Jobs: Alexander Panchin, biologist and popularizer of science

I had a paranormal experience of meeting Santa Claus

You said that you were a superstitious child. This is true?

- I would not say that I was more superstitious than others, but at some time I really recognized God and even tried to charge the water. My father brought disposable filters from work that he no longer used, and they were given to me as toys. I passed water through them, insisted on the sun and considered it magical - the game was called "Water Doctor". However, if I was asked whether this water really has healing properties, I would not insist.

I also had a paranormal experience of meeting Santa Claus. I remember how once on New Year's Eve my parents and I left the house where there were no gifts, and then returned, and they were already lying under the tree - this is clear evidence of gift genesis! I could not find another explanation, and my parents did not admit anything.

In addition, at one time I wore a cross and thought it might be useful, and I also put on an occult amulet for the university entrance exams. At that moment, I did not see anything strange in taking with me a subject with which I always passed exams perfectly well - even if it does not help, then it certainly will not harm.

These were small superstitions in which you are not completely convinced, but at the same time you see no reason to abandon them. Now I perceive all this as childish pranks.

“But your father is a biologist. Didn't he help destroy delusion?

- My parents gave me a lot in terms of knowledge about the world around me, but did not interfere in the process of forming a worldview. I remember many lessons related to biology, mathematics, physics and chemistry, but not a single one about the existence of spirits and the supernatural. The family did not touch on these topics at all.

I will say more: my father is an atheist, and my mother is a believer. I was baptized for the following reasons: if he grows up an atheist, he will not care, and if he is a believer, he will say thank you. As a result, I grew up an atheist and I don't care.

How did you overcome delusions and become one of the most famous Russian popularizers of science?

- In addition to my parents, school teachers played an important role in my development. I studied in a specialized biological class, where one of the disciplines was the scientific method - an atypical subject for most schools. Here we tried to understand the concepts of “control group,” “statistical analysis,” “proof of causation,” and “sample size,” and then we did simple physiological experiments on humans.

I was fascinated by the very idea of obtaining reliable knowledge: you need to come up with and correctly plan an experiment, formulate a hypothesis in advance and understand how to test it. Now I feel that this period has greatly influenced me.

At the university, I began to move away from some superstitions: I reflected more and more and thought about which of my beliefs are correct. The internet came along, and I saw people foaming at the mouth proving things that are obviously bullshit when viewed from a biological point of view.

I was perplexed when someone said that water has a memory, or argued that genetically modified foods are something terrible. I wanted to change the state of affairs if someone was wrong, so I began to get involved in discussions.

True, I quickly realized that online disputes are a very ineffective method to change public opinion. So I switched to popular science articles, which had more reach than discussion on a forum or chat.

Alexander Panchin: popular science articles have greater reach than discussion on a forum or chat

How did you come to the conclusion that you should not just study science in classrooms, but talk about it and travel with lectures throughout the country?

- I popularize science in very different ways - books, articles, lectures, and visits to radio and television. I don’t think everyone should do this, but I personally enjoy it.

I started with texts - I was a scientific columnist for Novaya Gazeta. Then I was asked to read several popular science lectures, and a couple of times I was invited to television. I liked the rest, apparently, too, so the proposals became more and more.

Popular science activities that I am engaged in are highly specific. I talk mainly about those things that seem to me the most important: they can affect the life of an individual or the development of our state.

For example, my first popular science book was about genetic engineering. I believe that people should have an adequate understanding of it, because in Russia laws are being passed that prohibit some options for the use of genetic engineering, and this can lead to a technological lag.

According to the results of sociological studies, more than 70% of the population believes that GMOs are very harmful. And I want both the state and society to change their position on this issue. People fall prey to unfair marketing when they buy "organic" products at five times the price.

Manufacturers are simply monetizing fear. Many of those who read my books and listened to lectures admitted that they can now safely go to supermarkets: their phobias have disappeared, because they understood how everything works.

Why are genetically modified foods still safe?

- When we get a new variety, it is always slightly different from what it was before. Each generation carries with it dozens of new mutations, and this applies to any product: crops, animal breeds.

Moreover, if we look at the method, it turns out that genetic engineering wins over selection. In the latter case, we rely on unpredictable mutations and focus on the final indicator - the productivity of the variety, and in the case of genetic engineering we can more accurately interfere with the genome.

If you drive into Google "GMO", then an apple will come out, into which something is injected with a syringe, or some even more absurd picture. People do not understand how genetic engineering works, and some even think that they are genetically modified if they eat a GMO product. In this case, I usually joke that I will cook if I eat a boiled egg.

