The comparison to the present-day US isn't hyperbole. It's not a perfect match but there are parallels.
The article mentions Lysenko, a Soviet "biologist" who set back Soviet biology for a generation. He believed, for example, that plants in the USSR would not compete with each other for resources the way they did in capitalist societies, but would instead share resources. He asserted that crops could therefore be planted closer together in the USSR, yielding more food per acre. Evidence to the contrary was suppressed: Lysenko had Stalin's ear and a zealot's confidence. The rest of the field was either purged or fell in line. Scientists lost their jobs or got sent to Siberia.
The comparison to the present-day US isn't perfect, but it also isn't hyperbole. While scientists in the US mostly aren't in the same type of danger of arrest for speaking out (assuming ICE doesn't start targeting political opponents), but we're looking at a similar era in the US in terms of making theories and data fit ideology. RFK, Jr. has his preferred biological theories about vaccines, autism, and disease. Government scientists are at risk of losing their jobs and their financial security if they reference (or publish) findings that Kennedy objects to. Universities are still (as far as I can tell) safe for natural scientists because the first wave of the crackdown is focused on the humanities and social sciences, so this purge of scientists is limited to federal government employees, but the effect is real, and it isn't a stretch to assume that if the government finds success in the current purge, it will go looking further afield.
The human impact is significant for those affected, but the article is right to point out that this purge of scientists from the government for ideological goals will have a broader impact for society: it will set back American science.
Kennedy doesn't even have to be wrong on the facts for the culture he's creating to be toxic for federal science in his department and beyond. Just the politicization of science pushes our country towards being a scientific backwater.
My take is the fall of the current order of scientific institutions was already happening well before Trump's actions this year. Increased academic fraud, the reproducibility crisis, increase in people prioritizing career growth over pursuit of knowledge, overzealous publish-or-perish culture, administrative bloat, and so on.
Can we save it? I want to believe it, but I'm more and more of the mind that we need to create a new scientific institution to replace the old one, whatever that means.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 32.0 ms ] threadPerhaps I know the subject too well. Or should quietly accept that The Atlantic needs a lot of click-fodder to pay the bills.
The past is a different country. The problems existing now are not the same as those of two empires from 100 years ago.
The article mentions Lysenko, a Soviet "biologist" who set back Soviet biology for a generation. He believed, for example, that plants in the USSR would not compete with each other for resources the way they did in capitalist societies, but would instead share resources. He asserted that crops could therefore be planted closer together in the USSR, yielding more food per acre. Evidence to the contrary was suppressed: Lysenko had Stalin's ear and a zealot's confidence. The rest of the field was either purged or fell in line. Scientists lost their jobs or got sent to Siberia.
The comparison to the present-day US isn't perfect, but it also isn't hyperbole. While scientists in the US mostly aren't in the same type of danger of arrest for speaking out (assuming ICE doesn't start targeting political opponents), but we're looking at a similar era in the US in terms of making theories and data fit ideology. RFK, Jr. has his preferred biological theories about vaccines, autism, and disease. Government scientists are at risk of losing their jobs and their financial security if they reference (or publish) findings that Kennedy objects to. Universities are still (as far as I can tell) safe for natural scientists because the first wave of the crackdown is focused on the humanities and social sciences, so this purge of scientists is limited to federal government employees, but the effect is real, and it isn't a stretch to assume that if the government finds success in the current purge, it will go looking further afield.
The human impact is significant for those affected, but the article is right to point out that this purge of scientists from the government for ideological goals will have a broader impact for society: it will set back American science.
Kennedy doesn't even have to be wrong on the facts for the culture he's creating to be toxic for federal science in his department and beyond. Just the politicization of science pushes our country towards being a scientific backwater.
Can we save it? I want to believe it, but I'm more and more of the mind that we need to create a new scientific institution to replace the old one, whatever that means.