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I still think that in the field of linguistics -- his scientific specialty -- he will one day be regarded as an american Lysenko.

I doubt it. I just don't see a comparison. Chomsky's Syntactic Structures came out in 1957 and his theories are still going strong today. They enjoy empirical support, one big difference between his theories and Lysenko's, and they are not dependent on the political expediency of the day.

Well, Lysenko was in favor for a long time. I do not think his work is entirely without merit, but ignores most of the features of human communication. Most of us do not spend our days creating well formed sentences. Heck, I'm over 50 and still have trouble. Where's my language bump?

I think it is a truism to say that languages have structural similarities. That is like saying bird wings and bat wings and insect wings have similarities. Sometimes form has to follow function.

Of course language requires brain structures, and of course these structures contrain language. It's probably fun to figure all this out.

But meanwhile, most of us communicate with hidden meanings, coded in body language, tone of voice, private meanings for common words, grunts and sentence fragments, etc. Chomsky is analyzing a subset of language that is as sterile and artificial as computer language.

The Lysenko comparison comes from the Chomskistas who controlled the linguistics departments during the 1960s to the 1990s. There was (is) a political correctness that makes what goes on now seem positively benign. There's a book about that but I forgot the name. I do remember that Chomsky dismissed all non-binary trees in any linguistic explanation.