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+title: "Lysenkoism"
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+
+Lysenkoism was a pseudoscientific political campaign led by the Soviet biologist Trofim Lysenko against genetics and science-based agriculture in the mid-20th century, rejecting natural selection in favour of a form of Lamarckism, as well as expanding upon the techniques of vernalization and grafting.
+More than 3,000 mainstream biologists were dismissed or imprisoned, and numerous scientists were executed in the Soviet campaign to suppress scientific opponents. The president of the Soviet Agriculture Academy, Nikolai Vavilov, who had been Lysenko's mentor, but later denounced him, was sent to prison and died there, while Soviet genetics research was effectively destroyed. Research and teaching in the fields of neurophysiology, cell biology, and many other biological disciplines were harmed or banned.
+The government of the Soviet Union (USSR) supported the campaign, and Joseph Stalin personally edited a speech by Lysenko in a way that reflected his support for what would come to be known as Lysenkoism, despite his skepticism toward Lysenko's assertion that all science is class-orientated in nature. Lysenko served as the director of the USSR's Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences. Other countries of the Eastern Bloc including the People's Republic of Poland, the Republic of Czechoslovakia, and the German Democratic Republic accepted Lysenkoism as the official "new biology", to varying degrees, as did the People's Republic of China for some years.
+
+== Context ==
+
+Mendelian genetics, the science of heredity, developed into an experimentally based field of biology at the start of the 20th century through the work of August Weismann, Thomas Hunt Morgan, and others, building on the rediscovered work of Gregor Mendel. They showed that the characteristics of an organism are carried by inherited genes, which were located on chromosomes in each cell's nucleus. Genes can be affected by random changes (mutations), and can be shuffled and recombined during sexual reproduction, but are otherwise passed on unchanged from parent to offspring. Beneficial changes can propagate through a population by natural selection or, in agriculture, by plant breeding.
+Some Marxists, however, perceived a fissure between Marxism and Darwinism. Specifically, the issue is that while the "struggle for survival" in Marxism applies to a social class as a whole (the class struggle), the struggle for survival in Darwinism is decided by individual random mutations. This was deemed a liberal doctrine, against the Marxist framework of "immutable laws of history" and the spirit of collectivism. In contrast, Lamarckism proposed that an organism can somehow pass on characteristics that it has acquired during its lifetime to its offspring, implying that changing the body can affect the genetic material in the germ line. To these Marxists, a "neo-Lamarckism" was deemed more compatible with Marxism.
+The Marxist principle of partiinost (party spirit) held that science is tied to class interests: scientists had a duty to serve the working class. This caused scientific findings to be judged by their economic and political utility, and allowed for questionable work. Marxist revolutionary Nikolai Bukharin downplayed realist interpretations of nature. He said that science had to show how to manipulate natural phenomena to serve the interests of the proletarian class. Because genetics was linked to eugenics and Social Darwinism, it was rejected as bourgeois, regardless of the evidence for it.
+Marxism–Leninism, which became the official ideology in Stalin's USSR, incorporated Darwinian evolution as a foundational doctrine, providing a scientific basis for its state atheism. Initially, the Lamarckian principle of inheritance of acquired traits was considered a legitimate part of evolutionary theory, and Darwin himself supported it. Although the Mendelian view had largely replaced Lamarckism in western biology by 1925, it persisted in Soviet doctrine. Besides the fervent "old style" Darwinism of Marx and Engels which included elements of Lamarckism, two fallacious experimental results supported it in the USSR. First, Ivan Pavlov, who discovered conditioned reflex, announced in 1923 that it can be inherited in mice; and his subsequent withdrawal of this claim was ignored by Soviet ideologists. Second, Ivan Michurin interpreted his work on plant breeding as proof of the inheritance of acquired traits. Michurin advocated directed plant breeding by environmental control: "We cannot wait for favors from nature: we must wrest them from her".
+Kliment Timiryazev, a popularizer of science in Russia, had sympathies with communism, and allied with the new Soviet republic. This made his views more orthodox and widely known. When gene theory rose in early 1900s, some gene theorists promoted saltative mutationism as an alternative to gradualist Darwinism, and Timiryazev vigorously argued against it. Timiryazev's views influenced many, including Michurin.
+Soviet agriculture around 1930 was in a crisis due to Stalin's forced collectivisation of farms and extermination of kulak farmers. The resulting Soviet famine of 1932–1933 provoked the government to search for a technical solution which would maintain their central political control.
+
+== In the Soviet Union ==
+
+=== Lysenko's claims ===

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+title: "Lysenkoism"
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+
+In 1928, rejecting natural selection and Mendelian genetics, Trofim Lysenko claimed to have developed agricultural techniques which could radically increase crop yields. These included vernalization, species transformation (one species turning into another), inheritance of acquired characteristics, and vegetative hybridization (see below). He claimed in particular that vernalization, exposing wheat seeds to humidity and low temperature, could greatly increase crop yield. He claimed further that he could transform one species, Triticum durum (durum spring wheat), into Triticum vulgare (common autumn wheat), through 2 to 4 years of autumn planting. This species transition he claimed to occur without an intermediate form. However, this was already known to be impossible since T. durum is a tetraploid with 28 chromosomes (4 sets of 7), while T. vulgare is hexaploid with 42 chromosomes (6 sets). This objection did not faze Lysenko, as he claimed that the chromosome number changed as well.
+Lysenko claimed that the concept of a gene was a "bourgeois invention", and he denied the presence of any "immortal substance of heredity" or "clearly defined species", which he claimed belong to Platonic metaphysics rather than strictly materialist Marxist science. Instead, he proposed a "Marxist genetics" postulating an unlimited possibility of transformation of living organisms through environmental changes in the spirit of Marxian dialectical transformation, and in parallel to the Party's program of creating the New Soviet Man and subduing nature for his benefit. Lysenko refused to admit random mutations, stating that "science is the enemy of randomness".
+
+Lysenko further claimed that Lamarckian inheritance of acquired characteristics occurred in plants, as in the "eyes" of potato tubers, though the genetic differences in these plant parts were already known to be non-heritable somatic mutations. He also claimed that when a tree is grafted, the scion permanently changes the heritable characteristics of the stock. In modern biological theory, such a change is theoretically possible through horizontal gene transfer; however, there is no evidence that this actually occurs, and Lysenko rejected the mechanism of genes entirely.
+
+=== Rise ===
+Isaak Izrailevich Prezent, a biologist politically out of favour, brought Lysenko to public attention. He portrayed Lysenko as a genius who had developed a revolutionary technique which could lead to the triumph of Soviet agriculture, a thrilling possibility for a Soviet society suffering through Stalin's famines. Lysenko became a favorite of the Soviet propaganda machine, which overstated his successes, trumpeted his faked experimental results, and omitted any mention of his failures. State media published enthusiastic articles such as "Siberia is transformed into a land of orchards and gardens" and "Soviet people change nature", while anyone opposing Lysenko was presented as a defender of "mysticism, obscurantism and backwardness."   
+Lysenko's political success was mostly due to his appeal to the Communist Party and Soviet ideology. His attack on the "bourgeois pseudoscience" of modern genetics and the proposal that plants can rapidly adjust to a changed environment suited the ideological battle in both agriculture and Soviet society. Following the disastrous collectivization efforts of the late 1920s, Lysenko's new methods were seen by Soviet officials as paving the way to an "agricultural revolution." Lysenko himself was from a peasant family and was an enthusiastic advocate of Leninism. The Party-controlled newspapers applauded Lysenko's practical "success" and questioned the motives of his critics, ridiculing the timidity of academics who urged the patient, impartial observation required for science. Lysenko was admitted into the hierarchy of the Communist Party, and was put in charge of agricultural affairs. 
+He used his position to denounce biologists as "fly-lovers and people haters", and to decry traditional biologists as "wreckers" working to sabotage the Soviet economy. He denied the distinction between theoretical and applied biology, and rejected general methods such as control groups and statistics:
+
+We biologists do not take the slightest interest in mathematical calculations, which confirm the useless statistical formulae of the Mendelists … We do not want to submit to blind chance … We maintain that biological regularities do not resemble mathematical laws.
+Lysenko presented himself as a follower of Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin, a well-known and well-liked Soviet horticulturist, but unlike Michurin, Lysenko insisted on using only non-genetic techniques such as hybridization and grafting.
+Support from Joseph Stalin increased Lysenko's popularity. In 1935, Lysenko compared his opponents in biology to the peasants who still resisted the Soviet government's collectivization strategy, saying that the opponents of his theories were opponents of Marxism. Stalin was in the audience for this speech, and was the first to stand and applaud, calling out "Bravo, Comrade Lysenko. Bravo." Stalin personally made encouraging edits to a speech by Lysenko, despite the dictator's skepticism toward Lysenko's assertion that all science is class-orientated. The official support emboldened Lysenko and gave him and Prezent free rein to slander any geneticists who still spoke out against him. After Lysenko became head of the Soviet Academy of Agricultural Sciences, classical genetics began to be called "fascist science" and many of Lysenkoism's opponents, such as his former mentor Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov, were imprisoned or executed, although not on Lysenko's personal orders.
+
+During 1947 October, Lysenko and Stalin exchanged multiple letters. Lysenko promised Stalin to breed branching wheat into a yield of 15,000 kg/ha. At that time, the most productive wheat breed under exceptionally favorable conditions could achieve 2,000 kg/ha. Lysenko's letter to Stalin, dated October 27, 1947 read;Mendelism-Morganism, Weissmanist neo-Darwinism ... are not developed in Western capitalist countries for the purposes of agriculture, but rather serve reactionary purposes of eugenics, racism, etc. There is no relationship between agricultural practices and the theory of bourgeois genetics.