Of course, you can specifically create a toxic product with a toxic protein, and after using it, problems will arise, but no one will do this. All stories, when varieties dangerous for people were bred, were connected precisely with selection. Not a single person has suffered from products created with the help of genetic engineering.

At the same time, GMOs are just one example of what seems to me socially significant. I am concerned that there are people who deny the role of HIV in the development of AIDS. These are very dangerous myths that can lead infected people to stop using medications. Such a decision will shorten their lives and endanger their sexual partners. Precautions must be taken, but the HIV epidemic is still developing in Russia.

Nobody goes to science for the sake of big salaries

How is your working day structured today and what does the workplace look like?

- I work at the Institute for Information Transmission Problems and do bioinformatics. My workplace is a computer, wherever it is. So I can do business wherever I want. I read a lot of scientific articles, write programs for analyzing biological data, discuss the results with colleagues, prepare publications.

All this is not difficult to combine with popular science activities. Recently, I have been visiting other cities about a couple of times a month - on weekends. I think it is important to talk about science in the regions, because there are many such events in Moscow, but not in the provinces.

My task is to make people understand that they are not alone in their desire to learn something new, but, unfortunately, due to the large number of things to do, I do not travel to other cities as often as I should. An example for me is Asya Kazantseva, who travels a lot.

What applications do you use in order not to keep a million facts in your head?

- My main note-taking application is a notebook on my computer. I also really like the EndNote service, which helps to store and insert links to sources in Word text in one click. This can be useful when you are writing a scientific or popular science article, book. In addition, the application independently creates a bibliography in the required format. This makes the job very easy - I recommend it.

Have you ever regretted going into science? Due to the small salaries in this environment, for example

- It seems to me that no one goes to science for the sake of big salaries. Everyone has an adequate idea of what kind of earnings are here. I have never regretted my decision, because I have a bad idea of myself in something else. I like to satisfy curiosity and learn something new, so I can't even imagine how you can not love science.

Alexander Panchin and Russian scientific pop

Don't you think that Russian scientific pop lags behind the world?

- If scientific pop is written in English, then it automatically becomes the property of the whole world and turns out to be more influential. In addition, there are more people who speak English than those who speak Russian. That is why the world of science pop has more authors and readers. This is an inequality that will most likely never change.

At the same time, there is quite a decent domestic scientific pop. True, in Russia there are few examples when a scientist with a world renown or great academic merit is engaged in this. There is Konstantin Severinov or Mikhail Gelfand - people with cool scientific publications, but they do not write popular science books. In Russia, scientific pop is more popular.

Where do we need to upgrade to reach the world level?

- To be honest, I don't know. At one time, the West faced the Sagan Effect, named after the famous popularizer of sciences, Carl Sagan. He was a cool scientist and tried to become a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, but he was not accepted.

Biographers believe that the fact that he was a popularizer of science played a decisive role. In the scientific community, he was not recognized, because they believed that scientists should sit in the laboratory and educate students, and not climb into the TV to influence society.

Subsequently, it turned out that Karl Sagan had greater competencies than many academics, and was more worthy than anyone to become a member of the Academy of Sciences. This snobbery has been overcome in the West, and now science pop is a very respectable thing. Good authors are respected in the academic community, and many scholars are quietly engaged in promoting educational ideas to the masses.

It seems to me that Russia is now just going through a period of early development of science pop, which the United States overcame back in the days of Carl Sagan. There are many perceptions that popularization devalues and vulgarizes science. We are working to overcome, and I hope that soon more and more worthy scientists will begin to lecture to a wide audience. It is important that people know what is happening in science. Maybe in this way we will be able to overcome the fear of technological progress.

Why do you think young people today are not particularly eager to go into science?

- People can be stopped by a purely economic component: salaries in science are not very high. In addition, if a person is a nonresident and wants to work in a good institute, he will most likely have to move and rent an apartment. All this can interfere with the desire to pursue the profession that interests you.

In addition, unfortunately, there is a strong devaluation of scientific reputations. In Russia, there are a huge number of people who hold high positions - up to the rectors of universities, but at the same time they simply wrote off their dissertations. There are deans of faculties whose Hirsch index is equal to one - that is, they have only one article that is cited only once in world science.

I fully admit that people understand all this and simply do not want to be involved. They are afraid to become the same candidates of science as some theologian who has defended a degree in theology. Or by the same doctor of sciences, as the author of the theory that water can be charged by putting it on a CD with a drug recording.

