Soviet agricultural science was held back for decades because of the ideology of Trofim Lysenko, who was a proponent of Lamarckism.

Lysenko believed that successive generations of crops could be improved by exposing them to the right environment, and so too could successive generations of soviet citizens be improved by exposing them to the right ideology.

So while Western scientists embraced evolution and genetics, Russian scientists who thought the same were sent to the gulag. Western crops flourished. Russian crops failed.

Today, the catch-cry of scientists must be frank and fearless advice, no matter the opinion of political commissars stationed at the U.S. EPA.