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+---
+
+=== Peak ===
+From July 31 to August 7, 1948, the Academy of Agricultural Sciences (VASKhNIL) held a week-long session (August 1948 Session of VASKhNIL), organized by Lysenko and approved by Stalin. At the end of it, Lysenkoism was declared as "the only correct theory." As Lysenko performatively spoke at the end, "the Central Committee of the Communist Party has examined my report and approved it". Attendants recognized this as the birth of a new orthodoxy. Of the 8 scientists who advocated genetics during the session, 3 immediately announced repentance.
+
+Soviet scientists were required to denounce any work that contradicted Lysenko, and criticism was denounced as "bourgeois" or "fascist". The Ministry of Higher Education commanded all biological institutes to immediately follow the Lysenko orthodoxy:The Central University Administration and the Administration of Cadres are directed to review within two months all departments of biological faculties to free them from all opposed to Michurinist biology and to strengthen them by appointing Michurinists to them.
+Point 6 of the Order No. 1208 (August 23, 1948)For several months, similar central directives dismissed scientists, withdrew textbooks, and required the removal of any references to heredity in higher education. There was also an order to destroy all stocks of Drosophila, a common model organism for research in genetics. Leading geneticists were being monitored by secret agents from the State Security Service.
+The same wave of propaganda supported a number of other pseudo-scientific "new Marxist sciences" in the Soviet academy, in fields such as linguistics and art. Pravda reported the invention of a perpetual motion engine, confirming Engels' claim that energy dissipated in one place must concentrate somewhere else.
+In 1948, the film Michurin portrayed Michurin as an ideal Soviet scientist, bringing the propaganda to the masses. Published songbooks included songs praising Lysenko, "He walks the Michurin path/With firm tread;/He protects us from being duped/by Mendelist-Morganists."
+In Lysenko and his followers' political claim, the "Weismannist-Mendelist-Morganist" theory was reactionary and idealistic, a tool of the bourgeois, while the "Michurinist" theory was progressive and materialistic. The victory of Michurinism was framed as a victory of socialism over capitalism. Some even traced Hitler's racial policies to the genetic theory. 
+A prominent promoter of Lysenkoism was the biologist Olga Lepeshinskaya, who attempted to demonstrate abiogenesis of cells and tissues from "vital substance". She delivered a speech in 1950 in which she equated all of the "bourgeois" heresies:
+
+In our country there are no longer classes hostile to each other, and the struggle of idealists against dialectical materialists still, depending on whose interests it defends, has the character of a class struggle. Indeed, the followers of Virchow, Weismann, Mendel and Morgan, who speak of the invariability of the gene and deny the influence of the external environment, are the preachers of the pseudo-scientific teachings of the bourgeois eugenicists and of all perversions in genetics, on the soil of which grew the racial theory of fascism in the capitalist countries. The Second World War was unleashed by the forces of imperialism, which also had racism in its arsenal.
+Perhaps the only opponents of Lysenkoism during Stalin's lifetime to escape liquidation were from the small community of Soviet nuclear physicists: according to Tony Judt, "it is significant that Stalin left his nuclear physicists alone and never presumed to second guess their calculations. Stalin may well have been mad but he was not stupid."
+
+=== Effects on scientists ===
+Genetics was eventually banned in the Soviet Union. Over 3,000 biologists were fired, and numerous scientists were imprisoned, or executed for attempting to oppose Lysenkoism, and genetics research was effectively destroyed until the death of Stalin in 1953. Secret research facilities such as sharashka were where numerous scientists ended up imprisoned.
+From 1934 to 1940, under Lysenko's admonitions and with Stalin's approval, many geneticists were executed (including Izrail Agol, Solomon Levit, Grigorii Levitskii, Georgii Karpechenko and Georgii Nadson) or sent to labor camps. The famous Soviet geneticist and president of the Agriculture Academy, Nikolai Vavilov, was arrested in 1940 and died in prison in 1943. In 1936, the American geneticist Hermann Joseph Muller, who had moved to the Leningrad Institute of Genetics with his Drosophila fruit flies, was criticized as bourgeois, capitalist, imperialist, and a promoter of fascism, and he returned to America via Republican Spain. Iosif Rapoport, who worked on mutagens, refused to publicly repudiate chromosome theory of heredity, and suffered several years as a geological lab assistant. Dmitry Sabinin's book on plant physiology was abruptly withdrawn from publication in 1948. He died by suicide in 1951.
+Those who supported Lysenkoism were favored. Alexander Oparin vigorously defended Lysenkoism and was politically favored, although he may have been genuine in his belief, as he continued to defend it even in 1955, after its fall.
+Lysenkoism became entrenched not just in academia but in Soviet schools, displacing Darwinism from natural sciences curricula.
+Inspired by the success of Lysenkoism and the 1948 VASKhNIL session, other fields of Soviet science experienced brief revolutions, albeit with less success: against "Pavlovians" in medicine, against "reactionary Einsteinism" in physics and quantum mechanics, and against Pauling resonance theory in chemistry.
+In addition to the biological sciences, Lysenkoism had an impact on geological sciences, especially paleontology and biostratigraphy in the USSR.
+
+=== Fall ===
+At the end of 1952, the situation started to change, and newspapers published articles criticizing Lysenkoism. However, the return to regular genetics slowed down in Nikita Khrushchev's time, when Lysenko showed him the supposed successes of an experimental agricultural complex. It was once again forbidden to criticize Lysenkoism, though it was now possible to express different views, and the geneticists imprisoned under Stalin were released or rehabilitated posthumously. The ban was finally lifted in the mid-1960s.
+Lysenkoism was never dominant in the West, and during the 1960s, it increasingly was seen as pseudoscience. Soviet scientists noticed the great advance in molecular biology, such as the characterization of DNA, and even hold-out Lysenkoists were starting to accept DNA as the material basis for heredity (though they still rejected gene theory).

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+
+=== Reappearance ===
+In the 21st century, Lysenkoism is again being discussed in Russia, including in respectable newspapers like Kultura and by biologists. The geneticist Lev Zhivotovsky has made the unsupported claim that Lysenko helped found modern developmental biology. Discoveries in the field of epigenetics are sometimes raised as alleged late confirmation of Lysenko's theories, but in spite of the apparent high-level similarity (heritable traits passed on without DNA alteration), Lysenko believed that environment-induced changes are the primary mechanism of heritability. Heritable epigenetic effects have been found, but are minor and unstable compared to genetic inheritance.
+
+== Scientific content ==
+Heredity was reformulated as "the property of the living body to demand certain environmental conditions and to react in a certain way to them". Michurin attempted to explain Lamarckian heredity by theorizing that some sort of "heredity" is present all throughout an organism, which reacts to environmental influence. This is incompatible with the Weismann barrier, which leads Lysenkoists to denounce Weismann. Instead, they proposed a "physiological" theory, that the heredity diffused throughout the body is somehow collected in the germ cells, which are "built from molecules, granules, of various organs and parts of the organism", i.e. the pangenesis theory. When two germ cells form a zygote, the "weak" one is assimilated by the stronger one, like food digestion.
+This theory also explains vegetative hybridization, as the heredity in the scion may diffuse into the stock, resulting in a change in the stock's offspring. The vegetative hybridization theory was further tested on animals by injecting blood, for example, by injecting blood from colored chicken into a white chicken. It was claimed that the white chicken's offspring showed partly and fully colors. However, such claims were rejected by Western scientists. The plant hybridization experiments did not replicate, and the chicken experiment did not control for recessive alleles.
+Lysenko also proposed a form of Lamarckian heterochrony. An individual plant develops in stages, depending on its environment. A change in environment can speed up or slow down the stages, and result in downstream effects that are then inherited. This theory justified Lysenkoist plant-breeding practices.
+
+== In other countries ==
+Other countries of the Eastern Bloc accepted Lysenkoism as the official "new biology", to varying degrees. 
+
+=== Poland ===
+In Communist Poland, Lysenkoism was aggressively pushed by state propaganda, signalling the newly founded Polish state's loyalty to the Soviet Union. State newspapers attacked "damage caused by bourgeois Mendelism-Morganism" and "imperialist genetics", comparing it to Mein Kampf. For example, Trybuna Ludu published an article titled "French scientists recognize superiority of Soviet science" by Pierre Daix, repeating Soviet propaganda claims. According to Aleksandra Putrament, doctoral students in biology had to study Engels's Anti-Dühring and Lenin's Materialism and Empiriocriticism and take examinations pertaining to Marxist philosophy. While some academics accepted Lysenkoism for political reasons, Polish scientists largely opposed it. A notable opponent was Wacław Gajewski: in retaliation, he was denied contact with students, though not dismissed from the Warsaw botanical garden. Lysenkoism was rejected from 1956, and in 1958 Gajewski founded Poland's first department of genetics, at the University of Warsaw.
+
+=== Czechoslovakia ===
+Communist Czechoslovakia adopted Lysenkoism in 1949. The prominent geneticist Jaroslav Kříženecký (1896–1964) criticized Lysenkoism in his lectures, and was dismissed from the Agricultural University in 1949 for "serving the established capitalistic system, considering himself superior to the working class, and being hostile to the democratic order of the people"; he was imprisoned in 1958.
+
+=== East Germany ===
+In East Germany, although Lysenkoism was taught at some universities, it had very little impact on science due to the actions of a few scientists, such as the geneticist Hans Stubbe, and scientific contact with West Berlin research institutions. Nonetheless, Lysenkoist theories were found in schoolbooks as late as the dismissal of Nikita Khrushchev in 1964.
+
+=== China ===
+Lysenkoism dominated Chinese science from 1949 until 1956, during which open discussion of alternative theories like classical Mendelian genetics was forbidden. Only in 1956 during a genetics symposium opponents of Lysenkoism were permitted to freely criticize it and argue for Mendelian genetics. In the proceedings from the symposium, Tan Jiazhen is quoted as saying "Since [the] USSR started to criticize Lysenko, we have dared to criticize him too". For a while, both schools were permitted to coexist, although the influence of the Lysenkoists remained strong for several years, contributing to the Great Famine through loss of yields.
+
+=== North Vietnam ===
+Lysenkoist theories and practices were attempted in North Vietnam, often in conjunction with the pedological theories of Vasili Williams as part of a broader diffusion of Soviet agronomy.
+
+=== Non-communist countries ===
+Almost alone among Western scientists, John Desmond Bernal, Professor of Physics at Birkbeck College, London, a Fellow of the Royal Society, and a communist, made an aggressive public defence of Lysenko. Australian biochemist and fellow communist Jack Legge tried to find a middle ground between Lysenkoism and conventional genetics by using Lysenkoist ideas to explain phenomena which conventional genetics at the time could not satisfactorily explain, while teaching other communists about conventional genetics.
+
+== See also ==
+Anti-intellectualism
+Deutsche Physik
+Junk science
+Neo-Lamarckism
+Solomon Levit – a notable victim
+Pavlovian session
+Politicization of science
+Suppressed research in the Soviet Union
+"Bourgeois pseudoscience"
+Nature versus nurture controversy
+
+== Notes ==
+
+== References ==

