The article presents a review of the Royal Corruption about N. S. Goncharova’s candidate dissertation “Symbols in Russian criminal law” (Saratov, 2023): issues of basic scientific reasoning. The conclusion is made about the undoubted ways to find candidates for independent scientific analysis of the current problems under consideration. This connection, despite a number of controversial conceptual provisions of the work, gives a positive assessment of the dissertation research, excluding its creative and innovative nature.