Биофизик Шноль ДОКАЗАЛ, что СЛУЧАЙНОСТИ НЕ СУЩЕСТВУЕТ: коллеги обвинили его в МИСТИЦИЗМЕ.

Summary

The video recounts biophysicist Simon E. Shnoll’s research into whether apparently random measurements might show recurring patterns. His findings remain controversial: the video presents them as intriguing claims, not as an established discovery.

Scientific Ideas and Phenomena

• Solar and sidereal days: A solar day is about 1,440 minutes. Earth takes roughly 1,436 minutes to rotate relative to distant stars—a sidereal day, about four minutes shorter. Shnoll focused on this interval because he said patterns in experimental data recurred on it.
• Fluctuations in biochemical reactions: While measuring reactions involving proteins and ATP, Shnoll noticed that repeated measurements varied even under apparently identical conditions. Instead of averaging those differences away, he examined their distributions.
• Histograms and “macroscopic fluctuations”: Shnoll reported that histograms of measurements had distinctive, jagged shapes rather than smooth distributions, and that similar shapes appeared at certain times and intervals. He called the reported effect macroscopic fluctuations and proposed that external, or cosmophysical, factors might influence them.
• Radioactive decay: His group studied alpha decay, including measurements involving plutonium-239. Although radioactive decay is generally treated as probabilistic, Shnoll’s team said that the shapes of decay histograms changed over time in recurring ways.
• Reported periodicities and direction tests: The team reported recurring similarities at intervals of about a day, 27 days (associated with the Sun’s apparent rotation as seen from Earth), and a year. They also reported that measurements made in different locations showed similar patterns at the same local time. In tests using a collimator to select particles traveling in a particular direction, they said the daily pattern disappeared when looking approximately along Earth’s rotational axis toward Polaris. These observations were used to suggest a possible connection with Earth’s orientation in space; the mechanism was not established.
• Belousov–Zhabotinsky reaction: The video describes Boris Belousov’s oscillating chemical reaction, in which a solution repeatedly changes color without external intervention. Initially rejected as implausible, the reaction was later studied and developed by Anatoly Zhabotinsky. It became a classic example of an oscillating reaction in a nonequilibrium chemical system and is associated with research on self-organization.
• Limits and criticism: Critics argued that the apparent patterns could result from data processing or from how histogram similarities were judged. Visual comparison may encourage people to see patterns in noise. Shnoll’s side said comparisons were blind and that computer analyses and measurements from different laboratories supported the effect. The video notes that the findings were not widely accepted and lacked confirmation from major independent laboratories.

Methodology Described

The video describes a process that involves:

1. Making repeated, short-interval measurements of a process, such as a biochemical reaction or radioactive decay.
2. Building a histogram for each measurement series.
3. Comparing histogram shapes across time and locations, looking for recurring similarities.
4. Repeating measurements under different conditions and checking possible influences such as temperature, pressure, humidity, light, and vibration.
5. Using simultaneous measurements at different sites and directional tests with a collimator.
6. Comparing results using blind assessment and computer-based methods.

The video concludes that Shnoll’s proposed effect remains unresolved: it may point to a real pattern, or it may reflect an artifact of measurement or analysis.

Researchers and Sources Mentioned

Researchers and scientists: Simon E. Shnoll; Sergei E. Severin; Boris P. Belousov; Anatoly Zhabotinsky; Ilya Prigogine; Alexander Derbin; Nikolai Vavilov; Sergei Vavilov; Trofim Lysenko; Fazail Ataullakhanov; Viktor Panchelyuga; Alexey Kondrashov; Maria N. Kondrashova; Emmanuel Shnoll; Yakov Shnoll.

Publications and institutions cited: Uspekhi Fizicheskikh Nauk (Shnoll and co-authors’ 1998 paper; a critical commentary led by Derbin in 2000); Heroes and Villains of Russian Science (Shnoll, 1997); Physicochemical Factors of Biological Evolution; Cosmophysical Factors in Random Processes (first edition, 2009). The video also mentions the Lenin Prize awarded posthumously to Belousov in 1980 and the 1977 Nobel Prize in Chemistry awarded to Prigogine.