IF YOU happen to have travelled on the London Underground’s District, Circle or Hammersmith & City lines in the past three months, you may have spotted the legendary Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev, creator of the periodic table. Not in person of course, but splashed across the side of a special train celebrating Russian achievements in science, space and the arts.
When The Heart of Russia took to the rails in October, the British Council announced that it would be running a similar stunt on the Moscow Metro: a Science Train adorned with images of Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Michael Faraday and the like. Part of something called the UK-Russia Year of Science and Education, one of its goals was to improve the reputation of British scientists in Russia.
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God knows they need it. But the train never materialised, perhaps because it would have instantly become the object of ridicule.
When they hear the phrase “British scientists”, Russians don’t tend to think of Newton, Darwin or Faraday; nor do they think of Stephen Hawking or Peter Higgs. Instead, they are much more likely to think of psychologist Richard Stephens of Keele University, who earlier this year showed that swearing can help reduce pain. Or Olli Loukola, a behavioural ecologist at Queen Mary University of London, who has taught bumblebees how to play football.
The phrase “British scientists” is a meme that you’ll regularly encounter if you search the Russian-language parts of the internet. It is defined on the online encyclopaedia Lurkmore as “a synonym for researchers working on pseudoscientific projects that are bonkers, idiotic and have absolutely no practical value”. In the past year, Russian news outlets have reported that “British scientists have found that fish have personalities”, that “British scientists have discovered the best time to make love”, that “British scientists have calculated the IQ of cats”, and many more in the same vein.
These are at least genuine studies by real scientists. Russians also tell a genre of satirical jokes that start “British scientists have discovered…”. For example, “British scientists have proven that birthdays are good for you: people who have the most live the longest”. And “British scientists have invented a way to walk through walls. They called it a door”. There’s also the (rather lame) “British scientists have discovered that British scientists live in Britain”, but in fact, this is not always true. The term is now so ubiquitous that anyone who conducts frivolous studies, including Russians, can be described as British Scientists.
So why do British scientists have this reputation in Russia? Last year, RIA Novosti, one of Russia’s state news agencies, announced that British scientists themselves had discovered the answer. In a story entitled “British scientists have explained why ‘British Scientists’ exist”, it reported a by Andrew Higginson and Marcus Munafo at Exeter and Bristol universities. Wanting to explore strategies for career success in science, they turned to a model usually used to predict optimal behaviour in animals. They found that it is in scientists’ best interest to search out novel results and conduct small studies with less rigorous statistical analysis. Their paper was not specific to British scientists, but Higginson argues that the findings are especially pertinent to the UK due to something called the Research Excellence Framework. This, he says, preferentially gives research money to institutions with a track record of publishing in top journals, which are massively biased towards strikingly novel findings.
Harmless eccentrics
I asked Higginson what he thought about his paper becoming such a big story in Russia. “Bemused,” he said. He was at pains to point out that the headlines in Russia were not strictly true: his research was concerned with novel findings rather than frivolous ones, which may sometimes overlap but are not the same thing.
Nonetheless, he also said he was proud to have done some research that qualified him to be a British Scientist. “Intrigued too,” he said, “as it’s got me interested in the role of satire in Russian life.”
I also asked Marc Abrahams, founder of the Annals of Improbable Research and the man behind the Ig Nobel prizes (known in Russia as the Schnobels). He is not surprised by the reputation of British scientists in Russia. The Ig Nobels, which celebrate amusing-sounding scientific work, are very popular in the Russian-speaking world, and a number of Russian journalists travel to Harvard University to cover the event each year. The awards get a lot of nominations from Russia, but not nearly as many as from the two most successful nations, Japan and the UK. So why are scientists from these two countries more likely to write winning papers? Abrahams thinks it’s down to national culture. “There are eccentric people everywhere, but they are treated differently in different countries,” he says. “In some places they are punished, but in the UK and Japan people are proud that ‘they are our eccentrics’. In fact, the term ‘British eccentrics’ is also common, not just in Russia, but around the world.”
“British scientists stand for projects that are bonkers, idiotic and of no practical value”
There may, however, be a more sinister explanation. Lurkmore suggests that the meme gained prominence around the time of the fatal poisoning of former Russian agent Alexander Litvinenko in London. The implication is that the Russian government pushed the meme to undermine British scientists at a time when they were expected to find evidence linking Litvinenko’s death to the Kremlin.
The claim seems plausible given recent accusations of Russia’s election hacking and fake-news creating, but the timings don’t quite add up: the meme first hit the internet in 2003, three years before Litvinenko’s death. It’s possible that the Kremlin saw an opportunity and encouraged its spread, but there’s no real evidence for this. Perhaps we should set some British Scientists to get to the bottom of it.
If the meme did begin as a negative publicity campaign, it hasn’t worked. British scientists are now a much-loved part of Russian folklore. In the past year, RIA Novosti has run twice as many articles mentioning British scientists as US ones, and almost 10 times as many as Japanese scientists. Russian rock band Mediavirus wrote a hit song called British Scientists; British Scientists is the name of a chain of coffee shops in the city of Krasnoyarsk.
The meme is now so popular that a discovery made in an obscure lab of a lesser British university, and which barely makes a ripple in the UK press, can make national headlines in Russia. And while the angle is usually humorous, these are often real, interesting and sometimes important studies. Just like the winners of the Ig Nobel prizes, it is science that makes you laugh… then makes you think. The UK may not be at the forefront of very much these days, but when it comes to serious humour, we still take some beating.
Bonkers… or not
Can you work out which of these are Russian headlines about real studies, and which are jokes?
1. British scientists have established the height of Cinderella’s heels.
2. British scientists have found that women more often reach orgasm if they have sex in their socks.
3. British scientists have invented a teacup for left-handed people.
4. British scientists have found that ostriches become sexually active in the presence of humans.
5. British scientists have discovered that primates can find the connection between a cassette tape and a pencil more quickly than people born after 1995.
(The real studies are 1, 2 and 4)
This article appeared in print under the headline “From Russia with lulz”
