The U.S. Is Adopting the Soviet Approach to Science—The Results Will Be Just as Disastrous
Political ideology is replacing peer review. America is quietly reviving a failed Soviet experiment--Lysenkoism.
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The freedom of scientific inquiry is not just essential to technological progress and public health—it underpins the very structure of modern society. When politics interferes with science, the consequences are not abstract or distant—they are immediate, profound, and often irreversible.
One of the clearest examples is Lysenkoism, a state-imposed pseudoscience in the Soviet Union that suppressed genetics research, dismantled institutions, and derailed scientific progress for decades.
Now, in a disturbingly familiar pattern, some U.S. officials and institutions are advancing efforts to impose political control over what science gets funded, published, or pursued—especially in critical fields like biotechnology and vaccine research.
When Science Was What the State Said
Trofim Lysenko, an agronomist, rose to prominence in the 1930s Soviet Union by promoting a theory of "vernalization," which claimed crops could be trained to adapt to environmental changes. Lysenko rejected Mendelian genetics and evolutionary theory, aligning his ideas with Marxist ideology, which favored the role of nurture over nature. That’s not dissimilar to the denial of the germ theory seen from some political appointees today.
Backed by Stalin, Lysenkoism became the official state doctrine. Critics were silenced, imprisoned, or executed. Genetic research was outlawed; many top scientists, including the pioneering geneticist Nikolai Vavilov, were purged.
The result? Soviet agriculture suffered devastating crop failures. More broadly, the Soviet Union lagged behind the West in molecular biology, biotechnology, and medicine for decades. The suppression of open scientific discourse not only stunted knowledge but also contributed directly to human suffering, famine, and intellectual decay.
A Marxist Ideology Comes to America
Last year, Nature posed a question: “The US is the world’s scientific superpower–but for how long?” Not even a year later, the cracks are already visible.
We are witnessing a resurgence of Neo-Lysenkoism in American institutions, where political ideology dictates what research gets funded or published. In a move that mirrors the Soviet ban on genetic research, House Republicans proposed legislation to block funding for mRNA vaccine research, citing vague safety concerns and opinion rather than demonstrable harm or scientific evidence.
Scientists report being told to remove mentions of mRNA — the very technology likely to produce a new era of cancer treatment and prevention — from their proposals, lest they be denied funding.
This is more than a policy disagreement; it is an attempt to restrict the publication and dissemination of federally funded research unless it aligns with politically approved viewpoints. This isn't an isolated case.
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has proposed barring scientists from publishing in leading medical journals such as The Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine, calling them “corrupt” and suggesting the establishment of a state-run journal for federally funded science.
The unilateral firing of the entire Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which determines what vaccines will be covered by insurance, citing a desire to install new members.
Major medical journals have received unprecedented inquiries from the Department of Justice regarding the content they publish.
The Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board experienced mass resignations in protest against the Trump administration's alleged political meddling. The State Department reportedly canceled nearly 200 approved scholarships and subjected approximately 1,200 foreign scholars to unauthorized reviews, actions perceived as violations of the program's merit-based principles.
Federal agencies removed or modified over 8,000 web pages and approximately 3,000 datasets without providing a valid rationale.
The administration demanded that Columbia University place specific departments under "academic receivership" as a condition for federal funding, an unprecedented intrusion into university governance.
Linda McMahon, owner of World Wrestling Entertainment and the new Secretary of Education, said, “Universities should continue to be able to do research as long as they're abiding by the laws and in sync, I think, with the administration and what the administration is trying to accomplish.”
Kennedy eliminated the public comment period for policy changes at the Department of Health and Human Services, limiting the ability of anyone to voice concerns about proposed changes.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) terminated at least 33 research grants focused on vaccine hesitancy and strategies for improving vaccine uptake, and scaled back funding for an additional nine projects on the same topic, according to Science.
Schools in the U.S. banned 5,894 books between 2021 and 2023.
The false claims about biological weapons and the plagiarized report that contained fake citations published by the MAHA Commission cast serious doubt on whether the U.S. will continue to lead in science. The threats extend beyond the U.S. economy and the scientific community at home.
As Dr. Gigi Gronvall, a Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security who has advised the Biological Weapons Convention in Geneva, Switzerland, writes:
“RFK Jr. claimed that Fauci has been creating bioweapons since 2001, a false statement that could motivate adversaries such as Russia not to believe that the United States unilaterally disarmed its offensive bioweapons program in 1969.”
These false claims may also lead to the proliferation of biological weapons. The Secretary’s words have already been used to advance the geostrategic aims of U.S. adversaries.
Few things would better serve those hostile to American interests than placing the engine of U.S. prosperity and security in the hands of someone who rejects foundational scientific principles, like the germ theory of disease. In a few short months, we have begun a journey back to 1861, a time when one-half to one-third of all children died before age five.
What Neo-Lysenkoism Threatens to Destroy
Neo-Lysenkoism poses an escalating systemic risk to the U.S. economy, scientific leadership, and even national security and military preparedness. Unlike its Soviet predecessor, Neo-Lysenkoism doesn’t—at least not yet—rely on show trials or gulags.
In the way that spin dictators have replaced fear dictators, Lysenkoism has been replaced with Neo-Lysenkoism. It uses funding freezes, bureaucratic sabotage, keyword searches, oligarch henchmen, and ideological intimidation to suppress scientific inquiry.
The long-term costs will be profound:
Political interference in biomedical research hinders life-saving breakthroughs and undermines the availability of future cures and treatments. We will miss out on the next generation of advancements, just as the Soviets did.
Top scientists are already leaving for countries with stable research climates, draining U.S. innovation at its source. No country where the state has consistently and broadly interfered in science has been able to surpass the U.S. Just as in every other place where the state has entered academia and research, we will fall hard.
When science becomes just another opinion battleground, snake oil salesmen thrive, people die preventable deaths, public trust erodes, and democratic governance fractures. If nothing is true, anything can be justified. Such intentional truth decay further frays the fabric of society.
We know where this leads. The Soviet Union prioritized Marxism over empirical rigor and paid the price with scientific stagnation, economic decline, and international irrelevance. Eventually, it collapsed.
The United States, once the global engine of biomedical and technological advancement, now risks dismantling its own infrastructure under the banner of partisan orthodoxy. It doesn’t matter whether the justification is Marxism or populist outrage. The mechanism is the same. So is the outcome.