The Authoritarian War on Science

What the Rise of Lysenkoism Reveals About America’s Political Assault on Scientific Institutions

Trofim Lysenko measures the growth of wheat in a collective farm field near Odessa, Ukraine. (Hulton Deutsch / Corbis / Getty)

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In the late 1920s, a Soviet crop scientist named Trofim Lysenko claimed he had found a way to grow crops without the need for traditional seeds or fertilizers. His theory, which rejected basic genetic science, argued that plants could be trained to inherit traits through environmental exposure alone.

Lysenko’s rejection of Mendelian genetics contradicted decades of international research and experimental evidence, and made little sense to leading plant geneticists around the world. His ideas weren’t based on experiments, peer-reviewed data, or credible evidence. Instead, it was ideology that aligned perfectly with the political mood of the Soviet Union.

At the time, famine was spreading and agricultural productivity had collapsed as a result of Stalin’s forced collectivization, a policy that took millions of small, privately owned farms and merged them into large, state-run collectives. Farmers were forced to give up their land, animals, and tools, and those who resisted were deported, imprisoned, or killed. As a result, these workers, who were supposed to be the soul of Stalin’s revolution, were demoralized and angry. And this was the environment in which Lysenko emerged, offering what looked like a miracle fix.

Lysenko was charismatic and unbothered by the slow process of scientific consensus. He gave fiery speeches and positioned himself not just as a scientist, but as a patriot. He called the scientific discipline of genetics ‘pseudoscientific’ and ‘anti-Soviet’ and said that Soviet biology could defy Western science just as Soviet power could defy capitalism, which was exactly what Stalin wanted to hear.

Lysenko was dismissed by many in the scientific community, but that didn’t matter to him because he had political favor, which was far more powerful than scientific evidence. Stalin endorsed Lysenko’s theories, and soon, real scientists became political enemies.

In 1940, Stalin appointed Lysenko Head of Genetics at the Soviet Academy of Sciences. And from there, pseudoscience became national policy. Over the next two decades, independent genetics research in the Soviet Union was effectively banned, and the field was dismantled, now labeled “dangerous” and “reactionary.” Scientists tried to resist, but under Stalin, disagreement was criminalized. Those who refused to denounce Mendelian science or questioned Lysenko’s methods were arrested, executed, or sent to labor camps.

Among them was Nikolai Vavilov, a botanist who had dedicated his life to ending hunger. He had traveled the globe collecting seeds, believing biodiversity held the key to feeding the Soviet Union. He stood up publicly against Lysenko’s pseudoscience, and was arrested as a result. He died of starvation in prison three years later.

By the end of the decade, Soviet biology was gutted, laboratories went silent, and important research stalled. Before Lysenko’s rise, the Soviet Union had arguably the strongest genetics research community in the world. But in just a few years, it was decimated.

Lysenko's theories remained in power until the mid-1960s. By then, an entire generation of scientists had been lost, and with them, decades of progress. The Soviet Union never fully recovered its leadership in genetics and molecular biology. “Lysenko gutted it,” science writer Sam Kean later wrote in a piece for the Atlantic, “and by some accounts, set Russian biology and agronomy back a half-century.”

Present Day

Last week, it was reported that multiple scientific publications, including JAMA and the New England Journal of Medicine, received threatening letters from the U.S. Department of Justice. The letters accused them of political bias and questioned their editorial practices, citing their nonprofit tax status in what appeared to be a veiled threat. No examples of bias were included.

In response, The Lancet, a British medical journal that did not receive a letter, published a scathing editorial titled “Supporting medical science in the USA.” It described the letters as a form of harassment and intimidation designed to instill fear and undermine independent editorial oversight, adding that “science and medicine in the USA are being violently dismembered while the world watches.”

Meanwhile, the administration has begun systematically eroding the infrastructure of American science. Federal agencies are now quietly instructing researchers to strip their grant proposals of terms deemed politically unacceptable—words like gender, health equity, diversity, and social determinants of health. These terms, once central to advancing public health, are now flagged as ideological threats.

