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To: DFG

Didn’t I read something about this in High School, yes, the book was “1984”


4 posted on 06/19/2023 4:32:51 AM PDT by wetgundog
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To: wetgundog

An example of this forced “scientific” conformity, which led to some disastrous outcomes, was the adoption by Soviet Union dictator Josef Stalin, of a theory of genetics known as “Lysenkoism”.

Trofim Denisovich Lysenko was a Soviet agronomist and pseudo-scientist. He was a strong proponent of Lamarckism, and rejected Mendelian genetics in favor of his own idiosyncratic, pseudoscientific ideas later termed Lysenkoism.

In 1940, Lysenko became director of the Institute of Genetics within the USSR’s Academy of Sciences, and he used his political influence and power to suppress dissenting opinions and discredit, marginalize, and imprison his critics, elevating his anti-Mendelian theories to state-sanctioned doctrine.

Soviet scientists who refused to renounce genetics were dismissed from their posts and left destitute. Hundreds if not thousands of others were imprisoned. Several were sentenced to death as enemies of the state, including the botanist Nikolai Vavilov. Lysenko’s ideas and practices contributed to the famines that killed millions of Soviet people; the adoption of his methods from 1958 in the People’s Republic of China had similarly calamitous results, culminating in the Great Chinese Famine of 1959 to 1962.


12 posted on 06/19/2023 4:48:50 AM PDT by alloysteel ("There is no dignity quite so impressive, as living within your means" - Calvin Coolidge)
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