[Book Review] Rethinking Lysenko's legacy
Thursday, April 21, 2016 - 14:11
in Psychology & Sociology
In Lysenko's Ghost, historian Loren Graham explores the latest attempts to restore the legacy of the Ukrainian agronomist Trofim Lysenko, who spearheaded a campaign to reject Mendelian genetics in favor of a pseudoscientific theory of environmentally induced heredity in the USSR from the late 1920s to the mid-1960s. Today, in the midst of a period of high nationalist and anti-Western sentiments, it seems that a quirky coalition of Russian right wingers, Stalinists, a few qualified scientists, and even the Orthodox Church is now claiming that Lysenko has been vindicated by the latest findings in molecular epigenetics. Author: Maurizio Meloni