Is science needed to popularize science? The mass extinction of academic journals has begun.
Science and high technology are fruits of the same tree. What becomes the engine of science? Human laziness and war. There is another factor, although it sounds unscientific: the passage of time is becoming faster and faster, information is compressed into tight forms, people are trying to keep up with everything. It is science as a discipline, regardless of whether it is biology or physics, chemistry or higher mathematics, that, in general, helps a person move the globe.
According to data as of July 3, 2019, the flood in the Irkutsk region killed 20 people, 15 are considered missing. The road infrastructure has been partially destroyed. Dozens of settlements fell into the flood zone. The state of emergency is in effect in six districts: Tulunsky, Chunsky, Nizhneudinsky, Taishetsky, Ziminsky and Kuitunsky. Thousands of people were left homeless. More than 3,000 houses remain flooded. Almost 2,600 people were evacuated from flooded areas, and hundreds sought medical help. More than a billion rubles of damage (the exact figures are still being established). The water level rose to almost 14 meters. How did this happen?
Photo from the Nauka Publishing House website
As NG learned, at today's meeting of the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences the issue of the situation with the publication of academic journals at the Nauka Publishing House may be considered. The fact is that the acting director of the publishing house, Sergei Palatkin, issued an order to transfer all employees of all magazine editorial offices to fixed-term (annual) employment contracts.
“Publishing house “Nauka” is the only full-cycle state academic publishing house with the main mission: to become a standard in the field of book publishing and scientific periodicals for all scientific publishing houses in the country, to implement the strategic state task of ensuring
barrier-free exchange of scientific information for all members of the scientific community,” notes the official website of the publishing house. Now it publishes 155 scientific and popular science academic journals (in addition to book products). Among them, for example, are such authoritative publications as “Questions of Philosophy”, “Nature”, “Questions of the History of Science and Technology”, “Man”, “Energy: Economics of Technology Ecology”...
And so, by October 20, all employees of these magazines were required to sign a letter of resignation of their own free will and a fixed-term employment contract. According to NG information from the head of one very well-known scientific journal, “no one did this, and it turned out that with 455 employees of 155 journal editorial offices, things don’t work out so easily; no one wants to show off to their superiors.”
The same source reported that editorial staff “...on their own managed to remove the following type of nonsense from the draft agreement: all employees of all magazine editorial offices were supposed to have a probationary period of indefinite duration every year (and who will check the qualifications of everyone - the personnel department?), editorial staff are responsible for the safety of the property of the Publishing House's clients (a jacket went missing in the wardrobe, the dacha burned down - and who took responsibility for the safety of property?), in clothing we must comply with the corporate standard, about which we know nothing.
But even after our editing, the Publishing House does not want to introduce into the contract (and its understanding) the concept of the editorial office and the editor-in-chief, whose competence is the certification of employees, assessment of the quality of their work and full responsibility for the preparation time and the quality of filling the original layout of the issue, no, all this will be control the HR department and incompetent managers.”
At the same time, from the first half of 2018, the price of both one issue of magazines and the price of subscription will increase. For some publications – by 20%. “And it is impossible to explain that such an unjustified increase in price will not lead to an increase in income - the number of subscribers will simply collapse,” emphasizes the NG source.
As a result, from 2018, RAS journals will most likely be divided into two groups. One of them will be published by the International Academic Publishing Company “Nauka/Interperiodika” (MAIK “Nauka/Interperiodika”). This company was founded in 1992. Its founders are the Russian Academy of Sciences and the American company Pleiades Publishing, Inc. and the publishing house "Science". Thus, MAIK undertakes the publication of only those RAS journals whose English versions are profitable. The rest - according to some estimates, from a third to a half of the journals translated - will no longer be published in English.
