A well-known Russian scientist and public figure, the founder of the Dissernet movement, which fights against massive falsifications in scientific papers, Andrey Rostovtsev , told in his blog an amazing story about how, at times, dissertations are written and defended in our country. And these, so to speak, candidates and doctors of veterinary sciences treat our pets:
“We will talk about Saratov farmers. More precisely, about veterinarians, candidates and doctors of sciences, who over the years copied the same research results from one work to another, while changing experimental animals: cats, dogs, calves, heifers, and even ewes.
The story dates back to the recent 2018, when the results of a blood test of newborn calves using chlorella suspension in one dissertation work turned out to be exactly the same as in newborn calves after the Difficult Birth Syndrome in another thesis defended by another person in 2015. Both authors are from the same Saratov State Agrarian University named after N.I. Vavilov.
Then exactly the same blood test results appeared in the thesis of a third Saratov veterinarian. Only now it was about sick dogs.
In parallel with this, another dissertation is being defended in Saratov. This time about cats. And as you may have guessed, the blood in cats was not a hundredth of a percent different from previous calves (both of them) and sick dogs. Everything would be fine, but someone noticed that the same tables of results wander from one dissertation to another for four years, and the Saratov doctors of science were asked: where have you been all these four years? The defense of the dissertation about cats failed, but the author's abstract with dubious results was sent to all libraries.
It would seem that the factory of fake Saratov veterinarians has been discovered and should stop working. No matter how! The fifth Saratov veterinarian successfully defends his dissertation on ... ewes.
The fifth veterinarian is smarter than his predecessors - replaces the last digits in the results of the study everywhere by one. The table looks ridiculous (the values and their errors end strictly in "1"), but formally differs from the previous ones. Blinded by such creative success, the members of the Saratov dissertation council "didn't notice the catch." Although, in the conclusions of his dissertation work, the author was no longer cunning, but left all the numbers that calves (both of them), sick dogs and cats used to have exactly.
The crowning achievement of the celebration of life of Saratov farmers in 2019 is a doctoral thesis dedicated to dry cows and heifers. There is no need to talk about blood tests. They are practically no different from calves (both of them), sick dogs, cats and ewes. The Russian Academy of Sciences opposes the crown of scientific creativity. Not huh-muhry!
The crown is the end of the matter. Can you breathe out? Again, no! A team of Saratov authors in 2022 speaks at the International Scientific and Practical Conference with exactly the same results. Which animal will they choose this time? Read in the published proceedings of the conference:
funny? I think so. In Dissernet, such amusements cannot be counted. Maybe it's time to publish an almanac of Dissernet's funny stories in faces?
By the way, about faces. They say that in the photo (from the network) a cross between a cow, a dog and a pig in the body of a sheep. It turns out that miracles happen not only in dissertations from Saratov.