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Lysenkoism (before Sagan, Hanson and global warming "consensus" there was Stalin's scientist)
BBC ^ | January 7, 2011 | Vanity

Posted on 01/07/2011 7:24:25 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife

In 1928, as America lurched towards the Wall Street Crash, Joseph Stalin revealed his master plan - nature was to be conquered by science, Russia to be made brutally, glitteringly modern and the world transformed by communist endeavour.

Into the heart of this vision stepped Trofim Lysenko, a self-taught geneticist who promised to turn Russian wasteland into a grain-laden Garden of Eden. Today, Lysenko is a byword for fraud but in Stalin’s Russia his outlandish ideas about genetic inheritance and evolution became law. They reveal a world of science distorted by ideology, where ideas were literally a matter of life and death. To disagree with Lysenko risked the gulag and yet he destroyed Soviet Agriculture and damaged, perhaps irreparably, the Soviet Union’s capacity to fight and win the Cold War.

(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Extended News; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: collective; consensusscience; genetics; globalwarming; gloriesofcommunism; greenreligion; heredity; leftuniverse; lysenko; mendel; stalin
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More history of Trofim Lysenko - the media promoted him, politicians fawned over him and real scientists were to "get their heads straight" or be destroyed by him. He truly was the father of today's global warming cult.

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In 1940 he became director of the Institute of Genetics within the USSR's Academy of Sciences, and Lysenko's anti-Mendelian doctrines were further secured in Soviet science and education by the exercise of political influence and power. Scientific dissent from Lysenko's theories of environmentally acquired inheritance was formally outlawed in 1948, and for the next several years opponents were purged from held positions, and many imprisoned. Lysenko's work was officially discredited in the Soviet Union in 1964, leading to a renewed emphasis there to re-institute Mendelian genetics and orthodox science.

Though Lysenko remained at his post in the Institute of Genetics until 1965, his influence on Soviet agricultural practice declined by the 1950s. The Soviet Union quietly abandoned Lysenko's agricultural practices in favor of modern agricultural practices after the crop yields he promised failed to materialize. Today much of Lysenko's agricultural experimentation and research is largely viewed as fraudulent.

Lysenko himself spent much time denouncing academic scientists and geneticists, claiming that their isolated laboratory work was not helping the Soviet people. By 1929 Lysenko's skeptics were politically censured, accused of offering only criticisms, and for failing to prescribe any new solutions themselves. In December 1929, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin gave a famous speech praising "practice" above "theory", elevating the political bosses above the scientists and technical specialists. Though for a period the Soviet government under Stalin continued its support of agricultural scientists, after 1935 the balance of power abruptly swung towards Lysenko and his followers. Lysenko (right) with Khrushchev in an experimental field

Lysenko was put in charge of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences of the Soviet Union and made responsible for ending the propagation of "harmful" ideas among Soviet scientists. Lysenko served this purpose by causing the expulsion, imprisonment, and death of hundreds of scientists and eliminating all study and research involving Mendelian genetics throughout the Soviet Union. This period is known as Lysenkoism. He bears particular responsibility for the persecution of his predecessor and rival, prominent Soviet biologist Nikolai Vavilov, which ended in 1943 with the imprisoned Vavilov's death by starvation. In 1941 Lysenko was awarded the Stalin Prize. More

1 posted on 01/07/2011 7:24:30 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
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To: Cincinatus' Wife
By 1929 Lysenko's skeptics were politically censured, accused of offering only criticisms, and for failing to prescribe any new solutions themselves.

That approach to dealing with skeptics sound vaguely familiar....

2 posted on 01/07/2011 7:28:59 AM PST by The_Victor (If all I want is a warm feeling, I should just wet my pants.)
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To: Cincinatus' Wife
his outlandish ideas about genetic inheritance

The shame is, I think there is some possible scientific merit in the concept, but it has been almost completely discredited by Lysenko. Anyone who investigages the possibility that organisms can alter their genetics within their lifetime, in response to environmental or other changes, and then pass those changes to offspring is immediately compared to Lysenko. But such imprinting is a logical explanation for genetically-imprinted behavior, and also such an explanation takes a lot of the randomness out of many evolutionary theories.

3 posted on 01/07/2011 7:33:21 AM PST by dirtboy
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To: Cincinatus' Wife

The scary thing is....Lysenko did have some semblance of a scientific background. Meanwhile, Al Gore has none...and people believe Al Gore’s junk science.

Interesting article....and everyone should get familiar with Lysenko. The Global Warming Fraud is full of Lysenko’s


4 posted on 01/07/2011 7:33:21 AM PST by UCFRoadWarrior (Whenever something is "Global"...it means its bad for America)
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To: Cincinatus' Wife
Lysenko's theories of environmentally acquired inheritance

Ironically recent discoveries show that in fact SOME acquired traits CAN be passed on. For example people who endure famine at crucial points in their life can affect the longevity of their grandchildren.

5 posted on 01/07/2011 7:34:30 AM PST by DManA
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To: The_Victor
"Soviet media reports heralding Lysenko's further discoveries in agriculture continued from 1927 until 1964; reports of amazing (and seemingly impossible) successes, each one replaced with new success claims as earlier ones failed. Few of the successes attributed to Lysenko could be duplicated. Nevertheless, with the media's help, Lysenko enjoyed the popular image of the "barefoot scientist"—the embodiment of the mythic Soviet peasant genius." Source
6 posted on 01/07/2011 7:35:04 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife (Allhttp://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2122429/posts)
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To: Cincinatus' Wife; LS
Many scientists, like many intellectuals, harbor a self-image in which they are very well compensated for using their pure intellect. Since finding a job in which this happens is kind of difficult in the real world, they are very susceptible to falling into line with whoever is willing to pay the piper... and that someone is, therefore, given a nice big you get to call my tune card. From that point on, the "scientist" is no longer a scientist, but they get to have (or keep) their dream job for a while longer.

