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Boris Lenhard @borislenhard.bsky.social

“Lysenkoism” in common parlance means pseudoscience enforced by high officials in charge of science, and rejection of legitimate science and scientific arguments, on specific topics, for ideological reason. It does not have to have all the elements of the original phenomenon that gave us the term.

aug 6, 2025, 10:42 am • 6 0

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Rob Noble @robjohnnoble.bsky.social

That was also my understanding. But it's very far from my area of expertise.

aug 6, 2025, 10:49 am • 1 0 • view
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Boris Lenhard @borislenhard.bsky.social

What RFK Jr and his ghouls are doing has more than enough parallels with what Lysenko did that it needs to be resisted and fought against. In that context, arguments like "well it is not exactly the same because some things in Soviet Union were different" miss the point completely.

aug 6, 2025, 2:16 pm • 2 0 • view
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Boris Lenhard @borislenhard.bsky.social

Nobody today uses this term in the mindset of "cold war driven, triumphalist rhetoric" or "assumes all state interventions are equivalent provided we don’t like them". Lysenkoism wasn't about the exact way in which Lamarckism was wrong, but about how scientists who thought it was wrong were treated.

aug 6, 2025, 2:22 pm • 2 0 • view
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Arseny Khakhalin @khakhalin.bsky.social

My take on it as well. Bad (or pseudo-) science used by a grifter to self-advance within an authoritarian state, because it aligns with the current political discourse, and later endorsed by the authoritarian state, causing harm. Not every pseudoscience is like that, but some recent events resonate.

aug 6, 2025, 11:35 am • 2 0 • view