Lysenkoism

Lysenkoism is a censorious name for a movement that demands either censure or faith in agrobiology, as Soviet agronomist Trofim Denisovich Lysenko (1898–1976) called his aggressive creation. He also named it Michurinism, in tribute to the plant breeder Ivan V. Michurin, who won fame with claims of improving fruit while scorning genetics. Obscurantist (mrakobes), the word a geneticist flung at Lysenko in 1935, recurs even when scholars bend over backward to avoid censure. Lysenkoism defies efforts to disentangle claims of scientific knowledge from assertions of practical authority and from the use of state power to achieve progress.