Researchers have reported being verbally warned by grant officers to avoid certain language if they want their applications to advance. Some have been told that using these terms would trigger additional scrutiny or automatic rejection. More than 100 words have been flagged in federal memos, and entire public health proposals have been delayed, sanitized, or rejected—not because the science was flawed, but because it no longer aligned with the administration’s political agenda.

This censorship has extended beyond grants. Scientific manuscripts have been pulled for review if they include banned terms, and public health datasets have gone offline or returned with politically edited documentation. Entire webpages have been scrubbed or removed, erasing long-standing guidance on diversity in clinical trials or the health impacts of racism. Health departments have been told to rephrase references to racial disparities in bland, generic terms, or omit them entirely.

At the same time, the NIH, widely regarded as the world’s leading biomedical research institution, is being systematically dismantled. The proposed budget slashes overall funding, cuts indirect cost coverage for research institutions, and consolidates 27 NIH institutes down to just eight. As a result, long-term research programs are collapsing, scientists are being laid off, and vital work on maternal health, environmental health, mental health, rural health, and health disparities is disappearing from the federal agenda.

Hundreds of active research grants have already been canceled mid-cycle. The move is unprecedented in modern NIH history, and it has sent shockwaves through the scientific community. Leading scientists are being replaced or pushed out, while unqualified ideologues are being elevated to positions of influence.

At the center of this is RFK Jr., now leading the Department of Health and Human Services. From the start, he has used his position to platform pseudoscience and attack scientific consensus. In his first press conference, he claimed that autism was caused by “environmental toxins,” a claim that contradicts decades of international research and the views of every major medical and scientific body.

He has since appointed David Geier, a widely discredited anti-vaccine activist, to lead a federal inquiry into the causes of autism. Geier has no medical degree, no background in epidemiology, and no formal training in public health. His career has been defined by the promotion of debunked claims about vaccines and autism, many of them co-authored with his father, Mark Geier, whose medical license was permanently revoked in more than a dozen states for unethical and dangerous treatment practices. David Geier himself was described by courts as “practicing medicine without a license.” He has never held a relevant credential.

That is the person RFK Jr. has chosen to lead the federal investigation into the causes of autism.

And last month, Kennedy went even further, announcing that his team, led by Geier, would identify the cause of autism by September 2025. The idea that a single cause for a complex neurodevelopmental condition could be uncovered in just four months is fundamentally anti-scientific. Autism is a condition with a broad range of presentations and contributing factors. Scientists from around the world, including geneticists, neurologists, developmental psychologists, have spent decades studying it. There is no single known cause, and no credible scientific body claims otherwise.

But Kennedy’s promise is very clearly about building a narrative designed to validate a long-debunked belief that vaccines cause autism, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary in the scientific literature.

And in another move aligned with his long-standing anti-vaccine agenda, Kennedy announced last week that all vaccines must now undergo randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trials before being approved or reapproved for use, even when such trials would be unethical or infeasible, like in the case of annual flu shots or long-standing pediatric immunizations. Experts warn that this requirement may serve not as a measure of scientific rigor, but as a mechanism to delay or eliminate vaccine access entirely.

Final Thoughts

We’d like to think we’ve learned from history. But what’s happening right now in the United States, quietly and strategically, should alarm every one of us.

Just like the rise of Lysenkoism, this didn’t happen all at once. It started with mistrust, then discrediting scientists and scientific consensus. Then came the purges, the closures, the funding stripped from legitimate research and redirected toward ideological projects. But it also gained momentum because the science being elevated, no matter how flawed, served a political purpose. It told the public what leaders wanted them to believe and helped increase morale and build support. It promised simple answers to complex problems. And it cast anyone who questioned it as disloyal, dangerous, or not wanting what is best for the country.

Lysenkoism was not an isolated historical example. It follows a playbook used by authoritarian regimes throughout history. First, undermine the legitimacy of science, then censor the language, defund the institutions and replace researchers with ideologues. And finally, use state-backed pseudoscience to justify your agenda while silencing dissent.

Science ceases to be a method for understanding the world. It becomes a tool of the state. And truth only counts if it serves the regime.

But this isn’t just a cautionary tale from the past. It’s a blueprint being followed in real time. And unless we name it for what it is, and act to defend scientific institutions, evidence-based research, and the people dedicated to advancing public health, we risk watching history repeat itself.