Everything I have just said is a reference to real-life examples. People have a question whether it is necessary to do science in Russia, if everything is so bad here. There are two answers: it is not necessary, or, on the contrary, it is necessary to change the current state of affairs. But change requires ambition, willpower, and a real desire to see as little bullshit as possible disguised as science.

What advice would you give to those who nevertheless decide to fight all this injustice?

- I will give purely practical recommendations for choosing a laboratory - this is the most important if you want to get personal skills and do science. The main thing is to know English and see what scientific publications come out of the laboratory that you like.

Read them and think if they are interesting to you or at least someone in the world, whether it is promising. If you find that you do, then take action to become a useful member of such a team and convince these people to take over. Do not be afraid to contact specialists who seem interesting to consider your candidacy and give advice on further development.

Belief in homeopathy is not only stupid, but also dangerous

Why do intelligent people so often believe in all sorts of nonsense? For example, to the same homeopathy

- You have to understand that the methods of alternative medicine pass through the sieve of natural selection. Only those who are best equipped to mislead people win. Take homeopathy.

If you have been prescribed a homeopathic remedy and it does not get better, then the problem is allegedly that you were prescribed the wrong medicine, and not that homeopathy does not work. You will be treated with one drug for six months, then another six months, and then the disease will go away by itself. However, you can be sure that it was the second drug that helped.

In addition, diseases that tend to go away on their own are chosen for homeopathic treatment. For example, there are many fufloferons designed to get rid of the common cold. As you know, with treatment, it goes away in a week, and without treatment - in seven days, but people are convinced that it was the drug that helped them.

A lot of attention in homeopathy is paid to talking with the patient and building trusting relationships, but if the doctor is a good psychologist, this does not mean that he is a qualified doctor. It is possible that a person who can speak heart to heart is far from the best specialist in medicine.

What are the toughest homeopathic fans you've come across?

- I have a friend, an oncologist, to whom they brought a boy with a tumor in his cheek with a diameter of 21 centimeters. His parents treated him with homeopathy for nine months, although the dentist referred the child to an oncologist. The homeopath said everything was fine and chatted to his parents. When the grandfather brought the boy to a normal doctor, the case was already very neglected. There are many such examples.

In the West, a homeopathic company made toothache pills that were supposed to contain absolutely nothing, as they should. But due to poor production control, belladonna got into them and several children died. In some cases, believing in homeopathy is not only stupid, but also dangerous.

You were on the SPAS TV channel, where you argued about the existence of God, and you also came to the Malakhov show, where you discussed the phenomenon of the Tisul princess. But why? Are you sure that the audience of these channels is ready for a scientific view of the world?

- The problem is that a significant part of the audience of science pop are people who no longer need to be convinced of anything. They already have a relatively adequate view of the world. Sci-pop is criticized for preaching among its own, and this is partly true. Entering other platforms that have nothing to do with the popularization of science, I see as an answer to this criticism and an attempt to expand the audience.

There is no hope that most people who watch the program will change their point of view. However, if at least a few people doubt and hears an argument that gets through to them, it will be great. It is difficult from a scientific point of view to assess our effectiveness.

Do not think that you are simply being used in order to strengthen another myth with a postscript: look, the scientist heard all this and could not dispute?

- I have not come across such an interpretation of programs with my participation. They edited everything fairly honestly at SPAS - they showed my position in the form in which I wanted it. I think that I performed well there and showed everything with dignity. It was a positive experience.

In the case of Malakhov's project, in my opinion, there was no exhaust, because I was not really allowed to say anything. I went there solely for the sake of an existential experience: to see how the programs are arranged, which, unfortunately, play a rather large role in the development of our society.

However, in a specific episode where the phenomenon of the Tisul princess was discussed, both points of view were presented: both supporters of the fact that the artifact is 800 million years old, and skeptics. There are much more horrible examples - in particular, programs on REN TV, in which people are shown outright bullshit without presenting a second point of view.

Alexander Panchin: about the experience of participating in television programs

You are a member of the Advisory Board of the Harry Houdini Prize. What is the most amazing thing you saw there?

- I am one of the founders of this award, so I have been there from the very beginning. The main organizer is Stanislav Nikolsky. He practically does not speak publicly, but initially it was he who decided to reproduce the Western award, in which a million dollars are paid for the demonstration of paranormal abilities. We decided not to discriminate against domestic psychics and said that we were ready to give a million rubles to the winner.

Another founder of the award, Mikhail Lidin, is the author of a skeptical YouTube blog in which he exposes the show "The Battle of Psychics". He probably does the biggest job. Our expert council also includes several illusionists who help eliminate the potential threat that some tests can be passed with the help of tricks.