A. VAGANOV, executive editor of the NG-science supplement of Nezavisimaya Gazeta.
“Let’s remember - the circulation of the magazine “Science and Life” in the good old days exceeded three million, the magazine “Knowledge is Power” - a million. And now the latter is happy, having reached a circulation of just over seven thousand.” These are the words of the Deputy Director of the Institute of Applied Mathematics named after. M.V. Keldysh RAS Georgy Malinetsky. Yes, circulation was in the millions. And not only the mentioned magazines. The magazine for a relatively small layer of “advanced” schoolchildren, “Kvant,” had a circulation of 315 thousand copies, the highly specialized magazine “Chemistry at School” had a circulation of 180 thousand. Is modern Russian society not interested in the achievements of science, or is the lack of popularization of science making science unpopular? Let's try to figure it out.
Science and life // Illustrations
Among modern Russian periodicals, there are no popular science magazines to be found.
Circulation of popular science magazines in the USSR and the Russian Federation.
In Russia, the professions of lawyer, lawyer and entrepreneur are now most respected. The profession of a scientist is in 13th place in terms of prestige.
Cover of the first issue of the science fiction magazine "Amazing Stories", published in the USA in 1926.
At the end of the 19th century, the volume of industrial production in Russia grew at an unprecedented pace. In the photo: the locomotive workshop of the Sormovo plant (late 1890s).
The first issue of the journal “Science and Life” was published in the era of rapid economic development in Russia at the end of the 19th century. Cover of the first issue for 1890.
The publication of the journal "Science and Life" resumed during the years of socialist industrialization. Cover of the December 1937 issue.
Annual expenditure on science per researcher.
The level of innovation activity of European countries (defined as a value proportional to the number of innovatively active enterprises to their total number in the country).
According to the results of a public opinion poll, in the United States in 1989, in the list of the most prestigious professions, a scientist ranked second after a doctor, ahead of an engineer, minister, architect, lawyer, banker, accountant, and businessman. The most surprising thing is that in 2005, that is, almost 20 years later, the indicator of the prestige of the scientific profession remained at the same level in the United States: scientists and doctors were equally respected by 52% of respondents. A similar survey was conducted in 2001 in EU countries. Here are his results: the profession of a doctor is considered prestigious by 71% of respondents, a scientist by 45%, an engineer by 30%.
Apparently, such sociological studies were not conducted in the USSR. (At least I couldn't find any references.) But the numbers speak for themselves. From 1930 to 1980, the number of scientists in the USSR doubled every 6-7 years! In the 70-80s of the last century, the number of scientists accounted for almost 4% of all those employed in the national economy.
In modern Russia, scientists are not held in high esteem. According to the Center for Research and Statistics of Science of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation (2005), in terms of prestige, the profession of a scientist was in eleventh place out of thirteen assessed. According to a survey by the All-Russian Center for Public Opinion Research (VTsIOM), conducted in April 2007, two-thirds of Russians surveyed found it difficult to name at least one name of a domestic scientist. The remaining respondents remembered Sergei Korolev (10%), Zhores Alferov (8%), Andrei Sakharov (6%), Svyatoslav Fedorov (3%).
The decline in the prestige of science and the scientific profession (although, strictly speaking, this is not the same thing) occurred in the shortest historical time. At the same time, circulation of popular science literature also fell. Let us recall that by the beginning of the 70s, more than 33% of all scientists in the world worked in domestic academic and industrial institutes. For every 10 thousand people employed in the national economy of the USSR, there were then about 100 scientific workers, in the USA - 71, in Great Britain - 49. Even in the not-so-distant 1981, the production of popular science literature in the USSR amounted to 2451 titles with a total circulation of 83 .2 million copies. The dynamics of circulation growth are also impressive: in 1940 - no more than 13 million copies; in the ninth five-year plan (1971-1975) - about 70 million annually. But, the most amazing thing is that millions of copies were sold out! There was a waiting list for science fiction novels in libraries. In addition to the journal "Chemistry and Life" I had to subscribe to "Pravda" (or, if I was lucky, "Komsomolskaya Pravda").
We were rightfully proud of this. And they were right to be proud.