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+title: "Lysenkoism"
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+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:30:18.060159+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+== Further reading ==
+Denis Buican, L'éternel retour de Lyssenko, Paris, Copernic, 1978. ISBN 2859840192
+Ronald Fisher, "What Sort of Man is Lysenko?" Listener, 40 (1948): 874–875. Contemporary commentary by a British evolutionary biologist (pdf format)
+Loren Graham, Chapter 6. "Stalinist Ideology and the Lysenko Affair", in Science in Russia and the Soviet Union (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
+Oren Solomon Harman, "C. D. Darlington and the British and American Reaction to Lysenko and the Soviet Conception of Science." Journal of the History of Biology, Vol. 36 No. 2 (New York: Springer, 2003)
+David Joravsky, The Lysenko Affair (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970).
+Richard Levins and Richard Lewontin, "Lysenkoism", in The Dialectical Biologist (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1985).
+Anton Lang, "Michurin, Vavilov, and Lysenko". Science, Vol. 124 No. 3215, 1956) doi:10.1126/science.124.3215.277b
+Valery N. Soyfer, Lysenko and the Tragedy of Soviet Science (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1994). ISBN 0813520878
+"The Disastrous Effects of Lysenkoism on Soviet Agriculture". Science and Its Times, ed. Neil Schlager and Josh Lauer, Vol. 6. (Detroit: Gale, 2001)
+
+== External links ==
+SkepDic.com – 'Lysenkoism', The Skeptic's Dictionary
+Lysenkoism, BBC Radio 4 discussion with Robert Service, Steve Jones & Catherine Merridale (In Our Time, June 5, 2008)

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+title: "Pavlovian session"
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+
+The Pavlovian session (Russian: Павловская сессия) was the joint session of the USSR Academy of Sciences and the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences held on June 28 to July 4, 1950. The session was organized by the Soviet Government headed by Joseph Stalin in order to fight Western influences in Russian physiological sciences. During the session, a number of Ivan Pavlov's former students attacked another group of his students (Leon Orbeli, Pyotr Anokhin, Aleksey Speransky, Ivan Beritashvili) whom they accused of deviating from Pavlov's teaching. As the result of this session, Soviet physiology excluded itself from the international scientific community for many years.
+
+== Preceding events ==
+The Pavlovian session followed a sequence of Stalin's interferences in academic affairs during the post-war time:
+
+In 1947, Georgy Aleksandrov asked Stalin to review his textbook for university students entitled "History of West European Philosophy". Stalin criticized the book as an attempt to analyze philosophy from a pro-Western position rather than using the principles of Marxism–Leninism.
+In 1948, Stalin strongly supported Lysenko's work on the inheritance of acquired characteristics in plants which has now been discredited. Lysenko's research was thought to hold the promise of strengthening the Soviet Union's agriculture.
+In 1949, Stalin declared an opposition to cosmopolitism. Great Soviet Encyclopedia defined cosmopolitism as a "reactionary bourgeois ideology of rejecting national traditions and national sovereignty by preaching indifferent relationship to one's country and national culture and advocating the establishment of a 'world government' and 'world citizenship.' "
+In 1949, Stalin commented on the issues of linguistics, in particular he criticized the view that language was a derivative of an economic base. Stalin also stated that "no science can develop and flourish without a battle of opinions, without freedom of criticism."
+The interference in physiology, psychology and psychiatry was initiated in the summer of 1949 when Stalin instructed the Minister of
+Health Yefim Smirnov to hold a session on Pavlov's teachings. On 28 September 1949, on the eve of the 100th anniversary of Pavlov's birth, Yuri Zhdanov reported to Stalin about the "serious trouble" with the development of Pavlov's teaching and put the blame on Orbeli, Beritashvili, and arrested Stern. In replying to this report, Stalin wrote: "In my opinion, the greatest harm to Academician Pavlov's teaching was done by Academician Orbeli... The sooner Orbeli will be exposed and the more thoroughly his monopoly will be eliminated, the better. Beritov and Stern are not so dangerous because they oppose to Pavlov openly and thus facilitate the reprisal of science against these amateurs of science... Now something about the tactics of the struggle against the opponents of Academician Pavlov's theory. At first, it is necessary to stealthily collect Academician Pavlov's supporters, organize them, assign roles, and only after this to gather the session of physiologists... where it will be necessary to give decisive battle to the opponents. Without this, it can fail. Remember: the enemy should be firmly beaten, with reliance on complete success." Georgy Malenkov supervised the organization of the meeting.
+
+== Keynote speeches ==
+Four keynote speakers outlined the main topics of the session: Sergey Vavilov, the President of the USSR Academy of the Sciences; Ivan Petrovich Razenkov, the vice-president of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences; Konstantin Bykov, the Director of
+the General Physiological Department at the Institute of Experimental Medicine; and Anatoly Grigorievitch Ivanov-Smolenskiy, a psychiatrist.
+
+=== Vavilov's speech ===
+In his inaugural address, Sergey Vavilov, praised Stalin and Pavlov for their materialistic approach to the problem of relationship between the material and mental. He stated that Pavlov was a great scientist whom Stalin and the Soviet Government esteemed very highly. Vavilov noted that Soviet physiologists had made great achievements since Pavlov's death, but some did not follow Pavlov's teaching and even attempted a revision of Pavlov's views. Open or concealed opposition to Pavlov's materialistic theory was expected and  quite understandable for bourgeois scientists who suggested that Pavlov's theory of conditioned reflexes should be shelved and only his experimental methods might be useful. However, even Soviet scientists did very little to develop important trends suggested by Pavlov. For example, experts who participated in a broad discussion of materialistic linguistics in Pravda did not even mention the role of Pavlov's theory in the study of language. Vavilov explained that the goal of the joint session of physiologists and psychiatrists was to conduct "a critical and self-critical examination of how matters stand with regard to the development of Pavlov's legacy in the Soviet Union". He concluded: "There can be no doubt that it is only a return to Pavlov's road that physiology can be most effective, most beneficial to our people and most worthy of the Stalin epoch of the building of Communism. Glory to Pavlov's genius! Long live the leader of peoples, our great scientist and preceptor in all our major undertakings, Comrade Stalin!"

