Campaign of lies launched against Academy – ex-president

(Interfax – MOSCOW, September 17, 2013) Academician Yury Osipov, who was the Russian Academy of Sciences’ president for 12 years, said an unseemly and insulting campaign has been launched in the media against the Academy.

“A well-orchestrated and large-scale information campaign against the Academy of Sciences, which is apparently linked to the Academy reform, aims to convince the public, whose trust in the Academy is high, judging from the latest polls, that it has become rotten and retrograde,” Osipov said at a press conference at the Interfax office on Tuesday.

The campaign is absolutely inappropriate and is based largely on an incorrect interpretation of facts, juggling with facts and brazen lies,” the academician said.

But he also said that reform is a must for the Academy. “I am not going to speak about how necessary the reform is. Of course, it is necessary. They have always been. And reforms have always been carried out. The Academy is a huge organization, incorporating 460 research institutes and about a hundred organizations. All of them have the status of legal entities. Of course, there are problems and questions that need to be tackled,” he said.