Kinda Science is a satirical science event where scientists can make fun of themselves and science enthusiasts. Researchers are tasked with examining an unusual phenomenon, theory or statement and prove it using a seemingly legitimate hypothesis, employing logic, factual data, expert opinions and the like. At the same time, it has to be painfully obvious that the suggestion is absurd – at least by our standards. The “shocking revelations” are to be delivered with a straight face: after all, this is kinda science...

“We want people to be dumbfounded; to get them to try and figure out what’s true and what’s not. We warn everyone right from the start: this is mockery and we want people to consider how truth is actually found and what determines the value and validity of a scientific discovery,” - explains head of the Zanuda (“Nitpicker”) project Vitaly Vasyanovich. The event was organized in St. Petersburg by the Brights Movement with support from Zanuda.


Kinda Science is, in a way, a parody of regular scientific conferences. In 2013, the well-known artist Zach Weinersmith, who runs the Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal webcomic, came up with the idea of an “ad hoc hypotheses festival”. In one of his comics, he depicted a scientist who proposes the theory that infants are shaped like rugby balls because the primitive people would punt them over mountains to exchange biological material with other villages and diversify their gene pool. Surely, that theory sounds incredibly outlandish, but it’s a good reminder of how people can sometimes believe anything as long as it’s presented in a formal manner. The comic served as an inspiration for Weinersmith’s brainchild BAHFest, an event where unlikely theories with even more unlikely explanations are presented as serious academic research. Authors of the most bizarre hypotheses are awarded with statues of Charles Darwin looking doubtful and of alchemist Hennig Brand boiling his own urine in hopes of producing gold.

Effect of mechanical waves on genes and Vladimir Lenin’s love of mushrooms

Alexander Yefremov, head of the Biohacking laboratory at Sirius Science Park, explained how gene expressions are affected by mechanical waves and the reason why Vladimir Lenin loved mushrooms.

First, it must be understood that our perception is limited by the culture we live in. Perhaps even Mickey Mouse is more real than we are. That’s why we shouldn’t outright deny theories that say that our genes can be affected by waves - like, say, terahertz radiation or acoustic waves. Russian scientist Petr Gariaev had “discovered” this phenomenon and published his findings in the book “Wave Genome”. This is science: not long ago, an article was published in Nature detailing the effect of terahertz radiation on gene structure. Various waves can change the nature of stem cells, says Yefremov. Gene expression can even be affected by waves coming from food - like mushrooms, for example.

“It is no coincidence that the armored car on which Lenin stood is reminiscent of a mushroom leg, with Lenin serving as its cap. Mushrooms have a tendency to affect a human’s personality and it’s likely that Lenin himself enjoyed mushrooms,” - said the scientist, referencing the commonly known Russian joke about Lenin’s fungal nature.

He then called upon the scientific community to adjust the requirements for doctorate degree recipients and introduce the history of arts as a mandatory subjects for those who seek out such degrees; he also suggested to spend 10% of every grant on parasciences, form a committee on the support of pseudoscience and to allow scientists with a high Hirsch index to partake in psychoactive drugs - the only way to let the brightest minds truly expand the limits of their conscience and advance science.

P.S. Editorial note: the works of Petr Gariaev are not accepted by the scientific community, have not been experimentally confirmed and are widely considered to be pseudoscience.

Homeopathy’s extraterrestrial origins

The government is hiding from us the existence of aliens bent on conquering our planet. This is a fact that cannot be disputed, says Maria Borukha, an astronomer who also organizes educational events for the St. Petersburg State University. Why is this indisputable?

Evidence 1: The Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli observed canals on Mars in the mid-19th century, and so did the early 20th century astronomer Percival Lowell. However, others after him found no such “canals” on the Red Planet. Therefore, the Martians must have filled them to avoid detection.

Evidence 2: Martians used to affect the asteroid ring and comets from Mars, but, out of fear of being discovered, they moved to Jupiter, which is why Jupiter now influences the comets and meteor showers that fall on Earth. Remains of comets can potentially contain bacteria and viruses that could affect humanity.

Evidence 3: If we look at the rockets that humans use for warfare here on Earth, we’ll notice that they are shaped the same as the rockets that go to space. From this, we infer that governments are already fighting aliens.

Evidence 4: The powerful lasers that people use to send signals to space are actually used to fight aliens and blind their pilots.

Evidence 5: Homeopathy. Aliens have sent their agents to Earth to promote homeopathy to humans and, therefore, make them reject actual medicine and die off (Read more about homeopathy in our article).

Evidence 6: Members of the International Astronomical Union may not wear tin foil hats, but they sure do cover all of their equipment in foil - just look at the Hubble telescope!

If you shout at water before drinking it, it’ll remember and seek revenge

The government is hiding knowledge about water memory, of unusual chemical compounds which you can use to create extremely powerful explosive devices; also, water can get offended if you shout at it, and will seek revenge, warned Artem Oganov, theoretical crystallographer. He developed the USPEX code which is used by thousands of researchers from around the world for crystal structure prediction. He is a Professor and Head of the Center for Materials by Design at State University of New York in Stony Brook. He is also a professor of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and head of other laboratories in Russia and China.  