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+title: "Pavlovian session"
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+---
+
+=== Razenkov's speech ===
+Ivan Razenkov spoke after Vavilov. He emphasized the importance of opposing the "reactionary idealist trend" in physiology following the example of Trofim Lysenko who contributed to a "decisive victory" of Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin's teachings over Weismannism-Morganism. Razenkov praised Pavlov's contribution to practical medicine and criticized Pavlov's students for not applying the progressive ideas of Pavlov and Ivan Sechenov to theoretical and practical medicine. He blamed Pavlov's immediate disciples and successors: L.N. Fydorov, the former director of the Institute of Experimental Medicine, Leon Orbeli, the director of the Pavlov Institute of Evolutionary Physiology, Pyotr Anokhin, the head of the Moscow Institute of Physiology, and Aleksey Speransky, the head of the Institute of General and Experimental Pathology. According to Razenkov, these scientists did not fight hard enough to defend Pavlov's materialist theory against the assaults of Western idealist physiologists, such as Sherrington, Lashley and Fulton, and Pavlov's opponents in Russia, such as Beritov. Razenkov also expressed some self-criticism for not conforming with the Party and the Government's expectation of the Academy of Medical Sciences. He informed that the Government had created a new scientific institution, the Institute of Physiology of the Higher Nervous System, to advance Pavlov's teachings, and Pavlov's faithful disciple Konstantin Bykov had been named the director of that institute. Razenkov emphasized the importance of the application of the work conducted by Bykov and his colleagues to clinical practice. He concluded his speech with a praise to the "peerless scientist, Comrade Stalin".
+
+=== Bykov's speech ===
+The next keynote speaker, Konstantin Bykov, asserted that medical science must be built on the foundation of correct humanitarian sciences in addition to biology and psychology. He praised the triumph of Michurian biology based on the philosophy of materialism. He also praised the "decisive blow struck at reactionary idealist theories" by Pavlov. Bykov divided the history of physiology and psychology into two periods: idealistic pre-Pavlovian stage and Pavlovian materialistic stage. Bykov condemned the West-European theories of the pre-Pavlovian stage which explained complex nervous phenomena based on idealistic analytical physiology. The authors of these theories failed to recognize class roots of scientific views. According to Bykov, Pavlov made a transition from analytical to synthetic thinking. He discovered a new class of reflexes, conditioned reflexes. He then developed the theory of higher nervous activity. Under the Soviet System, Pavlovian physiology could develop and flourish. However, some of Pavlov's students failed to follow his theory of higher nervous function and instead diverted to irrelevant issues. Even worse, they accepted Western theories. Bykov named Pavlov's disciples who correctly followed the theories of their teacher: Anatoly Ivanov-Smolenskiy and Ezras Asratovich Asratian. Then, he named the ones who deviated from the right path: Orbeli, Anokhin, Speransky and their coworkers. In particular, Orbeli followed idealist sensory theories of Ewald Hering and Wilhelm Wundt and even claimed that they had similarities with Pavlov's materialist theory. Orbeli's associates A.G. Ginetsinskiy and A.V. Lebedinskiy wrote a textbook for physicians "Principles of the Physiology in Man and Animals". in which they treated Pavlov's results as inferior to Western studies. In Anokhin's case, Bykov noted that, although Anoknin had deviated from Pavlov's ideas when Pavlov was still alive, there was still some hope for him and he might correct his mistakes and contribute to Soviet physiology. Bykov praised the contributions of Pavlov's ideas to medicine, emphasized the importance of following the right direction of Pavlov's teachings and resisting false Western theories. Finally, he spoke about Stalin's work that suggested improvement of science through criticism and self-criticism.
+
+=== Ivanov-Smolenskiy's speech ===
+In his long speech, Anatoly Ivanov-Smolenskiy reviewed of Pavlov's achievements in the development of the theory of higher nervous activity. According to Ivanov-Smolenskiy, Pavlov's contribution to psychiatry was "of immense value" as opposed to the failure of foreign scientists who did not achieve anything important. Ivanov-Smolenskiy then praised some Russian physiologists and condemned the others. He praised L. A. Andreev and M. K. Petrova as the followers of Pavlov's legacy. He accused Anokhin, Kupalov, and Orbeli. Anokhin was blamed for suggesting that Pavlov's theory was isolated from foreign science and needed improvement, for leaning toward Sherrington's concept of integration, and for criticizing Pavlov's conception of cortical inhibition. Kupalov was accused of distorting Pavlov's conceptualization of reflexes. Ivanov-Smolenskiy characterized Orbeli's views of the relation between subjective experience and objective reality as anti-Pavlovian because — unlike Pavlov who believed that subjective, psychological experience was superimposed on the objective experience of the environment — Orbeli separated the subjective and objective and adhered to psychophysiological parallelism. Orbeli was also blamed for diverging from Pavlov's deterministic position on the mechanisms of higher nervous activity.
+
+== Responses ==
+In the sessions that followed the keynote speeches, a number of speakers continued to attack the accused Pavlovians, and the accused confessed to their errors and expressed apologies.
+
+=== Asratian's speech ===
+Ezras Asratian spoke on June 29. According to him, several Pavlovians failed the expectations of the Communist Party and the Soviet government. In particular, they failed to pursue research in several important fields, for example cortical localization of functions and fixation of inherited conditioned reflexes in the next generation. They also failed to challenge the anti-Pavlovian theories of Western physiologists.
+
+== Consequence ==

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+---
+title: "Pavlovian session"
+chunk: 3/3
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavlovian_session"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:30:19.379692+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+In 1982, M.G. Yaroshevsky, criticizing the Pavlovian session, wrote that, in fact, Ivanov-Smolenskiy and his disciples did nothing but pervert the kernel of Pavlovian teaching, substituting for it a mechanistic view of the brain activity. These so-called scholars of Pavlov emasculated the ground of his theory and extremely damaged the prospects of Soviet science.
+A precursor of later abuses in psychiatry in the Soviet Union and the most somber event in the history of Russian-Soviet psychiatry was the so-called 'Joint Session' of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences and the Board of the All-Union Neurologic and Psychiatric Association, held in the name of Ivan Pavlov in October 1951, considered the matter of several leading neuroscientists and psychiatrists of the time (for example, Grunya Sukhareva, Vasily Gilyarovsky, Raisa Golant, Aleksandr Shmaryan, Mikhail Gurevich) who were charged with practicing 'anti-Pavlovian, anti-Marxist, idealistic, reactionary' science damaging to Soviet psychiatry. These talented psychiatrists had to admit publicly to their wrong beliefs and mistakes and promise to profess only Pavlov's teaching. During the Joint Session, scientists falsely acknowledged their 'wrongdoings' and gave up their beliefs, out of fear. But in the closing speech, the lead author of the policy report Andrei Snezhnevsky stated that they "have not disarmed themselves and continue to remain in the old anti-Pavlovian positions", thereby causing "grave damage to the Soviet scientific and practical psychiatry", and the vice president of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences accused them that they "diligently fall down to the dirty source of American pseudo-science". The fear and less than noble ambitions of the accusers including Irina Strelchuk, Vasily Banshchikov, Oleg Kerbikov, and Andrei Snezhnevsky were also likely to make them serve in the role of inquisitors. Not surprisingly, many of them were advanced and appointed to leadership positions shortly after the session.
+The Joint Session also affected neuroscience in such a way that the best neuroscientists of the time, such as academicians Pyotr Anokhin, Aleksey Speransky, Lina Stern, Ivan Beritashvili, and Leon Orbeli, who headed various scientific directions at that time, were labeled as anti-Pavlov, anti-materialist and reactionaries, and discharged from their positions. These scientists lost their laboratories, and some were subjected to tortures in prisons. The Moscow, Leningrad, Ukrainian, Georgian, and Armenian schools of neuroscience and neurophysiology were damaged, at least for a while. The Joint Session ravaged productive research in neurosciences and psychiatry for years to come. It was pseudoscience that took over.
+After the joint meeting of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences and the USSR Academy of Sciences (Pavlovian Session of 1950), pathophysiology of higher nervous activity was established as a new discipline mandatory for all of the USSR psychiatrists who underwent retraining in accordance with this concept. According to the postulates of pathophysiology of higher nervous activity, the development of all mental disorders was explained in terms of the changed relations between the excitation and inhibition, their interference and different phases of the inhibition. Psychological approaches during diagnosing, treating and explaining the mechanisms of mental disorders have been banned and virtually excluded from the practice of psychiatrists. This ban was based on the ideological concept of labeling all psychological theories of personality, especially psychoanalytic ones, as reactionary and idealistic.
+After the joint session of the Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Medical Sciences on June 28 — July 4, 1950 and during the session of the Presidium of the Academy of Medical Sciences and the Board of the All-Union Society of Neuropathologists and Psychiatrists on October 11–15, 1951, the leading role was given to Snezhnevky's school. The 1950 decision to give monopoly over psychiatry to the Pavlovian school of Professor Andrei Snezhnevsky was one of crucial factors of the onset of political psychiatry. The Soviet doctors, under the incentive of Snezhnevsky, devised 'Pavlovian theory of schizophrenia' on the strength of which they diagnosticated this illness in political oppositionists.
+
+== See also ==
+Suppressed research in the Soviet Union
+Lysenkoism
+Politicization of science
+
+== References ==

data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_hygiene-0.md

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+---
+title: "Racial hygiene"
+chunk: 1/2
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_hygiene"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:30:24.017753+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+The term racial hygiene was used to describe an approach to eugenics in the early 20th century, which found its most extensive implementation in Nazi Germany (Nazi eugenics). It was marked by efforts to avoid miscegenation, analogous to an animal breeder seeking purebred animals. This was often motivated by the pseudoscientific belief in the existence of a racial hierarchy and the related fear that "lower races" would "contaminate" a "higher" one. As with most eugenicists at the time, racial hygienists believed that the lack of eugenics would lead to rapid social degeneration, the decline of civilization by the spread of inferior characteristics.
+Like eugenics, racial hygiene was largely discredited and abandoned following World War II.
+
+== Development ==
+The German eugenicist Alfred Ploetz introduced the term "racial hygiene" (Rassenhygiene) in 1895 in his Racial Hygiene Basics (Grundlinien einer Rassenhygiene). He discussed the importance of avoiding "counterselective forces" such as war, inbreeding, free healthcare for the poor, alcohol and venereal disease. In its earliest incarnation it was more concerned by the declining birthrate of the German state and the increasing number of mentally-ill and disabled people in state-run institutions (and their costs to the state) than it was by the "Jewish question" and the "degeneration of the Nordic race" (Entnordung) which would come to dominate its philosophy in Germany from the 1920s to the Second World War.
+During the last years of the 19th century, the German racial hygienists Alfred Ploetz and Wilhelm Schallmayer regarded certain people as inferior, and they opposed their ability to procreate. These theorists believed that all human behaviors, including crime, alcoholism and divorce, were caused by genetics.
+
+== Nazi Germany ==
+
+During the 1930s and 1940s, institutes in Nazi Germany studied genetics, created genetic registries and researched twins. Nazi scientists also studied blood, and developed theories on the supposed racial specificity of blood types, with the goal of distinguishing an "Aryan" from a Jew by examining their blood. In the 1940s, Josef Mengele, a doctor in the Schutzstaffel (SS), provided human remains that were taken from Auschwitz – blood, limbs and other body parts – to be studied at the institutes. Harnessing racial hygiene as a justification, the scientists used prisoners from Auschwitz and other concentration camps as test subjects for their human experiments.
+
+Theories on racial hygiene led to an elaborate sterilization program, with the goal of eliminating what the Nazis regarded as diseases harmful to the human race. Sterilized individuals, reasoned the Nazis, would not pass on their diseases to their children. The Sterilization Law, passed on July 14, 1933, also known as the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring, called for the sterilization of any person who had a genetically determined illness. The Sterilization Law was drafted by some of Germany's top racial hygienists, including: Fritz Lenz, Alfred Ploetz, Ernst Rudin, Heinrich Himmler, Gerhard Wagner and Fritz Thyssen. Robert N. Proctor has shown that the list of illnesses which the law targeted included "feeblemindedness, schizophrenia, manic depression, epilepsy, Huntington's chorea, genetic blindness, and 'severe alcoholism.'" The estimated number of citizens who were sterilized in Nazi Germany ranges from 350,000 to 400,000. As a result of the Sterilization Law, sterilization medicine and research soon became one of the largest medical industries.In Nazi propaganda, the term "race" was often interchangeably used to mean the "Aryan" or Germanic "Übermenschen", which was said to represent an ideal and pure master race that was biologically superior to all other races. In the 1930s, under eugenicist Ernst Rüdin, National Socialist ideology embraced this latter use of "racial hygiene", which demanded Aryan racial purity and condemned miscegenation. That belief in the importance of German racial purity often served as the theoretical backbone of Nazi policies of racial superiority and later genocide. The policies began in 1935, when the National Socialists enacted the Nuremberg Laws, which legislated racial purity by forbidding sexual relations and marriages between Aryans and non-Aryans as Rassenschande (racial shame).
+
+Racial hygienists played key roles in the Holocaust, the German National Socialist effort to purge Europe of Jews, Romani people, Slavs, Blacks, mixed race people, and physically or intellectually disabled people. In the Aktion T4 program, Hitler ordered the execution of mentally-ill patients by euthanasia under the cover of deaths from strokes and illnesses. The methods and equipment that had been used in the murder of thousands of mentally ill persons were then transferred to concentration camps, because the materials and resources needed to efficiently murder large numbers of people existed and had been proven successful. The nurses and the staff who had assisted and performed the killings were then moved along with the gas chambers to the concentration camps, which were being built in order to be able to replicate the mass murders repeatedly.

