US Politics on Sidechat | I think more people need to know the story of Soviet agriculture scientist and hero to humanity Nikolai Vavilov, and how he died in a gulag after not supporting state-preferred pseudoscience. It’s not a good sign when science is an enemy of the state

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US Politics 1w

I think more people need to know the story of Soviet agriculture scientist and hero to humanity Nikolai Vavilov, and how he died in a gulag after not supporting state-preferred pseudoscience. It’s not a good sign when science is an enemy of the state

13 upvotes, 7 comments. Sidechat link post by Anonymous in US Politics. "I think more people need to know the story of Soviet agriculture scientist and hero to humanity Nikolai Vavilov, and how he died in a gulag after not supporting state-preferred pseudoscience.

It’s not a good sign when science is an enemy of the state"

The Tragedy of the World’s First Seed Bank

www.sciencehistory.org

US Politics 1w

justinian

evil

American Academy of Pediatrics loses HHS funding after criticizing RFK Jr.

www.washingtonpost.com

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Anonymous 1w

It’s an epic and tragic story, I fully agree.

Anonymous 1w

I suggest everyone read this story of Vavilov and his colleagues at the Leningrad Plant institute. They gave so much for the betterment of humanity. Vavilov dedicated his life to preventing famine. He made the world’s first seed bank and collected cultivars from around the world. But he became an enemy of Trofim Lysenko, and for that he was killed.

Anonymous

OP 1w

Lysenko was a quack. He didn’t believe in genetics. He thought a field of plants could all evolve together in one lifetime. Lysenko’s ideas of collective evolution matched with Soviet ideology more than perceived “individualistic” evolution. He said to grow wheat in fields too cold, and that it would grow stronger. They tried to grow plants the way Lysenko said, and the wheat died, and famine came.

Anonymous

OP 1w

Vavilov was surrounded by heroes too. While he was dying in a Siberian gulag, Leningrad was under siege. During the siege of Leningrad, his colleagues at the Plant Institute starved, some to death, rather than eat from the seed bank.

Anonymous

OP 1w

When the ground thawed in spring, those seed reserves would be planted and grown to feed the whole city. The seeds from that bank would then be used across Russia to this day. And the Plant Institute Seed Bank remains one of the most important collections on the entire planet. They starved so that the world wouldn’t.

Anonymous

OP 1w

Anonymous

OP 1w

Remember Vavilov. As much as I hate to say it remember Lysenko. Remember what happens when the state decides pseudoscience and ideology is more important than evidence and that dissenting experts must be punished.