Recent studies have shown that, under pressure, as well as in low-dimensional states, matter has unusual structures and chemical compositions. These new substances often don’t fit into the framework of classical chemistry and have unique physical properties. And this knowledge was hidden from us for centuries, including in Church walls, where priests, like Nicolas Steno, created the first mathematical law of crystallography. Priests can keep a secret, reminded Artem Oganov. Moreover, unusual images of crystals can be found even in Iranian mosques, and in Ancient Greece, mathematicians who worked with irrational numbers, such as Archimedes, were killed.


Chemistry is based on three pillars: the period table, the concept of valency, and the structure of chemical bonds between elements. Valency is the ability of atoms to connect with other atoms, for example, oxygen has a valence equal to 2, hydrogen - one, thus the formula H2O, that is for one atom of oxygen, two atoms of hydrogen can attach themselves. However, at high pressures, valences that are familiar to us and inherent in the periodic table, change!

“This year we discovered that helium, which is the the most inert gas (valency = 0) can have a valency of 2. Sodium chloride can also increase its valence. In my lab, it was predicted that chlorides can even have a valence of 7, but that’s not possible, only if you increase the number of electrons with a very high level and with high energy, for example, 200.5 tonnes of voltage. This is superior to the most powerful explosives we have,” warned Artem Oganov.

Crystals can be magnetized in different directions, thereby attaining a “zero” or “one”. This is a new way of recording information, and it’s possible that we can record information in water! We can potentially do that by just shouting, as water is a sufficiently malleable material, and only slight pressure is required to change its structure. Just imagine, somewhere in the U.S. someone shouts something in the ocean, the waves send information to the Baltic Sea and in Russia the recipient deciphers the message! There is an incredible opportunity before us, and science can achieve a lot.

P.S. Editorial note: Artem Oganov later gave a serious lecture at ITMO University, describing his real work and the discoveries of his scientific group. You can read about it here.

You can learn a lot about people just by their name, using big data

Psychology is dead. Long live Big Data! Cognitive social psychologist Larisa Mararitsa, lecturer from the Department of Social Psychology and St. Petersburg State University admitted defeat under the onslaught of big data specialists that can digitize a person’s personality and predict their behavior based on their digital trail – or just their name.

“With the help of MRI, one can study very scientifically how the brain works. This eliminates false concepts such as the soul. You can know everything without psychology, that is, know everything about a person. There are biologists, and academics specialising in data science, people who know how to count a digital footprint. And they do this objectively. They analysed “VK” and you know what predicts human behavior most of all? Your name. This simplifies psychology: why do we need terms like “introvert” or “social types” if we can just determine a person’s character based on their name?,” shares the lecturer.

Moreover, new technology completely gets rid of professions such as psychologists or psychotherapists. Why should you have mental therapy, if you can download an app from GooglePlay or Appstore which would observe your life, physical health and give recommendations of how to better yourself? In fact, psychological marketing is becoming much more important because you can identify what a person buys based on their personality and their consumer preferences, which is much more profitable and interesting than digging into the soul. For example, there are “beer” buyers: they always buy the same set of products. In the future we will be able to use digital technology to find out if there is life after death, since the digital footprint will stay in the brain until it dries, according to the theory of water memory.

In addition, psychology, is almost a parascience. Why?

  1. There is no scientific basis;
  2. You can’t repeat experiments;
  3. Psychologists seek to impose ethical limits to the use of big data for interacting with humans;
  4. Psychologists can’t help themselves, they even go to psychologists themselves since they have the “helping others” syndrome: people who can’t even help themselves try to help others.


Humans are badly designed

Do you think that humans are the peak of evolution? Not quite! We are a pitiful semblance of a perfect creation of the animal world that surpasses us in all its aspects, assured Ekaterina Vinogradova, coordinator of the “Scientists Against Pseudoscience” community and Associate Professor in the Department of Higher Nerve Activity and Faculty of Psychology and Biology at St. Petersburg State University. These are her arguments:

  1. Humans can’t jump very high, can’t run very fast, and don’t know how to swim from birth;
  2. Humans have a low threshold of survival: they can’t handle very high or low temperatures or pressures;
  3. Humans don’t have any means of self-defence in the form of fangs or claws;
  4. Humans have thin cartilage disks between the vertebrae, they have a bad spine, and they don’t even have bones in the male sexual organ;
  5. Walking upright on two legs has no special benefits: the only thing that we have learned to do on the way to somewhere is to delve into our smartphones, although the popularity of spinners compensate this deficiency;
  6. The entrance to the respiratory tract and digestive system are combined in humans so it’s easy to choke and die. There’s also a single urinary and genital system.

You may argue: but we have intelligence! Yes, we do, but is it better than the one primates have? Ekaterina Vinogradova gave the example of an experiment with monkeys and humans. Both had a specific task: to take a peanut out of a long and narrow flask. People tried to do this in the most desperate and daring ways: pushing the nut out by sucking out the air, by flipping the table, by breaking the flask, reaching in with their fingers. But monkeys just filled the flask with water and the peanut came out on its own!