By the way, a quarter of a century ago, the circulation of just one American popular science magazine, Scientific American, reached more than 580 thousand copies per month. At the same time, the monthly circulation of another “monster” of scientific popularization, the magazine “Discover,” was 750 thousand copies. Thus, the prosperity of the popular science genre in the USSR was not a unique phenomenon. But we should not forget that today the circulation of Scientific American remains approximately at the same level: 555 thousand in the USA plus 90 thousand in other languages (data as of December 2005), which cannot be said about the circulation of Russian popular science media .
The collapse in circulation of Russian popular science publications is also due to the decline in the prestige of science. Let us provide evidence.
According to public opinion research, in the United States in 1972-1978, 52-60% of respondents were convinced that science does more good than harm; Only 2 to 5% of Americans held the opposite position. In England in 1990, 76% of respondents believed that science improves the situation in the world. And this mood of public opinion remains surprisingly stable. A survey conducted in 1998 in the USA showed that interest in science and technology among Americans is greater than ever - 70% of respondents said they were interested in these problems (Science and Life, 1999, no., p. 57).
In Russia, on the contrary, in 1994 only 8% of respondents were in favor of supporting science from the state budget. A study conducted at the end of 1990 - beginning of 1991 among students of technical universities in St. Petersburg and Petrozavodsk University revealed the same trend: 56% of respondents expressed the opinion that scientists think more about their abstract problems than about the interests of ordinary people; 42.2% believe that scientists simply satisfy their curiosity at public expense.
In modern Russian society, a negative or, at best, wary attitude towards science appears to be becoming the norm, even among the educated part of the population. Nine years after the sociological survey cited above, another study obtained almost similar results: 58% of Russians surveyed had negative associations with science.
Summarizing the above, I would suggest that society's interest in science and popular science literature does not depend on the social system and is determined by what stage of economic development the society is at.
Here, by the way, is a good example confirming this. In the St. Petersburg Gazette of December 17, 1906 we read: “The newspaper Petit Parisien conducted a survey asking who was the greatest citizen of France in the 19th century, and received 15 million responses. Louis Pasteur was recognized as the greatest person (1,138 425 votes). Further votes were cast for Hugo, Gambetta, Napoleon I, Thiers, Carnot, Dumas the Father, Roux, Pirmantier, Ampere...” Please note: out of the ten greatest of their compatriots, the French named four natural scientists (Pasteur, Carnot, Ru, Ampere). And French President Adolphe Thiers became famous not only as a politician who suppressed the Paris Commune (1871), but also as a scholar-historian, one of the creators of the theory of class struggle and the author of “The History of the French Revolution.”
But such results are not surprising - in European countries and the United States at the beginning of the last century, an industrial revolution unprecedented in the history of mankind unfolded.
Here are some numbers that give an idea of the scale of this revolution. Until the mid-18th century, national income per capita did not differ much from locality to locality. In 1750, the territories that today are traditionally classified as the “Third World” collectively produced a gross national product estimated at $112 billion, while today's developed countries produced only $35 billion (converted to the value of 1960 US dollars). The Industrial Revolution, which began in England, radically changed the situation, and by 1913 the gross national product in the Third World and developed countries, respectively, amounted to $217 billion and $430 billion.
In 1882, the first power plant was opened in New York, and if in 1885 only 250 thousand electric light bulbs were used in the USA, in 1902 - already 18 million. 1869, November 4 - the appearance of the first issue of the world's leading scientific journal, British weekly "Nature" " . 1872: Popular Science magazine begins publication in the United States. 1888 - "National Geographic"…
In 1895, there were four (4) automobiles in the United States. In 1896, Henry Ford assembled his first car, and the American nation was on wheels! In 1909, Ford factories produced more than 10 thousand cars. By 1913, there were 600 thousand cars in the USA, by 1930 - already 23 million. (In all other countries of the world taken together, in 1930 there were 6.9 million cars running on roads and off-roads.) January 11, 1902 in America saw the light of another “monster” of popular science literature: “Popular Mechanics”. From the very beginning (and still!) one of the main topics of the magazine "Popular Mechanics" there were and remain cars in all their forms.