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+---
+title: "Racial hygiene"
+chunk: 2/2
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_hygiene"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:30:24.017753+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+The doctors who carried out experiments on the prisoners in concentration camps specialised in racial hygiene and used the supposed science to back their medical experiments. Some of the experiments were used for general medical research, for example by injecting prisoners with known diseases to test vaccines or possible cures. Other experiments were used to further the Germans' war strategy by putting prisoners in vacuum chambers to see what could happen to pilots' bodies if they were ejected at a high altitude or immerse prisoners in ice water to see how long they would survive and what materials could be used to prolong life if worn by German pilots shot down over the English Channel. The precursors of this notion were earlier medical experiments which German doctors performed on African prisoners of war in concentration camps in Namibia during the Herero and Nama genocide.
+A key aspect of National Socialism was the concept of racial hygiene and it was elevated to the primary philosophy of the German medical community, first by activist physicians within the medical profession, particularly amongst psychiatrists. That was later codified and institutionalized during and after the Nazis' rise to power in 1933, during the process of Gleichschaltung (literally, "coordination" or "unification"), which streamlined the medical and mental hygiene (mental health) profession into a rigid hierarchy with National Socialist-sanctioned leadership at the top.
+The blueprint for Nazism's attitude toward other races was written by Erwin Baur, Fritz Lenz, and Eugen Fischer and published under the title Human Heredity Theory and Racial Hygiene (1936).
+
+== After World War II ==
+After World War II, the idea of "racial hygiene" was denounced as unscientific by many, but there continued to be supporters and enforcers of eugenics even after there was widespread awareness of the nature of Nazi eugenics. After 1945, eugenics proponents included Julian Huxley and Marie Stopes, but they typically removed or downplayed the racial aspects of their theories.
+
+== See also ==
+
+== References ==
+
+=== Notes ===
+
+=== Further reading ===
+Glad, John (2008). Future Human Evolution: Eugenics in the Twenty-First Century. Hermitage Publishers.
+Joseph, J. (2004). The Gene Illusion: Genetic Research in Psychiatry and Psychology Under the Microscope. New York: Algora. (2003 United Kingdom Edition by PCCS Books)
+Joseph, J. (2006).  The Missing Gene: Psychiatry, Heredity, and the Fruitless Search for Genes. New York: Algora 
+Paul, Diane B. (1995). Controlling Human Heredity, 1865 to the Present. New Jersey: Humanities Press 
+Proctor, Robert (1988). Racial Hygiene: Medicine Under the Nazis. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0674745780.

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+---
+title: "Robert N. Proctor"
+chunk: 1/1
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_N._Proctor"
+category: "reference"
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+---
+
+Robert Neel Proctor (born 1954) is an American historian of science and Professor of the History of Science at Stanford University, where he is also Professor by courtesy of Pulmonary Medicine. While a professor of the history of science at Pennsylvania State University in 1999, he became the first historian to testify against the tobacco industry.
+
+
+== Career ==
+Robert N. Proctor graduated from Indiana University Bloomington in 1976 with a Bachelor of Science in biology. He then took up studies at Harvard University, earning master's and doctoral degrees in History of Science in 1977 and 1984, respectively.
+At Pennsylvania State University, he and his wife, Londa Schiebinger, co-directed the Science, Medicine and Technology in Culture Program for nine years.
+Proctor has worked on human origins and the history of evolution, including changing interpretations of the oldest tools. His 2003 Three Roots of Human Recency won the 2004/2005 Award for Exemplary Interdisciplinary Anthropological Research from the American Anthropological Association. In his Three Roots article he exposed the racism implicit in celebrating "leaving Africa" as a fundamental stage in human evolution (which he mocks as “out of Africa, thank God”); one of the points of this article was to show that anthropological ideas of human origins—including efforts to answer the question "when did humans become human?"—have been scarred by changing notions of race. Race was also the focus of his 1988 book Racial Hygiene: Medicine Under the Nazis, which identified the Nazi regime as a monstrous effort to create a biomedical utopia.  Hitler was celebrated as "the doctor of the German people" and physicians joined the SS in greater numbers than any other professional group.  Proctor detailed how racial theorists in Nazi Germany were inspired by eugenicists operating in the United States,  including men like Madison Grant and Harry Laughlin, and that one reason the Nazis mandated sterilization of "the unfit" and bans on racial intermarriage was to prevent the US from becoming “the world’s racial leader.”  As of 2021, his Racial Hygiene has been cited nearly 2000 times, according to Google Scholar.
+However, Robert Proctor is perhaps best known for his groundbreaking 2012 history of the tobacco industry, Golden Holocaust: Origins of the Cigarette Catastrophe and the Case for Abolition, winner of the Rachel Carson Prize in 2014. He also published dozens of articles related to the history of the tobacco industry.
+His 2008 book Agnotology: The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance, co-edited with Londa Schiebinger, examines the concept of Agnotology", a term coined by linguist Iain Boal in 1992 to describe the study of intentionally induced ignorance or doubt, particularly the publication of intentionally inaccurate or misleading scientific data.
+A central theme in Proctor's work is the history of race and racism, a focus of his career already in the 1970s, when he taught The changing concept of race with Nathan Huggins and Barbara Rosenkrantz in the African American Studies department at Harvard. In 2008, Proctor served as an expert witness in a wrongful death suit against Philip Morris and used the n-word in his testimony, triggering a mistrial. Later, in 2019, Proctor again drew scrutiny for repeatedly saying the racial slur aloud when quoting from cigarette advertisements in a guest lecture at Stanford Law School. He responded to this backlash with, "I didn't 'use' the N-word in my lecture, I showed and cited its use in three different brands of cigarettes sold in the middle decades of the twentieth century."
+
+
+== Personal life ==
+He is the longtime partner of fellow historian of science Londa Schiebinger, whom he met at Harvard. They have two sons together, named Geoffrey Schiebinger and Jonathan Proctor. Before having children, the couple decided they would have two and each would receive one of their surnames.
+
+
+== Bibliography ==
+Proctor, Robert N. (1988). Racial Hygiene: Medicine Under the Nazis. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-74578-7.
+Proctor, Robert N. (1991). Value-free Science?: Purity and Power in Modern Knowledge. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-93170-X.
+Proctor, Robert N. (1995). Cancer Wars: How Politics Shapes What We Know and Don't Know about Cancer. New York: BasicBooks. ISBN 0-465-02756-3.
+Proctor, Robert N. (1999). The Nazi War on Cancer. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-07051-2.
+Proctor, Robert N. (2000). Adolf Butenandt (1903-1995): Nobelpreisträger, Nationalsozialist und MPG-Präsident: Ein erster Blick in den Nachlass. Berlin: Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften. LCCN 2001375957.
+Proctor, Robert N. (2002) [1999]. Blitzkrieg gegen den Krebs. Gesundheit und Propaganda im Dritten Reich. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta. ISBN 3-608-91031-X.
+Proctor, Robert N. (2012). Golden Holocaust: Origins of the Cigarette Catastrophe and the Case for Abolition. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 9780520270169.
+Cross, Gary S.; Proctor, Robert N. (2014). Packaged Pleasures: How Technology and Marketing Revolutionized Desire. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226121277.
+
+
+== Prizes and fellowships ==
+Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2002–Present
+Visiting scholar, Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung, Hamburg, Germany, 1995
+Senior Scholar in Residence, U.S. Holocaust Research Institute, Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C., 1994
+Visiting Fellow, Shelby Collum Davis Center for Historical Studies, Princeton, 1992–1993
+Research grant, National Center for Human Genome Research, National Institutes of Health, 1992–1993
+Penn State Distinguished Scholar Medal Recipient, 1997.
+
+
+== See also ==
+Tobacco in the United States
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+
+The Agateer
+Anti-Agate: The Great Diamond Hoax and the Semiprecious Stone Scam
+Nazi Medicine and Public Health Policy Deprecated link archived 2012-12-05 at archive.today
+Rendez-vous with Robert Proctor Archived 2010-06-16 at the Wayback Machine
+The anti-tobacco campaign of the Nazis: a little known aspect of public health in Germany, 1933-45
+Commentary: Schairer and Schöniger's forgotten tobacco epidemiology and the Nazi quest for racial purity
+Historical Reconstruction of Tobacco and Health in the U.S., 1954-1994
+The man who studies the spread of ignorance - Gerorgina Kenyon, BBC, 6 January 2016
+Robert N. Proctor

