The scientist-darling of Communist theologians is Soviet Academician Trofim Denisovich Lysenko. Lysenko's basic idea seems to be that living forms (like nations) need to be shaken up by a kind of genetic revolution. Thus shaken, a tomato or wheat plant is capable of very rapid development. In proving this thesis, Lysenko is short on controlled experimentation and long on thundering Marxist phrases like "The Liquidation of the Conservatism of the Nature of Organisms" (TIME, Feb. 11, 1946). Many non-Communist geneticists consider him a politically motivated fraud.
Last week another Soviet scientist was cowering...
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