Samuel Damren
This is the final commentary in a series on “thinking like a scientist.”
The first three commentaries focused on the central role the Founding Fathers envisioned for science in America. The fourth commentary contrasted that foresight with Trump’s “what’s in it for me” philosophy.
The Trump administration’s drastic and punitive cuts to scientific research coupled with the appointment of unqualified scientific advisors, such as RFK Jr., is the topic of this commentary.
There is no precedent for Trump’s attack as an American president on the scientific community. Historical precedent for similar attacks reside in Stalin’s Russia. An example is the persecution of scientist Nikolai Vavilov for opposing the views of party loyalist Trofim Lysenko, a pseudo-scientist.
Nikolai Vavilov was born in 1887 in Moscow, received his university degree at the Petrovskaya Agricultural Academy in 1910, and then traveled to Cambridge University to study under William Bateson, one of the founders of modern genetics based on the theories of Gregor Mendel.
Vavilov was a professor of botany and later head of the Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences where he oversaw the establishment of 400 research institutes across Russia.
He was one of the first scientists to recognize the need to create “seedbanks” for agriculture storage and preservation. Traveling world-wide, he amassed the largest seedbank inventory in history for scientific research composed of 148,000 specimens.
After Russia suffered severe famines in the early 1930s related, in part, to the government’s failed efforts to collectivization peasant farmland, Stalin sought to deflect blame for this catastrophe away from the Communist Party.
Trofim Lysenko was not a trained scientist. He did not possess a degree in genetics but worked in the government agricultural bureaucracy. He came to Stalin’s attention as a strong Community Party loyalist promoting an explanation attributable to outside influences for inadequate crop production.
Based on a theory originally advanced by zoologist Jean-Baptist Lamarck in the 1700s, Lysenko asserted that Mendelian genetics was anti-Marxist bourgeoisie. Lamarck, a Frenchman, had posited – contrary to Mendelian theory – that the genetic traits of living things could be altered during their lifetimes by an organism’s use or the atrophy of limbs, organs and other physical attributes.
Lysenko applied the theory to seeds. The idea was that if seeds of winter wheat were buried in the snow, they would become accustomed to the cold and alter their genetic makeup to become hardy crops when later planted. From a scientific perspective, it was nonsense.
After being assured of Lysenko’s loyalty, Stalin fired Vavilov, despite the strenuous opposition of qualified and preeminent Russian geneticists. He appointed Lysenko to replace him as president of the Lenin Academy and to pursue party-approved Lamarckian practices. This began a purge of the Russian scientific community, devastating the study of science-based genetics in Russia for decades.
Vavilov continued to openly oppose Lysenko’s proposed method for raising crop production as unscientific. In response, Stalin ordered his arrest on the charge of sabotaging Soviet agriculture. Vavilov died in a Siberian gulag in 1943.
When later implemented into agricultural practice, Lysenko’s theory did not yield the promised results. Inadequate crop production continued to plague Russia through the remainder of Stalin’s reign.
RFK Jr. is not a scientist. He has no medical degree nor doctorate in a science discipline. The conspiratorial theories he promotes regarding vaccine safety are the 21st century equivalent to Lysenko’s bogus theory of plant genetics.
Over the strenuous objections of the American medical and scientific communities, Trump appointed RFK Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services just as Stalin appointed the unqualified Lysenko to head Russia’s Agricultural Sciences.
Following RFK Jr.’s appointment, Trump oversaw the firings and resignations of senior personal at NIH and the CDC. He then cut funding at those institutions and grants for life sciences and medical research at American universities. In so doing, he initiated the process of hollowing out vaccine science and disease prevention across the country.
Trump’s actions are the 21st century parallel to Stalin’s purge of Russian scientists in the 1930s based on anti-science ideology.
In different times and places, both Stalin and Trump share the same principle of governance: proof of loyalty through the embrace of party lies and pseudo-science takes precedence over proof of facts and scientific truth.
The ongoing story – science as only one chapter – is that the Founding Fathers vision for America is being systematically and cruelly betrayed by a sitting president.
