This day in history: Trofim Lysenko was dismissed from his position as Director of the Institute of Genetics at the Soviet Academy of Sciences on this day in 1965.
Lysenko's ideas highlights the uselessness of science when mixed with government. "During the late 1940s and 1950s, a pseudo-scientific concept based on Marxist-Leninist ideology became internationally known as ‘Lysenkoism’. Lysenkoism was a neo-Lamarckian idea, claiming that in crop plants, such as wheat, environmental influences are heritable via all cells of the organism. Lysenkoism was applied to agriculture during the Stalin era with disastrous consequences." Source
"Lysenkoism was an extension of Lamarckian evolution which was espoused by the Soviet geneticist Trofim Lysenko in the early 20th century, and an excellent example of politically-motivated deceit used to 'prove' an ideologically-based theory. Geneticists and biologists in general who disagreed with Lysenkoism lost their positions In addition, many geneticists were imprisoned and executed for their bourgeois science, and agricultural policies based on Lysenkoism that were adopted under the Communist leaders Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong caused famines and the death of millions. Lysenkoism adopted Lamarck's idea of "acquired characteristics," which states that the traits an organism develops during its life are passed on to their descendants. The theory was given enormous political support in the Soviet Union from the late 1930s until the 1950s." Source
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