elfwreck:

trcunning:

tilthat:

TIL that Josef Stalin fired, imprisoned, or executed 3,000 biologists because he preferred the research of a guy who denied the existence of genes ard natural selection, and thought that rye could be transformed into wheat. Soviet crop yields declined during his tenure.

via ift.tt

#he sure did#the guy’s name was Trofim Lysenko#who faked some results about increasing crop yields#and got into stalin’s good graces bc the soviet union had just gone through a terrible famine#he rejected mendelian genetics#and stalin gave him the most powerful position a scientist could have in the u.s.s.r.#of course the guy realized eventually thst if he didn’t want to get found out#he couldn’t let anyone practice genetics#or they’d find out he was a fraud and he’d be executed#so he systematically demoted imprisoned and had executed all scientists who opposed his ideas#including Nikolai Vavilov#a remarkable botanist who made enormous contributions to his field by id’ing the origins of different crops in the world#also one of the people who founded the first seed bank in the world#which would be crucial in getting the u.s.s.r. back on its feet after a famine#he died in a prison camp because he didn’t reject genetics as a dicipline#the whole thing is possibly one of the greatest scientific tragedies of the 20th century#history damnit#science bitch (via the-tao-of-fandom)

Watch for people who insist that climate change is real to start being demoted, fired, and imprisoned in the US.