19 JAN 2013 by ideonexus

 Anti-Science in Communism

Suppression of knowledge weakened Russia in the Lysenko affair. which a political ideologue and former peasant named Trofim Lysenko ingratiated himself to communist leaders and was placed in charge of national agriculture because of his ideological conformity. He denounced and suppressed scientists who questioned his odd schemes as "fly lovers and people haters"^^ (because geneticists were doing fruit fly research-h—I kid you not!) and his uneducated methods decimated Soviet agriculture. So...
Folksonomies: politics science communism
Folksonomies: politics science communism
  1  notes

The USSR and China as examples of how anti-science attitudes and political loyalty over empiricism damaged both countries.

18 MAY 2011 by ideonexus

 History VS Science

History generally is written by the victors to justify their actions, to arouse patriotic fervour, and to suppress the legitimate claims of the vanquished. When no overwhelming victory takes place, each side writes self-promotional accounts of what really happened. English histories castigated the French, and vice versa; US histories until very recently ignored the de facto policies of lebensraum and genocide toward Native Americans; Japanese histories of the events leading to World War II mi...
  1  notes

History is written from a perspective, science tries to reconstruct events.