The fact that they do enormous damage to "Science," in the abstract, is of very minor consequence to them. They don't really care about "Science" in the abstract, because they're not good enough scientists to really contribute to it. Look at that boob Michael Mann, the Penn State University "researcher" who sold himself to the global warming hoax. He's really not a scientist at all, but he gets to pretend he's one, and his department head goes along with it because he brings in the bucks. But history will forget him, while remembering names like Newton, Watt, Ampere, Joule, and many others.

7 posted on 01/07/2011 7:37:19 AM PST by Steely Tom (Obama goes on long after the thrill of Obama is gone)
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To: UCFRoadWarrior
Carl Sagan and Ted Turner discuss "nuclear winter
8 posted on 01/07/2011 7:39:41 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife (Allhttp://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2122429/posts)
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To: Cincinatus' Wife

“But if we [conservatives] fall, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.”


9 posted on 01/07/2011 7:52:31 AM PST by BenLurkin (This post is not a statement of fact. It is merely a personal opinion -- or humor -- or both)
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To: DManA

This topic - environmentally acquired inheritance - is discussed in this book and I am sure in many, many others. Very good read.

http://www.amazon.com/Survival-Sickest-Medical-Maverick-Discovers/dp/0060889659

The author has a blog, here: http://www.survivalofthesickestthebook.com/blog/


10 posted on 01/07/2011 7:53:50 AM PST by Buckhead
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To: Buckhead

Interesting, thanks. Looks like the author as been ignoring his blog - last entry July 2010.


11 posted on 01/07/2011 8:01:42 AM PST by DManA
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To: dirtboy
Anyone who investigages the possibility that organisms can alter their genetics within their lifetime, in response to environmental or other changes, and then pass those changes to offspring is immediately compared to Lysenko.

Or Jean-Baptiste Lamarck in the 18th/19th centuries, or Paul Kammerer in the 20th.

Arthur Koestler chronicles the rise and fall of the latter in The Case of the Midwife Toad.

12 posted on 01/07/2011 8:04:12 AM PST by Erasmus (Personal goal: Have a bigger carbon footprint than Tony Robbins.)
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To: Cincinatus' Wife

The fear mongers never have gone away.


13 posted on 01/07/2011 8:09:25 AM PST by Steve Van Doorn (*in my best Eric cartman voice* 'I love you guys')
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To: Cincinatus' Wife

Strangely few conservatives bring up such monstrosities perpetrated by the Left, I guess respectability in the eyes of the Left is worth more than human decency.


14 posted on 01/07/2011 8:40:17 AM PST by junta (S.C.U.M. = State Controlled Unreliable Media)
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To: dirtboy

If you listen to the program, they state that a famine can affect the height of the grandchildren. So it’s not quite as discredited as you make it out to be.

Search for epigenetics.


15 posted on 01/07/2011 8:48:06 AM PST by MetaThought
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To: Cincinatus' Wife; enough_idiocy; meyer; Normandy; Whenifhow; TenthAmendmentChampion; Clive; ...
 


Beam me to Planet Gore !

16 posted on 01/07/2011 9:36:06 AM PST by steelyourfaith (ObamaCare Death Panels: a Final Solution to the looming Social Security crisis ?)
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To: Cincinatus' Wife; metmom; Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus
"Into the heart of this vision stepped Trofim Lysenko, a self-taught geneticist...."

And Darwin was a self-taught "Naturalist." How ironic that so many PhDs today allow this self-styled non-scientifically academically accomplished poser to define their worldview of science, to the point of using his musings to explain their own existence.

Today, Lysenko is a byword for fraud but in Stalin’s Russia his outlandish ideas about genetic inheritance and evolution became law.

The word "fraud" together with the establishment of "evolution" for the basis of "law" makes it all into one sentence in a BBC piece.

He truly was the father of today's global warming cult.

Applied fraud based in evolutionary dogma as the basis of bad, tyrannical law, linked to today's Global Warming Cult. The interwoven connection is becoming more obvious.

It's philosophically inter-related and it's all borne of the same worldview -- bad worldview --> bad science --> bad politics = debasement of scientific thought, intellectual curiosity, and the result is "science-based" political tyranny.

FReegards!


17 posted on 01/07/2011 9:52:02 AM PST by Agamemnon (Darwinism is the glue that holds liberalism together)
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To: BenLurkin

“Dark Ages”

Something to ponder BenLurkin.


18 posted on 01/07/2011 9:59:01 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife (Allhttp://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2122429/posts)
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To: Cincinatus' Wife
Into the heart of this vision stepped Trofim Lysenko, a self-taught geneticist who promised to turn Russian wasteland into a grain-laden Garden of Eden. Today, Lysenko is a byword for fraud but in Stalin’s Russia his outlandish ideas about genetic inheritance and evolution became law. They reveal a world of science distorted by ideology, where ideas were literally a matter of life and death. To disagree with Lysenko risked the gulag and yet he destroyed Soviet Agriculture and damaged, perhaps irreparably, the Soviet Union’s capacity to fight and win the Cold War.

It sounds more like Stalin's enforced policies which caused the problems.

Lysenko does bear some blame for and with his failed science. He should not have made promises like that. However, he alone could not have accomplished what happened. It was Stalin's buying it and implementation of it that was the problem.

Goodness, this sounds eerily familiar......

19 posted on 01/07/2011 10:21:48 AM PST by metmom (Welfare was never meant to be a career choice.)
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To: Cincinatus' Wife

BTTT...Hansenism


20 posted on 01/07/2011 10:23:27 AM PST by I got the rope
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