The first three commentaries focused on the central role the Founding Fathers envisioned for science in America. The fourth commentary contrasted that foresight with Trump’s “what’s in it for me” philosophy.
The Trump administration’s drastic and punitive cuts to scientific research coupled with the appointment of unqualified scientific advisors, such as RFK Jr., is the topic of this commentary.
There is no precedent for Trump’s attack as an American president on the scientific community. Historical precedent for similar attacks reside in Stalin’s Russia. An example is the persecution of scientist Nikolai Vavilov for opposing the views of party loyalist Trofim Lysenko, a pseudo-scientist.
Nikolai Vavilov was born in 1887 in Moscow, received his university degree at the Petrovskaya Agricultural Academy in 1910, and then traveled to Cambridge University to study under William Bateson, one of the founders of modern genetics based on the theories of Gregor Mendel.
Vavilov was a professor of botany and later head of the Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences where he oversaw the establishment of 400 research institutes across Russia.
He was one of the first scientists to recognize the need to create “seedbanks” for agriculture storage and preservation. Traveling world-wide, he amassed the largest seedbank inventory in history for scientific research composed of 148,000 specimens.
After Russia suffered severe famines in the early 1930s related, in part, to the government’s failed efforts to collectivization peasant farmland, Stalin sought to deflect blame for this catastrophe away from the Communist Party.
Trofim Lysenko was not a trained scientist. He did not possess a degree in genetics but worked in the government agricultural bureaucracy. He came to Stalin’s attention as a strong Community Party loyalist promoting an explanation attributable to outside influences for inadequate crop production.
Based on a theory originally advanced by zoologist Jean-Baptist Lamarck in the 1700s, Lysenko asserted that Mendelian genetics was anti-Marxist bourgeoisie. Lamarck, a Frenchman, had posited – contrary to Mendelian theory – that the genetic traits of living things could be altered during their lifetimes by an organism’s use or the atrophy of limbs, organs and other physical attributes.
Lysenko applied the theory to seeds. The idea was that if seeds of winter wheat were buried in the snow, they would become accustomed to the cold and alter their genetic makeup to become hardy crops when later planted. From a scientific perspective, it was nonsense.
After being assured of Lysenko’s loyalty, Stalin fired Vavilov, despite the strenuous opposition of qualified and preeminent Russian geneticists. He appointed Lysenko to replace him as president of the Lenin Academy and to pursue party-approved Lamarckian practices. This began a purge of the Russian scientific community, devastating the study of science-based genetics in Russia for decades.
Vavilov continued to openly oppose Lysenko’s proposed method for raising crop production as unscientific. In response, Stalin ordered his arrest on the charge of sabotaging Soviet agriculture. Vavilov died in a Siberian gulag in 1943.
When later implemented into agricultural practice, Lysenko’s theory did not yield the promised results. Inadequate crop production continued to plague Russia through the remainder of Stalin’s reign.
RFK Jr. is not a scientist. He has no medical degree nor doctorate in a science discipline. The conspiratorial theories he promotes regarding vaccine safety are the 21st century equivalent to Lysenko’s bogus theory of plant genetics.
Over the strenuous objections of the American medical and scientific communities, Trump appointed RFK Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services just as Stalin appointed the unqualified Lysenko to head Russia’s Agricultural Sciences.
Following RFK Jr.’s appointment, Trump oversaw the firings and resignations of senior personal at NIH and the CDC. He then cut funding at those institutions and grants for life sciences and medical research at American universities. In so doing, he initiated the process of hollowing out vaccine science and disease prevention across the country.
Trump’s actions are the 21st century parallel to Stalin’s purge of Russian scientists in the 1930s based on anti-science ideology.
In different times and places, both Stalin and Trump share the same principle of governance: proof of loyalty through the embrace of party lies and pseudo-science takes precedence over proof of facts and scientific truth.
The ongoing story – science as only one chapter – is that the Founding Fathers vision for America is being systematically and cruelly betrayed by a sitting president.
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