Russians care less about scientific discoveries – poll

MOSCOW. Feb 27 (Interfax) – Russians are losing interest in science, Russian Public Opinion Study Center (VTsIOM) told Interfax. It polled 1,600 respondents in 138 towns and cities in 46 regions on February 2-3.

Only 47% show interest in the latest scientific achievements and technologies. The indicator stood at 68% in 2007, the center said.

The number of people who could not care less about scientific discoveries is up, from 28% in 2007 to 49% in 2013.

Innovations mostly catch the attention of men (54%), active Internet users (57%) and educated and well-to-do people (53%).

Women (54%), poorly educated people (67%), non-Internet users (57%) and people with low incomes (54%) have a much lower interest in science.

Medicine seems to evoke the biggest interest: 25% of the respondents say they monitor medical achievements. Nineteen percent are enthusiastic about new technologies and 16% about astronomical discoveries and space exploration.

Seven percent keep an eye on nanotechnologies and automobile industry innovations, 6% on physics and biology, 5% on Internet technologies and electronics, 4% on historic discoveries, and 3% on chemistry and military science.

The least interesting are innovations in agriculture, architecture, construction and transport (1%).

Russian scientists best known to the general public are Nobel Prize winner, physicist Zhores Alfyorov (known to 5% of the respondents now and 8% in 2007) and physicist Sergei Kapitsa who anchored the Ochevidnoye-Neveroyatnoye (Obvious and Improbable) popular science program for years (3% now and 6% in 2007).

Two percent recalled nuclear physicist, human rights activist Andrei Sakharov and mathematician Grigory Perelman.

One percent named founding father of Soviet cosmonautics Sergei Korolyov, pediatrician Leonid Roshal, thinker and philosopher Nikolai Fyodorov, and intellectual and political consultant Anatoly Vasserman. The latter was named for the first time ever.

Putin denies human rights violations in Russia

MOSCOW. Feb 28 (Interfax) – Russian President Vladimir Putin said he disagrees that there were

human rights problems in Russia in 2012, adding that election campaigns are accompanied by

accusations of human rights violations all over the world.

“I don’t believe we had any special problems with human rights in 2012. We had an election

campaign in 2012,” Putin told a press conference following his meeting with his French

counterpart Francois Hollande.

Putin recalled that two election campaigns (parliamentary and presidential elections) were

conducted in Russia in 2012.

“In every country, and you can’t not agree with that, political competition intensifies during

major election campaigns, and that is always accompanied by calls made on the other party or

third parties in this dispute to back this or that party, and people always talk about some

violations,” Putin said.

“I don’t think anything changed in Russia in this regard in 2012. We made a choice in favor of

democratic development back in the early 1990s, and Russia has no intention of leaving this

path,” Putin said, responding to a question from French journalists, who said year 2012 was a

hard year for Russia in terms of human rights observance.