From a reader:
Dear Derb—I’m surprised that this week, neither you nor Andrew Stuffaford mentioned that science, and especially biology, was one of the most significant victims of communist tyranny, and that there are lessons to be learned from this regarding the current anti-evolution fervor that has lamentably gripped American conservatives. I wrote something about it here:
Darwin Central, incidentally, is a new pro-science conservative advocacy site and meeting place. We’re about 25% scientists and/or scientifically-trained professionals and 75% laypeople (I’m one of the latter), all of whom share a love of science, and grave concerns about where the country is heading, both in terms of rising scientific illiteracy and the bizarre anti-science sentiment in too many corners of the right, and how it is in consequence allowing the far left to remerge by claiming the mantle of science and reason for itself. We have a very busy and vibrant forum, and an equally vibrant if somewhat less busy blog, and you’re welcome to look around, and even more welcome to plug it shamelessly for us.
Consider it plugged. Incidentally, speaking of Lysenkoism (which is part–though only a part–of what my reader means by the communist suppression of science), the current issue of The Economist has a good article on the new understandings of RNA & its relation to the genome. These new understandings have opened up the possibility–though only that–that acquired characteristics might, after all, be heritable, if only indirectly. Time to re-read The Case of the Midwife Toad, perhaps.