Literary scholars have long noticed: science fiction became one of the most popular genres precisely in the era of the scientific and technological revolution. By the way, it is not at all accidental that among the authors science fiction a lot of scientists and engineers: Hugo Gernsbeck, Isaac Asimov, Arthur Clarke, Ivan Efremov, Ilya Varshavsky, Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, Vladimir Obruchev, Carl Sagan...
In April 1926, the world's first mass magazine devoted entirely to science fiction, Amazing Stories, appeared in the United States. The monthly circulation of the magazine soon exceeded 100 thousand copies.
And again, Russia was no exception. In the period 1881-1896, the volume of industrial production in Russia increased by 6.5 times with an increase in the number of workers by 5.1 times; the number of factories during these 15 years increased by 7228, and worker productivity by 22%. In 1890, the generally understandable scientific illustrated magazine “Science and Life” began to be published in Russia.
In 1929-1933, industrial fixed assets were renewed by 71.3%. From 1922 to 1929, 37 thousand tractors were imported into the USSR. During the period of industrialization, 300 thousand machine tools were imported into the USSR. During the first five-year plan (1928-1932) in the USSR, 8 billion rubles were invested in capital construction - twice as much as in the previous 11 years. In 1933, the popular science magazine “Technology for Youth” began to be published, and in 1934, the publication of the magazine “Science and Life” was resumed.
The correlation can be traced. It is the achievements of science that have become accessible to society that give rise to a boom in popular science (or, as an option, science fiction) literature.
With the development of science, the circulation of popular science media is growing. Paradoxically, expanding the audience does not always cause a corresponding increase in the prestige of science in the public consciousness and education of the public.
In 1981, Swedish sociologists found that television popular science programs attracted few new friends to science. Moreover, they mislead and scare away its potential supporters.
A cult figure of the 60s and 70s, American psychologist Timothy Leary wrote: “... there can be no “educational television programs”! This is a complete oxymoron.”
If we agree with Leary that educational television programs are “a complete oxymoron” (an oxymoron is a stylistic turn of phrase that combines semantically contrasting words, “a combination of the incongruous.” - Note ed.), then this fact no longer seems so paradoxical: although, according to sociological surveys, in 1979, 49% of American adults showed interest in science and science policy, only 25% understood scientific information received from the media at a minimally acceptable level.
Thirty years later, the situation has changed little: today 70% of US residents are unable to understand the meaning of articles published in the “Science” section of the New York Times newspaper. This conclusion was reached by John Miller, a professor at the University of Michigan. To qualify as "science educated," according to Miller, a person needs to understand 20 to 30 fundamental scientific concepts and terms. For example, define a stem cell, molecule, nanometer, neuron; correctly assess whether the following statements are true: “lasers work by focusing sound waves”, “antibiotics kill viruses just like bacteria”, “the first people lived with dinosaurs”, “all plants and animals have DNA”, etc. d.
By this indicator, modern Russians are not too different from Americans. For example, a survey among Russian residents gave the following results. The statement “a laser works by focusing sound waves” was rated as correct by 20% of respondents, 59% were undecided, and only 21% of respondents answered that this was an incorrect judgment. With regard to the statement “antibiotics kill viruses just like bacteria,” the situation is even worse: 53% of respondents are sure that this is true; 29% find it difficult to answer; correct answers - 18%. The statement “all plants and animals have DNA” was slightly modified in the Russian version: “Ordinary plants - potatoes, tomatoes, etc. - do not contain genes, but genetically modified plants do.” 36% are sure that this is so; 41% find it difficult to answer, and only 23% quite rightly believe that this statement is incorrect. (Survey data was kindly provided to the author by Olga Shuvalova, leading researcher at the Institute of Statistical Research and Economics of Knowledge, State University - Higher School of Economics.)
That is, the same 70-80% of the population - in Russia or in the USA (regardless of the size of the circulation of popular science literature) - do not know the fundamental principles and provisions of modern scientific knowledge.
In 2003, 34% of Americans considered “flying saucers” and ghosts not fiction, but reality (sociological study from Virginia Commonwealth University). The Germans have the same picture: about 40% of German residents in 2006 were convinced that alien creatures had already landed on our planet (data from a survey commissioned by Reader's Digest Deutschland magazine).