data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_for_the_People-0.md

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+---
+title: "Science for the People"
+chunk: 1/3
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_for_the_People"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:30:27.934052+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+Science for the People (SftP) is a left-wing organization that emerged from the antiwar culture of the United States in the late 1960s. Since 2014 it has experienced a revival focusing primarily on the dual nature of science.  The organization advocates for a scientific establishment that is not isolated from society, rather one that uses scientific discoveries to advocate for and advance social justice and critically approach science as a social endeavor.
+
+== History ==
+The original group was composed of professors, students, workers, and other concerned citizens who sought to end potential oppression brought on by pseudoscience, or by what it considered the misuse of science. SftP generated much controversy in the 1970s for the radical tactics of some of its members. Over the initial few years there was an emergence of multiple differing opinions about the nature and mission of SftP should be. A faction wanted SftP to pay special attention to scientific issues that support class struggle. Another wanted to develop "a science for the people." The majority, however, wanted to be the scientific community's critical conscience and expose, from within, the dangers of the misuse of science. After a bitter internal struggle and departure of many, the group that remained focused its efforts, primarily through its magazine, on criticism of scientific misuse. During this time it became identified with prominent academic scientists such as Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin.
+
+== Relationship with the scientific establishment ==
+In the first five years SftP became known in the US scientific community for its attempts at disrupting the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). SftP members considered the AAAS, the world’s largest association of scientists, aligned with the government and the ruling elite. SftP particularly decried what it considered AAAS' complicity in war, sexism, racism and capitalism. A specific focus of the activists was the scientific community's involvement in the Vietnam war. Some of the tactics use to disrupt the AAAS meetings were picketing, demonstrations, impromptu speeches and confrontational interruptions. These actions led to the arrest of several SftP activists in the early 1970s.
+Prior to the formation of SftP and its radical activism against the scientific establishment similar attempts had taken place with other organizations. One notable example is University of California, Berkeley nuclear physicist Charles Schwartz's 1967 attempt to amend the American Physical Society's (APS) constitution to allow 1% of members to call for a vote on any social or scientific issue. His motion was defeated because APS members did not think the society should take a stance on social issues. Another instance is the petition physicists began to the APS not to hold its 1970 meeting in Chicago because of the police brutality at the Democratic National Convention in 1968. The APS Council polled members and upheld its decision to keep the meeting in Chicago.
+In 1971 a proposed amendment to change the APS's mission statement to include the phrase "The Society...shall shun those activities which are judged to contribute harmfully to the welfare of mankind." was defeated.
+In following years, thanks to the actions of dedicated activists such as Schwartz and Martin Perl and others, APS took certain steps towards social responsibility. These included the 1972 creation of the Committee on the Status of Women in Physics the 1979 boycott of states that had not ratified the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) and the 1983 Arms Control Resolution. The latter was strongly criticized by George Keyworth, science advisor to president Ronald Reagan.
+
+== Positions and views ==
+Science for the People has positions in multiple different areas. It states on its website that it identifies as part of the "broader left."
+
+=== Anti-militarism ===
+
+From its inception in January 1969 SftP opposed the involvement of scientists in the military. SftP also challenged the established notion that organizations such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the American Physical Society (APS) can stay neutral vis-à-vis the Vietnam war. Early on, a number of SftP scientists mobilized against US Congress' Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Program, arguing that the ABM was not feasible and the funds would be better spent on basic scientific research. On March 4, 1969 MIT scientists staged a mass walkout in protest of the ABM.
+In April 1969, Scientists and Engineers for Social and Political Action (SESPA), SftP's predecessor, held an orderly march of 250 physicists to the White House to protest the ABM.
+This type of activism among scientists in the US led to the anti-ABM treaty of 1972 with the Soviet Union. In the 1980s SftP opposed president Reagan's attempt to revive the arms race with the Soviet Union as well as the US involvement in Nicaragua.
+
+=== Position on nuclear energy ===
+In the mid-70s SftP cautioned against the ways that nuclear power was being promoted as a safe and environmentally clean alternative to coal. In May 1976 the organization published a pamphlet arguing that the push for nuclear energy in the US over solar and other cleaner, cheaper alternatives benefitted the Atomic-Industrial complex and not the general public. In the 1980s, especially in the wake of such disasters as Three Mile Island, SftP questioned the environmental safety of nuclear energy and the toxic waste it produces.
+
+=== Views on technology ===
+Throughout the 1970s and 1980s SftP considered technology an important outcome of scientific advancement. The organization favored the more concrete nature of technological developments over purely intellectual exercise of theoretical science. Key to the group’s support for technology was the conviction that it should neither replace humans in the workplace nor harm the environment. SftP members advocated for research and development programs to be chosen based on equity and social need and not to meet the government's needs of economic and military security.

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+title: "Science for the People"
+chunk: 2/3
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_for_the_People"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:30:27.934052+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+=== Position on science education ===
+One of the core tenets of the SftP was that science and particularly biology and medicine cannot remain neutral. The organization not only believed that these disciplines should focus on correcting societal ills they also actively participated in educating people on work place hazards such as asbestos and other chemical and environmental exposures.
+In the early 1970s a Boston several SftP members known as the Boston Science Teaching Group, published and distributed series of pamphlets on topics such as genetics and ecology. Other members who were professional educators volunteered to teach biology in Boston’s underserved school districts. In 1971 two university professors, Rita Arditti and Tom Strunk, in an attempt to reform college biology curriculum, created a socially conscious first year college course called "Objecting to Objectivity: A Course in Biology". The course covered genetic engineering, physical and social limitations and implications of human gene maps, polygenic inheritance and prenatal diagnosis. It also discussed reproduction, birth control and abortion including the contemporary research and public policies about reproductive health. Other topics included population growth and Malthusian and Marxist theories and ethics of human research.
+
+=== Positions on race and gender ===
+Advocating for racial and gender equality in science and medicine was one of the core tenets of SftP. The organization included multiple feminist members who were pioneering women in science. These included Arditti and other biologists such as Anne Fausto-Sterling, Freda Friedman Salzman, Ruth Hubbard, and author and activist Barbara Beckwith. Hubbard, for instance, was the first woman to attain tenure in biology at Harvard University. SftP also embraced the cause of gender equality in the society at large and advocated for reproductive rights, gender equality at the workplace and addressed issues surrounding sexuality. It also fought against domestic violence and traditional gender roles in family structure. While focusing on the world of science, feminist members of SftP faced an uphill battle in introducing gender parity for women in science at the universities. They also sought to change the discriminatory gender dynamics in academia and in laboratories.
+SftP's efforts at promoting gender equality were paralleled with its efforts to promote racial and ethnic equality. Although made up primarily of white Americans, some SftP members maintained relations with the Black Panther Party. The two organizations urged the scientific community to create a free science program for black communities to enhance their scientific knowledge. The organization also criticized attacks on affirmative action and featured pieces by black and other minority scientists in its publication. It also uncovered occupational health hazards among black and ethnic minority workers both in the US and abroad and fought to improve workplace conditions to eliminate these risks. SftP's antiracist ideology put it at odds with the concepts of sociobiology and genetic determinism.
+
+=== Criticism of sociobiology ===
+Biologists within SftP were highly critical of sociobiology, because of objectionable premises to the organization of the discipline and for the implications of using sociobiology to support racism, capitalism, and imperialism. E. O. Wilson, a biologist and entomology professor in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University, whose 1975 book Sociobiology: The New Synthesis had helped start the debate, wrote that "the political objections forcefully made by the Sociobiology Study Group of Science for the People in particular took me by surprise."
+SftP condemned the 1969 arguments that genetic differences were the underlying reason for differences in educational achievements between blacks and whites. SftP also took issue with the Harvard XYY study in 1975. The goal of the XYY study was to assess the risk of criminality the extra Y chromosome supposedly conferred. The SftP scientists pointed out the ethical and methodological failures of the above study, including open ended consents, stigmatization of individuals with XYY, lack of controls and absence of double blinding.
+
+=== Positions on healthcare and medicine ===
+Health care providers who were SftP members worked to strengthen healthcare infrastructure in underserved communities. They partnered with both the Black Panthers and Young Lords Organization to bring medical services to minorities, who often could not access the medical establishment both as practitioners and as patients. SftP joined with other New Left Health organizations such as Health Policy Advisory Center and Medical Committee for Human Rights, fought for a fair and just healthcare system and advocated for women’s reproductive rights.
+SftP members, such as cancer researcher John Valentine at Wayne State University, exposed the capitalist interests that drove biomedical research. He argued that the 1971 National Cancer Act, signed by president Richard Nixon, failed to fund research into cancer causes such as poor preventative healthcare, occupational hazards and environmental exposures. He also criticized the use of public funds only to develop new chemotherapeutic agents instead of using some of it to minimize cancer risk due to workplace exposures and cancer-causing consumer products.
+SftP biologists also opposed recombinant DNA (rDNA) research before its public health and environmental impact can be thoroughly elucidated.  They also expressed concerns and, accurately, predicted that rDNA can commercialize biomedical research and make it a market commodity.  They urged the scientific community and the general public to consider who decides what research gets done and who benefits from these decisions.
+
+=== Views on agriculture and ecology ===
+SftP argued that the existing contemporary agricultural models were neither benefitting the consumer, as food prices were rising astronomically, nor the farmer because their increasing debt without a raise in income.  The primary benefiters were input and output capital enterprises such has fertilizer companies, insecticide and herbicide manufacturers and farm machinery companies. Members of the SftP formed the New World Agriculture Group (NWAG) that attempted to discover and develop ecologically rational alternative agricultural methods.  Methods that protected the environment and preserved long-term productive capacity.  NWAG also proposed partnering with farm labor organizations to help bring an end to worker exploitation and the unequal wealth distribution.

