Word: lysenko
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...Trofim Lysenko is an egregiously indestructible plant breeder from the Ukrainian black-earth belt who long ago won world notoriety, scientific contempt and Stalinist favor with his attempt to rewrite nature to suit Marx. A weird cross between sinister charlatan and seedy fanatic. Lysenko used his political influence, based on Stalin's favor, to wreak ruthless vengeance on his critics, the scholars who had made genetics-until his rise-the pride of Russian science...
...Lysenko argued that newly acquired characteristics could be genetically passed on through succeeding generations, a provably quack notion that served the Communist notion of making over man by making over society. In 1939 he engineered the disgrace of the Soviet...
...Lysenko, a second-rate biologist, was enthroned because his theory that environment could produce any desired result fitted in neatly with the Communist theology. Physicist Lev Landau was tossed into jail; Physicist Abram Joffe barely escaped being shot; and Geneticist N. A. Vavilov died in a slave labor camp, while his younger brother, the president of the academy, dutifully signed the documents destroying his brother's life work...
...Lysenko slipped fast after the death of Stalin. His critics began speaking up, and got away with it. Early in 1954 one of his proteges was denounced in Pravda itself. Genetics of true scientific type began to be taught and used again. When Soviet agriculturists visited the U.S. last summer, they were enormously impressed by hybrid corn and ordered carloads of seed...
...Lysenko has not been shot, imprisoned or even sent to die in Siberia like his old rival Vavilov. He keeps his three Stalin prizes and his six Orders of Lenin, besides many of his honorary posts. But he knows what has happened to him. When interviewed by a Western newsman, he said with dignity: "I shall concentrate now on my scientific work...