become a state religion in our country. Being a believer is a good practice.
But in fact, to my knowledge, the vast majority of scientists are agnostic. The more we study nature, the more we learn how little we know and understand. And in this sense, we are asking more and more questions, for example on the problem of the origin of life.
However, no real scientist will look for the creator of life in this case, he will consider what natural causes could lead to it.
Because any attempt to find the Creator immediately leads to the question of who created that Creator, and so on. It will be a circle.
Therefore, I believe, and have always believed, that orthodox belief in full accordance with Holy Scripture is incompatible with science. Another thing is that you can follow all kinds of religious rules and canons and at the same time engage in scientific research in your field. But you must understand with certainty that religion as such has no place in science.
Does Kudryavtsev’s thesis about overpopulation of the planet and limited arable land have any basis?
The overpopulation of the planet is, of course, a problem. But he has stood before mankind for a long time, the same Thomas Malthus wrote about it more than 300 years ago. However, later it turned out that it was possible to significantly increase the fertility of the earth and feed the billions of people who still live there.
The productivity of one hectare of land was one before the third agrarian revolution, then it became different. It is entirely possible to feed people seaweed from the ocean. The whales end up feeding on plankton. Why not switch to plankton? So everything is arbitrary.
Only one thing is clear: in a closed world, population growth cannot remain unlimited, and these natural borders exist. At least until we go into space and fly to other stars.
So there are, in my view, much bigger issues that we have to deal with. For example, in the human population, the natural genetic selection factor for resistance to viral infections has disappeared. This partly led to the last terrible pandemic.
We know how to fight bacteria with antibiotics. But we only fight viruses by Old Testament means that are inside ourselves, with the help of our immunity. Vaccinations, in essence, are just a method of boosting the body’s “divine” ability to fight the virus.
The huge infant mortality factor disappeared, which automatically eliminated those who fell ill in childhood, not meeting the criteria for resistance to dangerous viruses. Our hereditary ability to fight these diseases continues to deteriorate. Therefore, this issue needs to be resolved.
For example, I think it is necessary to analyze the state of the embryo and make a selection at the very beginning of its appearance. Here I will certainly be accused of eugenics. But scientific eugenics itself has a right to exist.
Where did the initiative to close the commission on pseudosciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences come from?
Sergei Kiselev / Moskva Agency
No one spoke to me about it directly. Moreover, there have been many explanations according to which we are not talking about closing the commission, but simply about resubordinating it. Until now, they were subordinate to the Presidium of the Academy, and now they will be subordinate to the expert council.
Previously, we simply wrote our conclusions, informing the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the President about them. But gradually the surveillance started to extend to us, and they started telling us that we had to carry out the president’s instructions. Now we are transferred from the presidium to the council of experts. What it will be, I have no idea.
For a long time, pseudoscience came from above. Bosses don’t like being told they’re wrong. For example, in 2006, Rossiyskaya Gazeta published a program aimed at making Russia an energy superpower. Three energy sources have been named. The first is to extract it from the void. The second is energy extraction using thermonuclear energy. And the third is its hydrogen extraction. This means that those who formed this program have no idea of ​​the state of things in science, and they want nothing to do with science.
How hard it has become to fight pseudoscience in recent years
The latest fiasco of our committee is that we tried to block the “Top” device project. This device would have fought the covid by emitting specially selected radio frequency spectra.
Alas, very influential forces were implicated in this affair. As a result, the inventors of the Thor received a patent, and this device began to be mass-produced. It is a very expensive device which, using very low power microwaves and radio waves, as its developers claim, destroys the coronavirus in the air, on walls and everywhere else. Anyone who is even a little close to science understands that this is impossible.
Of course, we also had successes. We were able to block the development of perpetual motion machines and other equally crazy initiatives. But when the Russian Academy of Sciences merged with the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences and the Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences in 2013, agricultural and medical academicians came to us, who brought their twists with them. First of all, it is of course the “powerful” army of homeopaths. It’s no surprise – they’re backed by big, wealthy corporations.
The same scandal with businessman Viktor Petrik’s “Clean Water” initiative, with which then-Speaker of the State Duma Boris Gryzlov fell in love, is all about money. According to her, the plan was to spend around $500 billion on water filters over five years.
Unfortunately, we cannot claim victory over Petrik. Apparently, it just became clear to the leaders of the country that Russia simply does not have such monstrous money. But it was something blatant. Then the Society for the Protection of Consumer Rights, which sued Petrik, helped us a lot. The court decided to arrange an examination, which showed that his filter was simply not good.
Thus, in pseudo-scientific initiatives, madness and self-interest always go hand in hand. And more often than not, it turns out that there is some kind of crazy idea, and there are people who exploit those ideas. Usually it is not combined in one person.
The opinion of the author may not coincide with the opinion of the editors
