Does anyone know of any books/works about Lysenko?

[Zuni]

Lysenko was the crackpot soviet scientist who claimed that
communism can make plants grow better and improve harvests etc. He was one of a number of crackpot communists who went so far out ti impress the leadership. Stalin became a devoted advocate of lysenkoism.

[DifferentStrokes]

1. Found a bunch of references

Here (along with Lysenko's own works):

See J. Huxley, Heredity: East and West (1949, repr. 1969); Z. A. Medvedev, The Rise and Fall of T. D. Lysenko (tr. 1969); D. Joravsky, The Lysenko Affair (1970); V. N. Soyfer, Lysenko and the Tragedy of Soviet Science (1994).

And here under Lysenkoism in the Skeptics Dictionary:

http://skepdic.com/lysenko.html

However, one of the most compelling discussions of Lysenko is in a book with online chapters. This section, in particular, has strong parallels to modern conservative attempts to dominate intellectual life in the U.S.

Some of my favorities will be in bold. Just replace Soviet or socialist with conservative or words demonstrating similar ideological values. Of course, these are universal problems not limited to either the U.S. or Soviet Russia or any period of history.

http://www.comms.dcu.ie/sheehanh/lysenko.htm

My own view of what is required in the way of an analysis of Lysenkoism is that it cannot be understood simply as a story of personal opportunism and political terror, nor as a cautionary tale against the dangers of bureaucratic interference in intellectual life or of ideological distortion of science. These are obviously elements of an analysis, but it is vital to see the emergence of Lysenkoism as no historical accident, as no imposition of alien elements (philosophy and politics) upon science.

It was a movement reflecting the temper of the times and groping with very real problems. It must be understood against the background of the tasks of political and cultural revolution, the drive to create a socialist intelligentsia, the push to transform every sphere of life and thought (including science and agriculture) in a new social order. Such tasks naturally involved struggling with such issues as the ideological character of science, hereditarianism versus environmentalism, determinism versus voluntarism, the relationship of philosophy to biology, the relationship of biology to agronomy, and so on.

What went wrong was that the proper procedures for coming to terms with such complex issues were short-circuited by grasping for easy slogans and simplistic solutions and imposing them by administrative fiat. It was a tragedy parallel to other tragedies in Soviet life at this time, rooted in the same tensions opening in the yawning gap between the monumentally advanced tasks undertaken in Soviet political life and the persisting cultural underdevelopment of Soviet society … and this in conditions of hostile encirclement.

The sorts of conclusions to be drawn are: that there are no shortcuts in dealing with such intricate issues and that a certain cultural level is required to deal with them competently. The sorts of conclusions not to be drawn are: that science must be kept free from philosophy and from politics, that science is in essence non-ideological and that ideology is necessarily antithetical to science. Science is inextricably tied up with philosophy, politics and ideology.

On edit: I think this topic might do better among the residents of the Meeting Room. Hope you don't mind; I did suggest moving it.

[central scrutinizer]

2. "At the Fringes of Science"

by Michael Friedlander is a good book for laymen on various science frauds, charaltans, crackpots.