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madrobinsI've been reading a bunch of non-fiction lately; right now it's The Poisoner's Handbook, which is just the sort of thing I love. Before that it was Plague*, by Wendy Orent, about the history of everyone's favorite scary bacterium (ebola, which scares the hell out of me, is a virus). As often happens when I read such books, I learned about something I'd never heard of: Lysenkoism. Orent spends a good deal of time talking about the Soviet bioweapons program (of which plague was their favored toy) and the amount of effort that went into engineering a plague germ that would be antibiotic resistant, or could be rendered stronger by antibiotic therapy, or would be a host for a virus which would take over when the plague germ was destroyed by plague. Scary and tricky thinking.
Fortunately for the rest of us, Soviet biological science was hampered by Lysenkoism (which in turn advocated Michurianism, which in turn advocated Lamarckism). Lamarckism is sort of like the Think System** for evolution:
Leading the charge to make scientists in Soviet Russia follow the Lamarckist line was Trofim Denisovich Lysenko, who announced that Mendelian genetics was "reactionary and decadent," and declared scientists who embraced Mendel and Darwin enemies of the People. As director of Soviet Biology under Stalin, Lysenko was responsible for sending those scientists who didn't toe the ideological line off to the gulag--or worse.
The result was that biology, as a study, withered, "mired in the swamp of Lysenkoism" as Orent put it. Even after Stalin Lamarckism lingered. Given how enthusiastically the Soviets worked on bioweapons right up until 1992, perhaps the rest of the world should be thankful for Trofim Lysenko and his lingering influence on science in the USSR.
The moral of the story (um, Creationists might want to be listening) is that trying to make your science match your ideology is going to result in crappy science. Which--unless there are Creationists out there planning on dabbling in germ warfare--is lousy for all of us.
*careful proofreading is important. At one point in the book a scientist points to an award hanging on his wall. It is inevitable, perhaps, that no one in production noted that what he was pointing to was a "plague," not a "plaque." Sort of like My Last Duchess hanging there.
** Professor Harold Hill's way of teaching music to the band in The Music Man
***from The Skeptic's Dictionary.
Fortunately for the rest of us, Soviet biological science was hampered by Lysenkoism (which in turn advocated Michurianism, which in turn advocated Lamarckism). Lamarckism is sort of like the Think System** for evolution:
evolution occurs because organisms can inherit traits which have been acquired by their ancestors. For example, giraffes find themselves in a changing environment in which they can only survive by eating leaves high up on trees. So, they stretch their necks to reach the leaves and this stretching and the desire to stretch gets passed on to later generations. As a result, a species of animal which originally had short necks evolved into a species with long necks.***In other words, you can will evolutionary traits into being. This was particularly, ideologically, appealing: it suggested that people living under socialism would, in a few generations, be purged of their regressive bourgeois tendencies.
Leading the charge to make scientists in Soviet Russia follow the Lamarckist line was Trofim Denisovich Lysenko, who announced that Mendelian genetics was "reactionary and decadent," and declared scientists who embraced Mendel and Darwin enemies of the People. As director of Soviet Biology under Stalin, Lysenko was responsible for sending those scientists who didn't toe the ideological line off to the gulag--or worse.
The result was that biology, as a study, withered, "mired in the swamp of Lysenkoism" as Orent put it. Even after Stalin Lamarckism lingered. Given how enthusiastically the Soviets worked on bioweapons right up until 1992, perhaps the rest of the world should be thankful for Trofim Lysenko and his lingering influence on science in the USSR.
The moral of the story (um, Creationists might want to be listening) is that trying to make your science match your ideology is going to result in crappy science. Which--unless there are Creationists out there planning on dabbling in germ warfare--is lousy for all of us.
*careful proofreading is important. At one point in the book a scientist points to an award hanging on his wall. It is inevitable, perhaps, that no one in production noted that what he was pointing to was a "plague," not a "plaque." Sort of like My Last Duchess hanging there.
** Professor Harold Hill's way of teaching music to the band in The Music Man
***from The Skeptic's Dictionary.