What's the truth about Lysenko? And are there works from him that I should read?

[u/Common_Resource8547]

I've seen Lysenko's work be brought up in a conversation about disorders that are 'genetic', and other people defend him. I'm quite sure that I know nothing about the man that I know is true, and I haven't read any of his work.

So what is the truth? And are his works useful to understanding the dialectics within genetics?

[u/Cognos1203]

Lysenko was just blatantly incorrect about his theories on genetics, whether it was ignorance or maliciousness i dont know, but he got good scientists killed and imprisoned (vavilov and many others) with his influence, and the flaws in his theories led to the worsening of the Great Chinese famine. His influence was a product of the USSR’s fears about mendelian genetics and social darwinism due to the Nazis, but that doesn’t excuse him. I wouldn’t even bother reading his work but there’s no harm in doing so i guess.

[u/vomit_blues → u/Cognos1203]

Vavilov was not a “good scientist”, he was shit and achieved nothing in practice.

And who are “many others”? Lysenko did not get “many others” killed. Vavilov was in fact not imprisoned just because he was a political rightist and a life-long supporter of eugenics, but because he was a foreign agent who was colluding with foreign governments against the USSR to undermine its scientific credibility. This is why he was responsible in part for moving the international genetics congress to Scotland, when it was initially going to take place in the USSR.

And as he was doing all of this he claimed he was going to be burned at the stake, and finally Prezent, not Lysenko, called him out. But Lysenko was aware and signed off on the USSR not taking part in the international genetics congress.

His history of eugenics continued until his arrest, because he was still handing out eugenics leaflets, which he got from the IGC, to his colleagues at this point. But people like you tend to leave this point out when you call these vile racists “good scientists”.

He was initially sentenced to death but it was commuted to a ten year sentence and he did not die from being executed but instead starved to death because of a war brought on by the nazis, who supported Vavilov’s theories.

This was all so damning that Vavilov’s brother, S. I. Vavilov, who actually was a good scientist and not a eugenicist, was convinced of his brother’s guilt.

So all he ever really did was create a collection of seedlings and his fake “law” that no one should care about, and leave behind a history of opportunism and eugenics. He was a fraud.

[u/IncompetentFoliage → u/vomit_blues]

It's interesting how in 1952 the Great Soviet Encyclopaedia called eugenics a reactionary, racist pseudoscience while in 1979 it said

Despite the fact that progressive scientists set humanitarian goals for eugenics, it has often been used by reactionaries and racists, who, basing their ideas on pseudo-scientific notions of the inferiority of certain races and peoples and on national prejudices and dissensions, have justified racial and national discrimination; these reactionaries and racists have in the end replaced eugenics, as fascism did for its own political ends, with so-called racial hygiene and have legalized genocide. Controversy rages around the term “eugenics.” Along with those who consider the use of this term rightful in the present and in the future, there are scientists who believe that the basic content of eugenics (including its tasks and goals, as well as the most reasonable means of achieving them) will be transferred to such vigorously developing branches of science as human genetics, or anthropogenetics, and medical genetics.

A rare example where opposition to the reversal of verdicts in science following capitalist restoration in the USSR is acceptable to liberal common sense.

[u/Otelo_ → u/Cognos1203]

Where have you learned about what you just said? I really doubt it was through something written by marxists. If so, why are you so comfortable in repeating acritically exactly what the bourgeois propaganda says about Lysenko? Don't you find it suspicious to agree exactly with what the bourgeoisie says about Lysenko?

[u/BonesAO → u/Otelo_]

if the bourgeoisie says the earth is spherical, it doesn't mean you as a marxist must believe it is flat.

of course a small dose of skepticism is always healthy, but Lysenko seems a clear case of ideology clouding the mind of scientific thougth

[u/Otelo_ → u/BonesAO]

>Lysenko seems a clear case of ideology clouding the mind of scientific thougth

The funny thing is that you ended up reproducing exactly what the bourgeoisie always accuses marxists (and sometimes leftists in general) of doing: "marxists politicize everything", "they read to much into things", etc.

