REVELATIONS IN SCIENCE: Trillion Allocations and Billion Lawsuits

Art design: huxley.media via Photoshop inspired by René Magritte’s painting Portrait of Stephy Langui, 1961

It is difficult even to list the astonishing inventions created by Viktor Petrik (b. 1946), who graduated in absentia from the Faculty of Psychology at Leningrad University. He came up with truly miraculous things — a method of moving vehicles that does not require any energy sources, nano-batteries for electric cars, a perpetually rotating cylinder that also consumes no energy, an underground «Pyramid of Cheops» emitting rays capable of extending human life to at least 140 years, and even a formula for a foolproof game in a casino.

The well-known entrepreneur Artem Tarasov (1950–2017) claimed that Petrik had developed a technology for extending life to 200 years, which Tarasov personally tested (why, then, he died at the age of 67 is simply beyond comprehension!). And this is not even mentioning his most famous invention — miracle filters allegedly capable of purifying even the dirtiest and most radioactive water to crystal clarity. The only problem: no one has ever managed to find any of these miracle inventions in working condition. Otherwise, everything would be perfect…

SEARCHING FOR HIS OWN PATH

rom early youth, he was an indefatigable innovator. Even before graduating from university, he was already astonishing the public with mass hypnosis sessions. Then he began to actively mingle with very interesting people — antique collectors. The outcome of these useful connections was a sentence: 11 years of imprisonment with confiscation of property. The court found him guilty under 11 articles of the RSFSR Criminal Code — fraud, extortion, attempted robbery, coercion to give false testimony, and so on…

Malicious tongues accused poor Petrik of acting as a tipster for robbers, relieving antique collectors of the burden of caring for their collections. Could it really be true? Well, yes, he did get a sentence, but in 1989, after serving only six years, he was released on parole — which must mean he deserved leniency, right?

And prison clearly became a university for Petrik — soon after the collapse of the USSR, he became the general director of an enterprise engaged in growing artificial semiprecious stones, and before long, he surfaced in the business around osmium-187 — an isotope costing $10,000 per gram, but with no practical use: a perfect money-laundering scheme! One of Sobchak’s deputies was even arrested over this business, but not Petrik — greater things awaited him…

SCIENTIFIC GROWTH

Petrik’s achievements — whatever they may have been — earned him recognition in certain circles: in 1997 he became an academician! Nowadays, when all vocational schools have turned into colleges, institutes into universities, and universities into academies, this has become much easier. Petrik became an academician of the RAEN — the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences — as well as of five similar institutions. And what are these academies? Just public organizations — that’s what they call themselves, but they grant no special rights to their members. Still, it feels nice…

What such academies do know how to do is flatter their members. For example, RAEN awarded Petrik the academic degree of Doctor of Technical Sciences in May 2001 (though the Ministry of Education, just six months later, issued a special clarification that the academic degrees awarded by such academies mean something only within those academies themselves. But you, dear reader, most likely do not hold such a degree, while Petrik does!)

Moreover, in just six years, he made four bona fide discoveries, for which RAEN issued him four ornate diplomas. All in all, life was a success. Others could only envy him… And that was still far from everything.

COLLEAGUES AND ASSOCIATES

Nevertheless, Petrik did not embark on his greatest invention in proud solitude. His trusted collaborator and valued co-author was none other than the Chairman of the Russian State Duma, Boris Gryzlov — would you dare claim that he is not a great scientist? To those who dared, Petrik would shout: «Gryzlov is a brilliant scientist! Do you know how many nights he spent with me in these laboratories? Back when nobody knew him, before he even became a politician». As proof of these claims, he would present a photo in which he and Gryzlov were grilling shashlik together — and it was clearly a recent one. Admittedly, grilling shashlik properly is no easy science, but let’s agree it is somewhat different…

Incidentally, Gryzlov was not Petrik’s only famous co-author. Another was the well-known Sergei Kiriyenko, the Russian prime minister who organized the 1998 default and is now the First Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Administration of the Russian Federation. Few would dare challenge his scientific credentials either…

And when, with the support of such illustrious allies, Petrik began producing the main product of his scientific endeavors — miracle filters that could purify water from anything imaginable, including poisons, heavy metals, and radioactive isotopes — he named some of these filter models «Shoigu» and decorated them with EMERCOM symbols (although it later turned out that neither Shoigu nor EMERCOM had given him permission, and he was even fined as much as 200,000 rubles).

Well, let’s leave Shoigu aside — but Gryzlov is officially listed as Petrik’s co-author on patent RU 2345430 C1 for a «method of purifying liquid radioactive waste using nanotechnology». Who could possibly doubt with such a co-author? After all, not a single Chairman of the State Duma since 1905 had ever held a technology patent — but Gryzlov does!

ENVIOUS DETRACTORS

And so, in 2006, when the United Russia party launched the federal program «Clean Water» to provide the population with quality drinking water, guess who won the party’s competition for the best water filter. As for how much was supposed to be allocated for this program, reports vary — the lowest estimate I found was 100 billion, while Gryzlov once voiced the figure of 15 trillion rubles!