During the existence of the award, we have not seen anything supernatural and inexplicable. There was not a single applicant who passed our tests.

And what are they made of?

- Tests are selected individually for each applicant. If a person says that he can determine someone's death from a photograph, then we will ask him to take a set of frames and a list of the circumstances of the death and propose to compare. None of those around you can tell: the correct answer is hidden in an envelope. In this case, all the details of the test are negotiated with the applicant in advance, and before starting the test, he confirms that nothing prevents him from starting work.

I get a thrill when I analyze some myth

Your book "Defense from the Dark Arts" debunks many misconceptions, but at the same time it regularly appears on the "Astrology" shelf in bookstores. What do you think about it?

- There she belongs. This is exactly the solution to the problem of preaching among our own people. The book, with its cover and design, should attract the attention of people who would buy an alternative medicine publication but read Defense Against the Dark Arts instead and may not fall prey to delusion. After reading, a person should have a sufficient arsenal to identify and learn erroneous inferences.

You also have an art book "Apophenia". Why would a scientist write dystopias?

- "Apophenia" is about a world where pseudoscientific trends and astrology have won, homeopathy and theology have become mainstream. They began to be used in courts and government medicine. Much of what is written there is not fantastic, but reflects reality in an exaggerated version.

I wrote this book more for myself - it was interesting to try to state my views on what we can get to. I wanted this story, on the one hand, to arouse fear in the reader, because we live among the most dangerous delusions, and on the other, laughter, because all this is so absurd.

You said that many of the drafts of the book came true at the time of writing - what, for example?

- The emergence of the same theology as a state specialty or the emergence of a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences - a homeopath. All this is in the spirit of "Apophenia". Or take our Ministry of Education, which is engaged in imposing religious ideology instead of directing efforts to popularize science and seek scientific answers to questions. They recently had a Freudian typo on their website: Minister of Education.

How do you relax? I read that you spend a lot of time swearing when “someone is wrong on the Internet”. Can a web doctor be productive from this point of view?

- Some discussions on the Internet really make me happy. There is a video on YouTube called "This is my obsessive-compulsive disorder." The doctor presents the character with some things that make him want to fix them. For example, three paintings, one of which hangs crookedly.

The hero, looking exhausted, adjusts everything, and at the end asks: "Can I come tomorrow?" He enjoys this therapy, and I have the same reaction to delusions. I feel high when I analyze a myth, so pop science is one of the forms of relaxation for me.

If you take other forms of leisure, then sometimes I do social dancing. You come to a party where everyone is trained in some form of dance, but there are no regular couples, and you dance with whoever you want. This is the meaning of sociality: you can meet new people. Of course, like many others, I read books, go to the movies and even play computer games - I really love StarCraft.

Life hacking from Alexander Panchin

Books

The most useful and interesting book I can now name is Harry Potter and the Methods of Rational Thinking by Eliezer Yudkowsky. It describes in an accessible way some scientific approaches and worldview humanistic ideas that seem useful to me.

In life, more than anything else, I was inspired by science fiction writer Stanislav Lem. This is my favorite author. Read Star Diaries and Cyberiada. I recommend Lem to everyone, because he has a great sense of humor, and in his work there are many prophetic ideas about the development of the future.

Serials

To be honest, I'm somewhat of a TV series fan. I've seen a huge number of TV shows that HBO or Netflix makes - from Game of Thrones to House of Cards. Of the latter, my favorite is The Miracle Workers. They talk about how decisions are made in heaven about what happens on earth. Most importantly, do not confuse it with the Russian TV series "The Miracle Worker" - I have not watched it.

Films

Favorite movie - "Cloud Atlas". I really like it when the works are complete and everything is connected in them. In the "Cloud Atlas" it is done very beautifully. Each of several stories tells how to fight for freedom and how the achievements of previous fighters inspire future ones.

For similar reasons, I love Cloverfield - it's a horror movie. There is a famous phrase: "If there is a gun on the wall, then it must shoot."There are a lot of guns in this film and they all shoot - very beautiful.

Video

I love to watch the speeches of Western popularizers of science. Probably my favorite is the physicist Sean Carroll. It is very pleasant to listen to him. On YouTube you can find his lectures "" or "Why God is Not a Good Theory." There is also a podcast where he communicates with other scientists and even Nobel laureates.

I also watch with great pleasure the discussions of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett. These are four people who played a major role in the development of the secular movement in the United States. They were nicknamed "horsemen of the apocalypse". They brought a lot of interesting ideas and at the same time they were also very good speakers.