Russian Academy of Sciences head refuses to endorse stripping Minister of PhD

Vladimir Fortov, the president of the Russian Academy of Sciences, refused to endorse the statement of a group academics and academy members who had called the PhD thesis of Russia's Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky a "pseudo-scientific" work. The academy head has, instead, asked that the dissertation be sent for reassessment at the country's Ural Federal University.

"They signed [that document] individually. In no case does it represent the opinion of all of the Academy of Sciences. [The Academy] has over 2,000 members," said Fortov in an interview with news agency RIA Novosti.

Ministry spokesperson, Irina Kaznacheeva told newspaper RBK that the actions of the academics seemed to be politically and ideologically motivated, as if ordered. She did not specify who exactly the "client" could be.

In an interview with news agency Interfax, Kaznacheeva drew attention to the fact that the majority of the academics who had made the statement were not historians. "It is not quite correct ... [for] specialists in different fields of scientific research to accuse a doctor of historical sciences of pseudoscience. This does not sound convincing," she said.

Academics and academy members had published a statement on Medinsky's dissertation in newspaper Kommersant on the morning of Friday, October 28, 2016. The statement was signed by 24 people, all part of an association of researchers who oppose the reform of the Academy of Sciences.

In April 2016 a group of scientists appealed to the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation to deprive Medinsky of his doctorate status, having uncovered "mistakes" in his dissertation.