In short, everything was going wonderfully when suddenly, as if on cue, the Academy of Sciences Commission on Combating Pseudoscience took an interest in such an outstanding project. At first, Petrik tried to persuade academician Aleksandrov to kindly withdraw his publication that raised uncomfortable questions about Petrik’s filters. But Aleksandrov refused — and, by a strange coincidence, he began receiving messages on his answering machine.

Here is the text of one of them: «You’ve gotten yourself into an incredibly difficult situation, which is why you’ll need all your weak intellectual abilities. You think you’re too smart, but now you’ve climbed to a very high level… I don’t care what happens to you, but you’re setting up — very seriously setting up — other scientists from the Academy of Sciences. And you still have a chance to call back, meet, and make a decision…»

When that didn’t work, the same voice in the next message cheerfully informed Aleksandrov that he «knew 20 ways of making someone disappear without a trace». Aleksandrov was convinced he recognized Petrik’s voice, though perhaps he was mistaken? In any case, when Aleksandrov turned to the FSB, he was told that for some reason they could not pursue this person and advised him to leave Moscow for a while…

International Short Story Competition «ODESSSIADA»

THE PLOTTINGS OF HIS ENEMIES

Nevertheless, it proved impossible to reach the entire Commission on Pseudoscience, and the questions about the miracle filters continued. A number of quite capable journalists also wrote about what they thought of Petrik’s filters — and they thought very poorly. As the tests purported to demonstrate the filters’ advantages were examined, one astonishing thing after another turned up — for example, a study from the Erisman Institute of Hygiene about which little was known: there was no conclusion, no expert protocol, and the research had been paid for by some foreign company that wished to remain anonymous.

Other studies produced results that made one want to cry out — for example, that 100% of daphnia crustaceans, good indicators of biological hazards, died after passing through Petrik’s filters, while other systems did them no harm at all. It quickly became clear that Petrik’s filters did not remove chlorine, clogged rapidly with metal salts, and even made sterile water largely unsuitable for drinking after treatment. True, in one respect they did surpass all other filters — they cost roughly three times as much.

Meanwhile, the RAS Commission on Pseudoscience issued its conclusion — politely and diplomatically worded, but perfectly clear: Petrik’s studies are full of monstrous errors and have nothing to do with science. How to deal with such dangerous enemies when scientific facts in Petrik’s favor are conspicuously absent? Very simply: expose them and sue them! Co-author Gryzlov supported him in one interview, declaring that the commission was engaged in obscurantism and even alleging the existence of «forces that do not want the Russian Federation to become a state with high technologies». Why be ceremonious with people like that? Grab them by the scruff and drag them into the dock!

THE TRIAL BEGINS

Petrik attacked his opponents energetically and decisively, though they were many — not only the Commission on Pseudoscience but also a host of capable and honest journalists who were not afraid to say what they thought of him (one of them, the well-known biologist and writer Kirill Eskov, author of perhaps the most popular sequel to The Lord of the Rings, coined a fitting name for this story — «Petrikgate», by analogy with Watergate).

At first, Petrik hoped simply to intimidate them — besides leaving messages on answering machines, he also made public statements. Here are his own words: «I have no doubt that the dirty story of the Commission on Pseudoscience would sooner or later have ended without me. The only question is how many more human destinies would have been crippled, how many more talented scientists would have left Russia. The time has come to put an end to this disgrace: my case will be the last page in this commission’s activities!»

Why was this evil commission offending poor Petrik? He explained it effortlessly — because of the big money the USA was paying them, of course!

In 2010 Petrik filed a lawsuit against members of the Commission on Pseudoscience, demanding one billion rubles for the damage done to his reputation. With the sincerity of an innocent child, he admitted: «I’m just scaring the Academy with the money». How upsetting it must have been when the Academy was not scared at all, and the court dismissed his claim… On the contrary, the academicians’ countersuit against Petrik succeeded — the court awarded only a modest sum, 20,000 rubles each, but officially recognized Petrik’s statements as false and obliged him to retract them. Later, other courts forbade him from naming his filters after high-ranking officials, and eventually even prohibited their production, installation, and sale. Despite his eminent co-author — at that time, this was still possible. Ah, those were the days…

UNLIKELY TO BE THE END…

Since then, the position of the pseudo-scientist has weakened — even his co-author Gryzlov preferred to distance himself. No one paid attention anymore to his other claims, such as alleging that Nobel laureates Geim and Novoselov had stolen their discoveries from him, while he supposedly had tons of graphene in storage with remarkable properties, worth trillions of dollars (so why didn’t he sell them?).

Nor did he seem to receive any large state allocations recently — such as the 6 billion rubles for gamma-laser research, with which he also had nothing to do — unless, of course, that is a state secret. Petrik fell into disgrace, became a completely odious figure; no one is afraid of his lawsuits or his answering-machine messages anymore.

But the method he devised — enlisting top officials as co-authors and jointly siphoning off budget funds — has hardly become less relevant. Moreover, the less vulnerable these top officials are to criticism, the more likely a new Petrik will emerge, perhaps under another name, but with the same methods of plundering the state treasury.

And they will act and explain in exactly the same way Petrik once did: «Don’t try to understand anything! Understanding is impossible! And the moment you start relying on knowledge, there will be a misfire… nothing will work out!» With this genuine quote from him, I will end — after all, nothing could be clearer.

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