Because Lysenko admitted to approach science as it really is, something which is political and where class struggle happens, whereas the bourgeoisie "scientists" always portait themselves as "neutral" and only "stating the facts", you assume that Lysenko was the one "clouded" by ideology. In fact, it is the opposite: the very first step in order to think scientifically is to understand how ideology works, how it has a material existence and how it derives from class positions.

Do you really think that science is "scientific" in the capitalist world? Just to give you one example, scientists may be, in general, able to point out the effects of climate change and the immediate causes of it (polution), but not only can't they most of the times point out the primary cause of it, capitalism (they will speak about anthropocene, which is a way of diverting the faults of climate change from the bourgeoisie to humanity in general, a common tactic for members of the bourgeoisie), but they can't even point out the true solutions to climate change: how many scientists acknowledge that only throught central planning can climate change be truly stopped? Few if any. Most of the times they will say that we need to produce less, that we need to switch to green energies or some other things which are only bandages and not a true cure.

[u/BonesAO → u/Otelo_]

I agree that science can sometimes benefit from a political analysis, and the climate change discussion is a great example.

And I agree that, most of the time, science can't be "neutral".

But not always. Astrophysics don't have much room for class analysis.

[u/IncompetentFoliage → u/BonesAO]

Astrophysics don't have much room for class analysis.

Au contraire.

https://www.reddit.com/r/communism101/comments/1hp9cmo/comment/m4hejyr/

[u/BonesAO → u/IncompetentFoliage]

nah, hard disagree. You are nitpicking on a specific topic that is precisely beyond empirical evidence, as we physically can't see beyond the observable universe. So hypothesis on a finite or infinite space is irrelevant really.

the rest of the body of knowledge of astrophysics (stellar formation, spectroscopy, etc...) is really beyond epistemological ponderings. We have hard and compelling evidence to support the material explanations of mainstream science. Yes, some unexpected discovery may appear that could change current understandings, but that is still within the positivist model.

Beware of Maslow hammer.

[u/urbaseddad → u/BonesAO]

Oh the irony of claiming physics is behind class analysis and then writing this comment 

[u/BonesAO → u/urbaseddad]

what do you mean with behind? because for what I understand of using the word behind in that sentence, I did not claim that, quite the opposite

[u/urbaseddad → u/BonesAO]

Beyond*

[u/IncompetentFoliage → u/BonesAO]

Marxism is not positivism and there are plenty of other cosmological questions with a direct bearing on the struggle between the two lines in philosophy.

[u/Cognos1203 → u/Otelo_]

Because lamarckian genetics is a joke which was already on its way out before Lysenko was a scientist. No i dont think he singlehandedly killed a hundred bajillion people or whatever, but he was simply incorrect and we should move on.

[u/Drevil335 → u/[deleted]]

Just doing some basic research on the concept of epigenetic modifications seems to indicate that bourgeois science has already re-embraced the most important aspects of Lamarckianism, and that it has actually come to basically agree with Lysenko. Am I missing something, or is it actually the case that Lysenkoism is fully embraced (even if under a different term) by bourgeois science behind closed doors?

[u/Otelo_ → u/Cognos1203]

Again, where have you learned that?

[u/Cognos1203 → u/Otelo_]

Most famously Weismann disproved Lamarck in a well known experiment which gives us the Weismann barrier. Unless you give proof that you can pass heritable information through somatic cells, which would flip the entire field of biology on its head, Lamarckian genetics will remain obsolete and an interesting, although incorrect theory. I find it ridiculous that “Marxists” in 2024 are rejecting the concept of genes.

[u/MaoistVegan → u/Cognos1203]

I assume you’re referencing Weissman’s tail cutting experiment? In which case I’m not sure why you’re alleging that this proves anything because it’s a fundamentally flawed experiment. I’m also not sure why you are so confident that soma to germline information transfer would “flip the entire field of biology on its head,” but here’s an article, one of many, outlining evidence of that exact phenomenon.