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+title: "Science for the People"
+chunk: 3/3
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_for_the_People"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:30:27.934052+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+=== International relations ===
+From its inception SftP condemned the use of technology and science to oppress and colonize other countries. The organization gave the examples of both Vietnam and Cuba where, it stated, the US technological and scientific superiority was being used to both militarily and economically repress the smaller nations. In response to the US policy, in 1971, a group of SftP members in Cambridge, Massachusetts collected and shipped large amounts of scientific books and journals to Vietnam and Cuba to aid in science education there. The same year, molecular biologist Dr. Mark Ptashne and zoologist Dr. Bert Pfeiffer went to Hanoi and lectured to Vietnamese scientists and physicians.  There were also successful efforts of networking with scientists in China, and, in the 1980s, with the scientific and technological community in Nicaragua.
+
+== 2014 revitalization ==
+Since the fall of 2014, an effort to revive and reorganize SftP has been underway. The SftP revitalization efforts emerged from the convention held April 11–13, 2014, at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. At the 2014 conference various topics including the history of the SftP, health care, climate change, social justice, science education, gender and racial bias and militarization of science were discussed. Since then, inspired by the original 1970s-1980s group, this new formation has dedicated itself to building a social movement around progressive and radical perspectives on science and society.
+Several local chapters of the SftP participated in the first annual March for Science on April 22, 2017.  The revived SftP also published a statement titled "Which Way for Science?".  The statement hailed the March for Science as "an exciting first step," but it also criticized the "apolitical" nature of the event and for their lack of attention to the experiences of scientists from historically marginalized groups such as women, people of color and others. "Which Way for Science" called attention to science's historic ties to U.S. capitalism and militarism, and called for a radical shift in its practice.
+
+== 2018 National Convention ==
+The national convention, held at the University of Michigan's Ann Arbor campus in February 2018, brought together close to one hundred scientists and activists to formalize the group's bylaws and structure.  During the three days the attendees discussed the history and future of SftP, heard from local chapters that included representatives from Atlanta, Mexico City, New York and seven other North American locations. The organizational structure of SftP was explored and these discussions served as a guide to developing an inclusive, radical and democratic political movement for scientists and STEM workers. There were a dozen presentations on variety of topics related to SftP's mission.
+In addition to the call to organize more local chapters a number of working groups was also developed during the meeting. These included groups dealing with Climate Change, Reproductive Justice, Science education and others. Plans to participate in the second annual March for Science on April 14, 2018, were also initiated at the convention.
+
+=== Local chapters ===
+
+Ann Arbor
+Atlanta
+Boston
+Canada
+Knoxville
+Madison
+Mexico City
+New York City
+Urbana Champaign
+Washington, D.C.
+Western Massachusetts
+Twin Cities
+
+== Magazine ==
+From 1969 to 1989 the original SftP published a quarterly, then bimonthly, magazine, that has been digitized and available on the organization's website.
+On July 28, 2018, at Caveat in New York City the publication was relaunched online with a special issue dedicated to geo-engineering. The event also featured the premiere of a documentary on the organization. The first regular issue of the relaunched magazine was published online and in print on May 1, 2019.
+
+== Notable members ==
+
+Jon Beckwith
+Chandler Davis
+Anne Fausto-Sterling
+Douglas J. Futuyma
+Stephen Jay Gould
+Joseph L. Graves, Jr.
+William A. Haseltine
+David Himmelstein
+Ruth Hubbard
+Richard Levins
+Richard Lewontin
+Karen Messing
+David F. Noble
+Alvin Francis Poussaint
+James A. Shapiro
+John Vandermeer
+Joseph Weizenbaum
+Steffie Woolhandler
+
+== See also ==
+Science Wars
+Evolutionary psychology controversy
+Nature versus nurture controversy
+Sociobiology Study Group
+British Society for Social Responsibility in Science
+New World Agriculture and Ecology Group
+
+== References ==
+
+== External links ==
+Official website
+Science for the People Discussion List - discussion archives
+"Towards A Science For The People" - theoretical outline, dated 1972
+"Science for the People, a revived movement of radical scientists, to meet this week in Ann Arbor" - segment on Michigan Radio's Stateside program, February 1, 2018

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+title: "Science policy"
+chunk: 1/4
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_policy"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:30:20.702150+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+Science policy is concerned with the allocation of resources for the conduct of science towards the goal of best serving the public interest. Topics include the funding of science, the careers of scientists, and the translation of scientific discoveries into technological innovation to promote commercial product development, competitiveness, economic growth and economic development. Science policy focuses on knowledge production and role of knowledge networks, collaborations, and the complex distributions of expertise, equipment, and know-how. Understanding the processes and organizational context of generating novel and innovative science and engineering ideas is a core concern of science policy. Science policy topics include weapons development, health care and environmental monitoring.
+Science policy thus deals with the entire domain of issues that involve science. A large and complex web of factors influences the development of science and engineering that includes government science policymakers, private firms (including both national and multi-national firms), social movements, media, non-governmental organizations, universities, and other research institutions. In addition, science policy is increasingly international as defined by the global operations of firms and research institutions as well as by the collaborative networks of non-governmental organizations and of the nature of scientific inquiry itself.
+
+== History ==
+
+State policy has influenced the funding of public works and science for thousands of years, dating at least from the time of the Mohists, who inspired the study of logic during the period of the Hundred Schools of Thought, and the study of defensive fortifications during the Warring States period in China. General levies of labor and grain were collected to fund great public works in China, including the accumulation of grain for distribution in times of famine, for the building of levees to control flooding by the great rivers of China, for the building of canals and locks to connect rivers of China, some of which flowed in opposite directions to each other, and for the building of bridges across these rivers. These projects required a civil service, the scholars, some of whom demonstrated great mastery of hydraulics.
+In Italy, Galileo noted that individual taxation of minute amounts could fund large sums to the State, which could then fund his research on the trajectory of cannonballs, noting that "each individual soldier was being paid from coin collected by a general tax of pennies and farthings, while even a million of gold would not suffice to pay the entire army."
+In Great Britain, Lord Chancellor Sir Francis Bacon had a formative effect on science policy with his identification of "experiments of ... light, more penetrating into nature [than what others know]", which today we call the crucial experiment. Governmental approval of the Royal Society recognized a scientific community which exists to this day. British prizes for research spurred the development of an accurate, portable chronometer, which directly enabled reliable navigation and sailing on the high seas, and also funded Babbage's computer.
+The professionalization of science, begun in the nineteenth century, was partly enabled by the creation of scientific organizations such as the National Academy of Sciences, the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, and State funding of universities of their respective nations. In the United States, a member of the National Academy of Sciences can sponsor a Direct Submission for publication in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. PNAS serves as a channel to recognize research of importance to at least one member of the National Academy of Sciences.
+Public policy can directly affect the funding of capital equipment, intellectual infrastructure for industrial research, by providing tax incentives to those organizations who fund research. Vannevar Bush, director of the office of scientific research and development for the U.S. government in July 1945, wrote "Science is a proper concern of government" Vannevar Bush directed the forerunner of the National Science Foundation, and his writings directly inspired researchers to invent the hyperlink and the computer mouse. The DARPA initiative to support computing was the impetus for the Internet Protocol stack. In the same way that scientific consortiums like CERN for high-energy physics have a commitment to public knowledge, access to this public knowledge in physics led directly to CERN's sponsorship of development of the World Wide Web and standard Internet access for all.
+
+== Philosophies ==