In general, Russia seems to be in the global social mainstream in this regard. In October 2005, VTsIOM surveyed 1,600 people in 153 settlements in 46 regions of Russia. As a result, sociologists stated: 21% of Russians believe in omens, 9% in horoscopes, 8% in witchcraft and magic, and 6% in aliens.
That is, the specific, so to speak, level of “obscurantism” in the US/EU is close to that in Russia. And although I have not yet been able to find relevant sociological data on how things stood with this indicator in the USSR, I think that it was not qualitatively different from the world trends of that time.
Someone thinks that if a million copies of the magazine “Knowledge is Power” are now printed, then this circulation will be sold out (that is, read). I doubt it very much. My skepticism is confirmed by sociological statistics.
According to a Levada Center study published in December 2006, 37% of Russians do not read books at all. Read occasionally - 40%. Constantly read - 23%. In 1996, 18% of respondents never or almost never read books. Perhaps an allowance can be made here for the fact that in 1996 some respondents were simply ashamed to admit that they did not read books. Ten years later they are no longer shy. Which, however, in itself says a lot. Of those who read regularly, 24% are fond of women's detective stories, 19% - women's prose, 18% prefer "Russian action", 16% - historical adventure classics, 14% - modern historical prose, 11% - Russian and Soviet classics. In non-fiction literature, the leaders are books about health (25%), publications on cooking (20%), books on the specialty (20%). If previously Russian residents preferred thick hardcover novels, today they tend to buy serial standard literature - “pocket books” in paperbacks.
By the way, sociologists have long noted that the explosive spread of “pocket books” in both Europe and the USA is associated with total motorization. In this sense, the processes taking place in Russia are no different from the processes in the rest of the civilized world. In terms of the scale of motorization, Russia is far ahead of Ethiopia (122 and 1 personal car per 1,000 inhabitants, respectively), although it still lags behind Germany and Italy (more than 500 cars per 1,000 inhabitants), Japan (about 600) and the USA (about 800).
Conversations: so, they say, all the book counters are filled with paperback “waste paper” and there is no place for worthy, including popular science, literature, which is why the prestige of science in the public consciousness has fallen so low - at least, they are naive. In the same USA in the 60-70s of the last century, the total circulation of “popular science” comics by only one author - Stan Lee (creator of the famous image of Spider-Man) amounted to 134 million copies. But this was a period when the program of landing American astronauts on the Moon was successfully implemented and the prestige of science was very high. The dominance of comics, as we see, did not in the least prevent the American nation from developing science and technology.
The Japanese are just crazy about comics ( manga- this is the name of this type of printed material in Japan): 40% of publications in the Land of the Rising Sun are comics, 30% of publishers’ income comes from comics... But comics today do not prevent the Japanese from respecting science and occupying second place in the world after the United States in terms of the number of registered patents - 26,096 (versus 49,555 for Americans); At the same time, the Japanese have the highest rate of growth in the number of patents in the world - 8.3% in 2006.
Everything seems to be like that of people! And with cars, and with “pocket books”, and with belief in the supernatural. But for some reason, all this does not prevent the United States from successfully maintaining the country’s status as a world scientific and technological leader, but it really hinders us, Russia. Why? We can only assume that we are not an industrial (in the modern sense) and certainly not a post-industrial country.
In 1994, the ratio of US to African R&D spending was approximately 54.3:1. Now compare: in 2003, domestic spending on research and development in the United States and Russia amounted to $284,584.3 million and $16,317.2 million, respectively. The ratio is 17.4:1. Doesn't it remind you of anything in order of magnitude?
According to academician Yuri Tretyakov, dean of the Faculty of Materials Sciences at Moscow State University. M.V. Lomonosov, “the contribution of Russian scientists to world nanotechnology science over the past five to six years has decreased noticeably and is now 1.5% versus 6% in 2000.” Today, even in those industries that mainly form GDP, the level of depreciation of fixed assets is supercritical: in ferrous metallurgy - 50%, in oil and gas - close to 65%, in oil refining - 80%. (That is, practically the situation of the late 20s of the last century!) And this despite the fact that the chemical and petrochemical industries occupy fifth place in the structure of industrial production in Russia - about 6% of the total volume.
