Ukrainian state leaders: P.Poroshenko, A.Yatsenyuk, V.Groysman: Take all measures against scientific misconduct in Mrs. Kyrylenko's thesis

As members of the Ukrainian scientific community, we are deeply concerned with the case of serious scientific misconduct that took place in our country with respect to the Doctor of Science thesis in the field of Pedagogy that was written by Mrs. Kateryna Kyrylenko, wife of Vice-Premier-Minister of Ukraine Vyacheslav Kyrylenko (he is also the Minister of Culture).

The problem is the author’s husband that defends her in the media and in Twitter, as well as behind the scene, Mr. Kyrylenko is the current boss of Ukranian Education Minister Prof. Sergii Kvit (who controls all the system of granting of scientific degrees), and Mrs. Kyrylenko works at the University of Culture subordinated to Mr.Kyrylenko – so we have a blatant case of conflict of interest that hampers any attempts of the scientific community to insist on investigation of this case.

The thesis contains numerous obviously plagiarized paragraphs, some totally pseudoscientific ideas intended to be taught to university students, some fake publications not compliant with any reasonable standards. However, the thesis was speedily defended and approved by the Ministry of Education, despite earlier plagiarism complaints with respect to Mrs. Kyrylenko’s book.

All this happens in the situation when the Government of Ukraine reduces already low funding of science and salaries of real scientists with valid degrees, announces programmes of even wider job cuts targeted at science and fast “evaluations” supervised by the same people that defend plagiarism and pseudoscience.

The whole process of getting higher scientific degrees is very cumbersome, formal and expensive for everybody with exception of officials and their relatives. One thing is that forms to be completed take much more paper and time than the thesis itself. Almost only progress reached after prolonged fight of the scientific community for better standards was mandatory publication of theses that allowed the community to find plagiarism and pseudoscience in the thesis by the official’s wife.

The reaction of Mr. Kyrylenko (see e.g.https://twitter.com/KyrylenkoVyach/status/691630026312278016 ) against initial publication in Ukrainska Pravda newspaper (in Ukrainian) http://life.pravda.com.ua/columns/2016/01/13/206334/ suggests possible conflict of interest. That's why we're writing to you as an independent and unbiased observer.
The thesis matherials (in Ukrainian) are in http://nubip.edu.ua/node/16445Some brief description of early stage of conflict (in English) can be found there https://vitaliyb.wordpress.com/2016/01/15/the-father-the-mother-and-the-teacher/

Later, it has been discovered that the thesis of Mrs. Kyrylenko plagiarized about 10 pages (pp.153-163) of her thesis by copying large parts of text from pseudo-scientific work of other author without proper citations; therefore it contains pseudo-scientific “description” of leptons - elementary particleswidely studied in particle physics (see e.g.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lepton) stating (in Ukrainian) e.g. that "leptonic conglomerations develop feelings, passion, thought and self-consciousness similar to those in biological systems", with many more equally pseudoscientific paragraphs presented as learning material for students. Also, a paper of Mrs. Kyrylenko's used for her thesis defence (ref. 474) was published in a fake journal "The USA Journal of Applied Sciences" that cites at its page an ISSN of another (though also predatory) journal. All other required “foreign” publications are in predatory “journals” that are not actually published – the journals and books of “conference” papers are not properly distributed but just sent to authors. Ukrainian requirements for publications supporting theses are regarded by many people to be excessive and unreasonable, however, looks like officials’ wives can get away with non-compliance.

We are extremely concerned with the fate of the Ukrainian science in the situation when officials try to get rid of scientists while supporting their relatives’ and colleagues’ exercises in pseudoscience or getting degrees with theses produced other people. The planned procedures of “optimisation” are too fast to be reasonable and justified, and are governed by people not interested in proper science but in getting hand upon the academies’ buildings and land, as we can see in the 2016 Budget Law. Scientists were stamped by the same top officials as producing only wastepaper (actually they are required to produce huge reports by regulations).

Low standards and disrespect pursued by top officials with respect to science and scientists threatens jobs, reputations, international cooperation of Ukrainian scientists, and well as the country’s future.