The denial of genetics is a truly surprising modern reprise of Lysenkoism

The New Lysenkoism: Scientific American’s broadside against E. O. Wilson fits a fashionable, science-denying trend. by Nicholas Wade.

An excellent insight.  I was incensed when Scientific American ran a condemning obituary of E.O. Wilson.  It was, of course, not by anyone of his stature but rather by someone enamored with the academic infatuation with wokeism, the poisonous intermingling of progressivism, critical race theory, and social justice theory.  A noxious stew completely bereft of Age of Enlightenment values and of any correlation to reality.  An indulgence of social signaling status beliefs.  

My outrage presumably blinded me to the point Wade is making.  By endorsing a racist interpretation of Wildon's work, Scientific American was also endorsing Lysenkoism.  

A strange thing is happening to the venerable magazine Scientific American. It has decided to kick its science-loving readers in the teeth and embrace a modern equivalent of Lysenkoism—the doctrine that required Soviet biologists to ignore evolution and the genetics of plants.

The great biologist Edward O. Wilson died on December 26. Few readers of Scientific American could be unaware of Wilson’s towering contributions to biology and conservation, or of his rare gifts as a synthesizer and writer. They surely didn’t expect that the oeuvre of this globally renowned scientist would be labeled by Scientific American, just three days after his death, as “built on racist ideas.”

Why would the editor of the magazine, Laura Helmuth, take it into her head to insult almost everything her readers believe in? The sad truth is that she, like some editors of more important scientific journals, has been infected by a taste-destroying, judgment-paralyzing malady: the virus of progressive wokeness.

The article she ran, by a junior academic at UC San Francisco, Monica McLemore (who holds a Ph.D. in nursing science), asserts that Wilson’s “racist ideas” come from his book Sociobiology, which supported “the notion that differences among humans could be explained by genetics, inheritance and other biological mechanisms.”

The assertion reflects the foundation on which woke theory is built: everyone is the same, with no genetic differences between sexes or races. By rejecting genetics, adherents can dismiss the notion that people might have different innate talents and earn different rewards. The theory instead attributes any deviation from equality, whether in occupations or income, to discrimination. At one blow, the hope of a merit-rewarding society is destroyed, to be replaced by a distribution of wealth according to wokeist rules.

Woke theory provides the platform for putting opponents on the defensive, grabbing more spoils for practitioners of identity politics, and smearing as racist anyone who dares dispute the premise of the whole racket—that people have no genetic differences. Since no one wants to be called a racist, the intimidation works perfectly and is spreading an ever-widening circle of fear in campuses, corporations, and media.

The premise is, of course, entirely false. A handful of genetic differences exist between the sexes, but they have profound consequences. A multitude of genetic differences exist between the races, but they have trivial consequences, like effects on skin or hair color. None justifies the fundamental idea of racism, that one race is superior to another. If you say there are obviously genetic differences between races but no race is superior, wokeists will ignore that central distinction and call you a scientific racist.

This sort of ideological anti-realism is no mere inconsequential fantasy conjured up by government supported academics with little in terms of real-world feedback or practice in the rough and tumble of intellectual debate.  They want to assert without evidence and deplatform everyone who points out that this is no mark of academic success.  A coercive mindset with a dark past.  

The denial of genetics is a truly surprising modern reprise of Lysenkoism. Wokeists, too, both deny the role of genetics in biology and aggressively seek to punish or ostracize their critics. Some 3,000 Soviet biologists were dismissed, imprisoned, or killed because they refused to abandon the theory of evolution for the nonsense Trofim Lysenko was peddling. Our academics are evidently made of more pliant stuff.

Wade finishes dishing Helmuth and McLemore and then appends a factually useful and endearing obituary of Wilson.