This probably sounds odious: “...we are not an industrial (in the modern sense) and certainly not a post-industrial country.” This thought makes me extremely uncomfortable, but I have no other explanation for the fact that “spiritless America,” the country that gave birth to the pop culture phenomenon, sells $29,548 million worth of books and newspapers per year (1st place in the world), and we are not even among the top thirty leading countries in terms of this indicator.
In such a situation, it makes no sense for the state to invest in increasing the prestige of scientific work and science in the public consciousness. It's simply not cost effective. It is not included.
The state may not understand, but it feels: inflating national “PR” in relation to the popularization of scientific and technological knowledge, science and technology is an absolutely hopeless thing; even more hopeless than looking for a national idea. Hence the current circulation of popular science literature. It is significant that the decline in these circulations successfully compensates for the growth in sales of literature in the “fantasy” genre, that is, in other words, fairy tales from the era of biotechnology and the Internet (7-8% of total sales). At the same time, we must not forget that fantasy ( science fiction) is primarily cognitive in nature, while “fantasy” and “horror” (horror) are genres designed for emotions and even physiological arousal. Again, it is no coincidence that among authors in the fantasy genre you will hardly find scientists.
Writer Vladimir Sorokin, in one of his interviews, very figuratively and accurately assesses the situation: “It seems to me that we have enlightened feudalism, coupled with high technology. Modern feudal lords do not ride in carriages, but in six-hundredth Mercedes. And they do not keep their money in chests, and in Swiss banks. But mentally they are no different from the feudal lords of the 16th century."
And you can’t say that this image is too metaphorical. At least, the attitude of our state towards science and scientists often really resembles the relationship between a medieval feudal lord and a court alchemist or astrologer: my neighbor has it, let me have it too; He doesn’t ask for a lot of money, but what the hell isn’t he kidding! - look, and turn mercury into gold. And in general, astrologers are of direct benefit: horoscopes are an irreplaceable thing in the household. It’s not for nothing that even the Izvestia newspaper regularly publishes them...
In fact, Russian society yearns for high technology. For example, the influence of biotechnology, as well as all new technologies in general, is assessed positively by more than 80% of respondents and negatively by only 10% (1026 survey participants in the Moscow region, 1998). The impact of new technologies on the quality of life was assessed positively by 82% of respondents, negatively by 10%. And the level of development of new technologies in Russia is considered low by 42% of respondents, satisfactory by 40%, and high by only 6%.
Perhaps it is precisely the longing for high technology, quite palpable in the public consciousness, that constitutes the resource upon which we can return to truly modern and dynamic socio-economic development. There will be investments in science - popular science magazines will become in demand. But I don’t think this will be the case with popular science journalism.
The statistical data presented in the article in the form of diagrams was kindly provided by Leonid Gokhberg, director of the Institute of Statistical Research and Economics of Knowledge at the State University - Higher School of Economics (SU - HSE).
In the publication by A.G. Vaganov’s “Science Loves Counting” talks about the new format of one of the leading scientific journals in Russia. Currently, 22 journals are registered in the Russian Science Citation Index. The history of the publication began in 1999, when the journal “Naukovedenie” appeared. In 2004, the presentation of the magazine and its name changed - the almanac “Science. Innovation. Education". Increased interest on the part of readers in the results of scientific research had an impact on the editorial board of the journal. A decision was made to change the format of the publication and the frequency of its releases (from 2 to 4 issues per year) while maintaining the name. I would like to especially note that scientific traditions in covering research results, starting from 1999, are supported at a high level by the editor-in-chief of the journal, Doctor of Philosophy, Professor, Honorary Worker of Science and Technology of the Russian Federation, Academician of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine Evgeniy Vasilyevich Semenov.