Why Were There No Papers on War-Affected Soil at a Conference on the Effects of War on Soil. Protocols of Expert-AI Scientific Inquiry. Version 1.0

Abstract

A conference originally devoted to war, soil, and freshwater received virtually no papers directly investigating soil affected by war. This happened after hundreds of invitations and approaches, including approaches to authors who had published on the subject. Most did not reply, some limited themselves to routine messages, and substantive proposals were isolated. The protocol treats this absence not as an accidental organisational failure but as an empirical sign of how the scientific community is organised. Soil is an object of ownership, economic use, state regulation, and commercial interest. Access to territory, data, laboratory infrastructure, and the right to turn an observation into a recognised scientific fact is therefore controlled by institutional networks. Dominant organisations certify not only a specialist's qualifications but also the admissibility of the specialist's questions, methods, and conclusions. The priority of rapid recovery turns the question "what happened to the soil?" into "what must be measured to permit its further use?" As a result, complex ecological relations and long-term consequences disappear from the research, while an institutionally defined subject is presented as the real object. The protocol introduces and clarifies the concepts of the paradox of absent soil, the certified right to scientific statement, institutional appropriation of the object, the imperative of rapid recovery, permitting science, supporting soil science, controlled independence, and simulated research.