The Executives of the Ministry of Education and the Higher Attestation Commission paid due attention to the proposal made by the Ministerial Science Council concerning the revision of the composition of expert councils after it became clear that these councils involved people connected with the defense of dissertations with large-scale borrowings.

      This was stated by chairman of the Science Council, pro-rector of Moscow State University, RAS Academician Aleksey Khokhlov. “We were offered a list of people for the committee that would check the compositions of expert councils, first of all, in economics; there is where we noticed maximum distortions. Today we have composed this list of people, it will be submitted to the Minister, I hope that this will remedy the situation”.

      Earlier the Science Council drew the attention of the Ministry to the fact that the new members of the expert councils of the Higher Attestation Commission in social sciences (the expert council for sectoral and regional economy, the expert council for theory of economics, finance and global economy and the expert council for legal science) included people “fully engaged in the creation of false theses as supervisors or opponents”.