The new evaluation rules proposed by the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education in July 2018 are set to cure some of the ailments of the existing system, notably the “punktoza” phenomenon (i.e. publishing for volume, not scientific quality). However, it should be pointed out that the method of fixing old “bugs” might in fact create some new ones. In this article I discuss three elements of the proposed regulations, namely: the principle of “inheritance of prestige”, treatment of chapters in edited volumes, and possible variants of ministerial registry of academic publishers. To address those issues empirically I use an existing dataset covering citation of books in 2009–2013 (Torres-Salinas et al. 2014). While the new evaluation rules apply relatively high value to chapters in edited volumes, they in fact have disproportionately low scientific impact. What is more, the correlation between citation of books and chapters in edited volumes is very low, casting doubt on the assumed “inheritance of publishers' prestige”. Finally, there seems to be a high risk that the registry of publishers will not reproduce the exponential distribution observed in the actual structure of scientific impact (and apparently sought by the new system), thereby jeopardizing validity of such evaluation.

The article presents results of a survey of attitudes toward experts’ recommendations in fighting COVID-19 pandemic, scientists and science in general, and academic freedom in Poland, and discusses them in the context of the on-going pandemic as well as local developments in Poland. The global crisis triggered by the coronavirus pandemic highlighted the subtle, yet vital social role played by science, which in normal circumstances does not present itself that vividly. This, paradoxically, comes at a time, when the status of science and scientific freedom is disputed in the Polish public debate. The internet survey was conducted by the Institute of Political Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences in April 2021 on a sample of Poles aged 18–65.