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+---
+
+=== Basic versus applied research ===
+The programs that are funded are often divided into four basic categories: basic research, applied research, development, and facilities and equipment. Translational research is a newer concept that seeks to bridge the gap between basic science and practical applications.
+Basic science attempts to stimulate breakthroughs. Breakthroughs often lead to an explosion of new technologies and approaches. Once the basic result is developed, it is widely published; however conversion into a practical product is left for the free market. However, many governments have developed risk-taking research and development organizations to take basic theoretical research over the edge into practical engineering. In the US, this function is performed by DARPA.
+In contrast, technology development is a policy in which engineering, the application of science, is supported rather than basic science. The emphasis is usually given to projects that increase important strategic or commercial engineering knowledge. One example is the Manhattan Project that developed nuclear weapons. Another example is the "X-vehicle" studies that gave the US a lasting lead in aerospace technologies.
+These exemplify two disparate approaches: The Manhattan Project was huge, and spent freely on the most risky alternative approaches. The project members believed that failure would result in their enslavement or destruction by Nazi Germany. Each X-project built an aircraft whose only purpose was to develop a particular technology. The plan was to build a few cheap aircraft of each type, fly a test series, often to the destruction of an aircraft, and never design an aircraft for a practical mission. The only mission was technology development.
+A number of high-profile technology developments have failed. The US Space Shuttle failed to meet its cost or flight schedule goals. Most observers explain the project as over constrained: the cost goals too aggressive, the technology and mission too underpowered and undefined.
+The Japanese fifth generation computer systems project met every technological goal, but failed to produce commercially important artificial intelligence. Many observers believe that the Japanese tried to force engineering beyond available science by brute investment. Half the amount spent on basic research rather might have produced ten times the result.
+
+=== Utilitarian versus monumental policy ===
+Utilitarian policies prioritize scientific projects that significantly reduce suffering for larger numbers of people. This approach would mainly consider the numbers of people that can be helped by a research policy. Research is more likely to be supported when it costs less and has greater benefits. Utilitarian research often pursues incremental improvements rather than dramatic advancements in knowledge, or break-through solutions, which are more commercially viable.
+In contrast, monumental science is a policy in which science is supported for the sake of a greater understanding of the universe, rather than for specific short-term practical goals. This designation covers both large projects, often with large facilities, and smaller research that does not have obvious practical applications and are often overlooked. While these projects may not always have obvious practical outcomes, they provide education of future scientists, and advancement of scientific knowledge of lasting worth about the basic building blocks of science.
+Practical outcomes do result from many of these "monumental" science programs. Sometimes these practical outcomes are foreseeable and sometimes they are not. A classic example of a monumental science program focused towards a practical outcome is the Manhattan Project. An example of a monumental science program that produces unexpected practical outcomes is the laser. Coherent light, the principle behind lasing, was first predicted by Einstein in 1916, but not created until 1954 by Charles H. Townes with the maser. The breakthrough with the maser led to the creation of the laser in 1960 by Theodore Maiman. The delay between the theory of coherent light and the production of the laser was partially due to the assumption that it would be of no practical use.
+
+=== Scholastic conservation ===
+This policy approach prioritizes efficiently teaching all available science to those who can use it, rather than investing in new science. In particular, the goal is not to lose any existing knowledge, and to find new practical ways to apply the available knowledge. The classic examples of this method occurred in the 19th century US land-grant universities, which established a strong tradition of research in practical agricultural and engineering methods. More recently, the Green Revolution prevented mass famine over the last thirty years. The focus is usually on developing a robust curriculum and inexpensive practical methods to meet local needs.
+
+== By country ==
+Most developed countries usually have a specific national body overseeing national science (including technology and innovation) policy. Many developing countries follow the same fashion. Many governments of developed countries provide considerable funds (primarily to universities) for scientific research (in fields such as physics and geology) as well as social science research (in fields such as economics and history). Much of this is not intended to provide concrete results that may be commercialisable, although research in scientific fields may lead to results that have such potential. Most university research is aimed at gaining publication in peer reviewed academic journals.
+A funding body is an organization that provides research funding in the form of research grants or scholarships. Research councils are funding bodies that are government-funded agencies engaged in the support of research in different disciplines and postgraduate funding. Funding from research councils is typically competitive. As a general rule, more funding is available in science and engineering disciplines than in the arts and social sciences.
+
+=== Australia ===
+In Australia, the two main research councils are the Australian Research Council and the National Health and Medical Research Council.
+
+=== Canada ===
+In Canada, the three main research councils ("Tri-Council") are the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). Additional research funding agencies include the Canada Foundation for Innovation, Genome Canada, Sustainable Development Technology Canada, Mitacs and several Tri-Council supported Networks of Centres of Excellence.

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+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+=== Brazil ===
+In Brazil, two important research agencies are the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq, Portuguese: Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico), an organization of the Brazilian federal government under the Ministry of Science and Technology, and São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP, Portuguese: Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo), a public foundation located in the state of São Paulo, Brazil.
+
+=== European Union ===
+The science policy of the European Union is carried out through the European Research Area, a system which integrates the scientific resources of member nations and acts as a "common market" for research and innovation. The European Union's executive body, the European Commission, has a Directorate-General for Research, which is responsible for the Union's science policy. In addition, the Joint Research Centre provides independent scientific and technical advice to the European Commission and Member States of the European Union (EU) in support of EU policies. There is also the recently established European Research Council, the first European Union funding body set up to support investigator-driven research.
+There are also European science agencies that operate independently of the European Union, such as the European Space Agency, and the European Higher Education Area, created by the Bologna process.
+The European environmental research and innovation policy addresses global challenges of pivotal importance for the well-being of European citizens within the context of sustainable development and environmental protection. Research and innovation in Europe is financially supported by the programme Horizon 2020, which is also open to participation worldwide.
+
+=== Germany ===
+German research funding agencies include the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, which covers both science and humanities.
+
+=== India ===
+Research funding by the Government of India comes from a number of sources. For basic science and technology research, these include the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Department of Science and Technology (DST), and University Grants Commission (UGC). For medical research, these include the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR), CSIR, DST and Department of Biotechnology (DBT). For applied research, these include the CSIR, DBT and Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC).
+Other funding authorities include the Defence Research Development Organisation (DRDO), the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), the Department of Ocean Development (DOD), the Indian Council for Social Science Research (ICSSR), and the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MEF).
+
+=== Ireland ===
+Irish funding councils include the Irish Research Council (IRC) and the Science Foundation Ireland. The prior Irish Research Council for Science, Engineering and Technology (IRCSET) and the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences (IRCHSS) were merged to form the IRC in March 2012.
+
+=== Netherlands ===
+Dutch research funding agencies include Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO) and Agentschap NL. In 2016, the Netherlands began trials for Self-Organized Funding Allocation (SOFA), a novel method of distributing research funds which proponents believe may have advantages compared to the grant system.
+
+=== Pakistan ===
+The Government of Pakistan has mandated that a certain percentage of gross revenue generated by all telecom service providers be allocated to development and research of information and communication technologies. The National ICT R&D Fund was established in January 2007.
+
+=== Russia ===
+Under the Soviet Union, much research was routinely suppressed.
+Now science in Russia is supported by state and private funds. From the state, funding institutions include the Russian Humanitarian Scientific Foundation (www.rfh.ru), the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (www.rfbr.ru), and the Russian Science Foundation (rscf.ru).
+
+=== Sri Lanka ===
+Science and Technology Policy Research Division (STPRD) of the National Science Foundation (NSF), which was established as a statutory body, through an Act of the Parliament of Sri Lanka, is engaged in providing evidence based policy recommendations for policy formulation on science, technology and other fields ensuring the research/innovation eco-system of the country. Accordingly, the Division undertake science, technology and innovation policy research in the areas of importance to make recommendations for policy formulation.
+Besides NSF, the national experts, researchers, public universities and non-governmental bodies like National Academy of Sciences of Sri Lanka (NASSL), also provides expert advice on policy matters to the Government.
+
+=== Switzerland ===
+Swiss research funding agencies include the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), the innovation promotion agency CTI (CTI/KTI), Ressortforschung des Bundes, and Eidgenössische Stiftungsaufsicht.
+
+=== United Kingdom ===
+The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) is the ministerial department of the government of the United Kingdom responsible for helping to encourage, develop and manage the United Kingdom's scientific, research, and technological outputs. Additionally, the Government Office for Science advises the Government on policy and decision-making based on science and long-term thinking.
+In the UK, the Haldane principle that decisions about what to spend research funds on should be made by researchers rather than politicians is still influential in research policy. UK Research and Innovation is a non-departmental public body that directs research and innovation funding in accordance with this principle. The Advanced Research and Invention Agency is an additional body which was set-up to fund high-risk, high-reward research.
+
+=== United States ===
+
+The United States has a long history of government support for science and technology. Science policy in the United States is the responsibility of many organizations throughout the federal government. Much of the large-scale policy is made through the legislative budget process of enacting the yearly federal budget. Further decisions are made by the various federal agencies which spend the funds allocated by Congress, either on in-house research or by granting funds to outside organizations and researchers.
+Research funding agencies in the United States are spread among many different departments, which include:
+
+Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
+United States Department of Energy Office of Science
+National Institutes of Health: biomedical research
+National Science Foundation: fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering.
+Office of Naval Research

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+title: "Science policy"
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+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:30:20.702150+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+== See also ==
+Big science
+Evidence-based policy
+Funding bias
+Funding of science
+History of military science
+History of science policy
+Intellectual property policy
+List of books about the politics of science
+List of funding opportunity databases
+Metascience
+Open access
+Operations research
+Office of Science and Technology Policy
+Patent
+Politicization of science
+Right to science and culture
+Science of science policy
+
+== References ==
+
+== Further reading ==
+
+=== Books ===
+Bush, Vannevar (1960). Science, the endless frontier: a report to the President on a Program for Postwar Scientific Research (Repr ed.). Washington: National Science Foundation. ISBN 978-1-59740-026-8. OCLC 635336648. {{cite book}}: ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)
+Stokes, Donald E. (1997). Pasteur's quadrant: basic science and technological innovation. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution. ISBN 0-8157-8178-4. OCLC 36656380.
+Neal, Homer A. (2008). Smith, Tobin L.; McCormick, Jennifer B. (eds.). Beyond Sputnik: U.S. science policy in the twenty-first century. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. ISBN 978-0-472-02745-3. OCLC 671654179.
+Pielke, Roger A. Jr. (2007). The honest broker: making sense of science in policy and politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-511-27948-5. OCLC 162145073.
+Stephan, Paula E. (2012). How economics shapes science. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-04971-0. OCLC 709670355.
+Sarewitz, Daniel R. (1996). Frontiers of illusion: science, technology, and the politics of progress. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. ISBN 978-1-4399-0372-8. OCLC 646068257.
+Marburger, John H., III (10 February 2015). Crease, Robert P. (ed.). Science policy up close. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-41709-0. OCLC 875999943.{{cite book}}:  CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
+Rozell, Daniel J. (2020-02-04). Dangerous Science: Science Policy and Risk Analysis for Scientists and Engineers. Ubiquity Press. doi:10.5334/bci. ISBN 978-1-911529-88-0. S2CID 213952232.
+
+=== Journals ===
+"Issues in Science and Technology".
+"Science and Public Policy | Oxford Academic". OUP Academic. Retrieved 2020-04-08.
+"Research Policy | Journal". ScienceDirect. Retrieved 2020-04-08.
+"Journal of Science Policy and Governance".
+
+== External links ==
+ Media related to Science policy at Wikimedia Commons

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 category: "reference"
 tags: "science, encyclopedia"
-date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:18:19.961744+00:00"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:30:31.714006+00:00"
 instance: "kb-cron"
 ---