Reply #32: There are only two other cultures I can think of... [View All]

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...that have purposely attempted to turn back the clock on science (as opposed to merely trying to supress certain discoveries).

1) The Soviet Union while Trofim Denisovich Lysenko was at their Academy of Sciences.

2) Germany under the Nazis, which rejected Einstein's discoveries as 'Jewish Science'.

Both anti-science 'movements' were catastrophic to their respective countries' economies (apart from the greater catastrophes happening in each of the two countries). Lysenkoism was responsible for famine, among other things, and the original rejection of Einstein's theories as 'Jewish' probably hindered the Nazis enough to prevent them from developing the A-bomb in time (which was good for everyone else in the long run, but bad for Germany's leadership at the time).

This time around, the rejection of Darwinian evolution (and other advanced bio-sciences like stem cell research, cloning, etc...), will lead to the US losing a lot of ground in the medical sciences and the nascent bio-tech industry.