Social Construction, Soviet Science, and Our Relationship with Science Today
A fringe Soviet scientist managed to change the way genetics was perceived for decades, shedding light on our views of science.
At the end of HBO’s mini-series, Chernobyl, the nuclear physicist Valery Legasov states: “The truth doesn’t care about our needs or wants. It doesn’t care about our governments, our ideologies, our religions. It will lie in wait for all time. And this, at last, is the gift of Chernobyl. Where I once would fear the cost of truth, now I only ask: “What is the cost of lies?” Legasov says this as he is apprehended by the state, a result of his effort to reveal the truth of Chernobyl, particularly that it was a failure of Soviet science as much as it was a failure of Soviet policy.
While this lecture is not concerned with the Chernobyl disaster, I feel that this quote reflects a predominant perspective concerning Soviet science, and that is that it is devoid of truth and is founded instead on lies. In particular, there is this predominant idea in the West that science in the Soviet Union is inferior, overly politicized and socially constructed — as if Western science is not a result of the same issues.
This lecture is not concerned with Chernobyl but deals instead with a complicated and long-running situation known as the Lysenko Affair, where a genetic theory, Lamarckian in essence, gained prominence in Soviet science agriculture, and politics, for almost 30 years before quietly fading into obscurity. Loren Graham provides some solid insights into this affair.
But who is Loren Graham? Graham is an American historian of science with a special focus on science within Russia and the Soviet Union. Much of his work addresses Lysenkoism, and he had even met Trofim Lysenko on a visit to Moscow in 1973. So why address Soviet science in a class that has, for the most part, only concerned itself with the paradigms of Western science? Well, Graham provides an answer in that “it sheds light not only on the nature of Russia and the Soviet Union but also science itself”.[1] What we say about Russian or Soviet science can also be said about Western science and science as a whole.
So, let us jump into the Lysenko Affair by starting with its namesake and the social background he came to prominence in. His biological and genetic theories will follow, followed by Graham’s assessment of social constructivism and the strong and weak aspects of a social constructivist viewpoint. Finally, we will end with Feyerabend’s assertion that science needs more Lysenko Affairs.
Trofim Lysenko
Trofim Denisovich Lysenko was born in 1898 in Ukraine, near Poltava, and was born into a peasant family. He was educated as a Practical Agronomist at the Horticultural Institute of Poltava. Between 1923–1965, Lysenko has published approximately 400 works concerning his studies in plant propagation and his theories on biology and genetics. By 1948 Lysenko had established “all the major components of his biological system.”[2], as Loren Graham explains in his 2016 book, Lysenko’s Ghost: Epigenetics and Russia. But what was Lysenko’s biological system, and what makes it worth addressing?
What characterizes Lysenko’s views on genetics and biology is best described as an almost ill-informed and practical application of Lamarckian genetics paired with Russian peasant interpretations and understandings of nature and the growth of plants. As the Russian historian Loren Graham describes in the reading assigned for today, “Russian, Science, and Social Constructivism”:
For over thirty years, from the early 1930s to the late 1960s, the Soviet agronomist Trofim D. Lysenko opposed the Mendelian genetics that was accepted elsewhere in the scientific world and favoured in its place a form of Lamarckism, the doctrine of acquired characteristics.[3]
The support for Lamarckism and acquired genetics is not unique to Lysenko. It would be disingenuous to assert that he was the one to popularize the idea of acquired genetics within Russia. The idea of acquired genetics that traits acquired through life can be passed onto offspring and written into your genetic makeup had been popular in Russian leading up to the revolution and has longevity well into the Soviet period. As Graham asserts, “Lamarckian views were widespread among Russian biologists, especially young Marxists but also many non-Marxists”.[4] It was a view, before the revolution, that Lamarckian genetics and Mendelian genetics were compatible, and Graham seems to assert that they provided explanations for the shortcomings present in both theories.
Following the revolution and civil war that would rock Russia and the satellite states that would make up the Soviet Union, we begin to see a change in ideas of genetics and biology. While prior to 1917, many Russian biologists and geneticists toyed with and engaged thoroughly with the ideas of not only Lamarck and Mendel, but also Weismann, Darwin, and Kammerer, with the rise of Marxist science and a stronger class consciousness between the proletariat and the bourgeois, came to a change in what was popular science. An official consensus would emerge in the 1930s, as enforced by the Communist Party. Graham explains:
It held that Mendelian genetics was a suspicious field and definitely should not be applied to human beings in the form of eugenics. Lamarckian biology was favoured but only on the levels of plants and animals, not humans. Humans were explicable in Marxist terms, not biological ones.[5]
For the Communist Party, people could only be explained by Marxist terms. To be reduced to genetic qualities and traits seemed to undermine the Soviet mission of Marxist development and freedom.
However, it is important to keep in mind that the idea of acquired genetics (Lamarckism) was never applied to humans, and this will extend to Lysenko, as well. His reach only went as far as farm animals. What is significant about this point is that it almost single-handedly undermines the Western conception that the rise of Lysenko and Soviet genetics was based on the desire to create a unique Soviet man, Homo Sovieticus, a notion even Stalin dismissed as ridiculous.
Why was Mendelian genetics suspect, and what led to the rise of this scientific change of perspective, though? The easiest response has been mentioned in passing, and that is the rise of class-consciousness, particularly a distaste and suspicion of the bourgeoisie following the Civil War, especially after Stalin’s official coming into power in 1927. Many geneticists at the time were those who either came from aristocratic backgrounds or were of a member of the bourgeois class prior to 1917, and “because many of the professional biologists had bourgeois backgrounds, their political loyalties were always suspect to the regime”.[6] This meant that even their theories were viewed as suspect. They were inherently untrustworthy, and their perspectives were impractical or too bourgeois. Lysenko exploited this in asserting his biological perspectives and provided him greater credibility in the regime. He could position himself as a practical biologist up against academic biologists who, in his words, ‘cared more about the flies they studied than the people of the Soviet Union’.
Lysenko’s Biology
So, what made Lysenkoism unique besides his adoption of Lamarckism and belief in acquired genetics? Graham goes in-depth into Lysenko’s views on genetics in chapter six of his book, Lysenko’s Ghost, as he discusses not only his views on genetic theory but how they fail or are wildly uninformed and unoriginal, given the framework of the time he is living in. There is too much to discuss on that front in this lecture, but three aspects of Lysenko’s biological theories make up the foundations of his work.
The first is that he believed that the whole cell was the carrier of heredity, not just its constituents.[7] As a result of this, Lysenko also refused to accept the existence of dominant and recessive alleles.[8] An allele is one, two, or more versions of a gene, of which you inherit two from each parent — in the case of humans. I am not a geneticist, so I cannot explain all the nuances of the problems of his point, but as you can see, Lysenko’s ideas of genetic transfer are in direct conflict with what we consider to be standard genetics.
His second point is the most damning in his denial of modern genetics:
Lysenko also denied the distinction between phenotype (the observable characteristics of an organism that result from its genotype and the environment) and genotype (the genetic makeup of a cell), even over the distance of one generation. Instead, he maintained that “all the properties, including heredity, the nature of an organism, arise de novo to the same degree to which the body of that organism (for example, a plant) is built de novo in the new generation.” The obliteration of this separation lay at the bottom of much of Lysenko’s writings and repudiates the whole structure of modern genetics.[9]
For Lysenko, he refused to accept that different types of plants or animals produced things differently. Instead, he firmly believed that you could force characteristics on different plants or animals to make them work for your expectations.
Lysenko is famous for working with wheat and cows, but mostly for his work with wheat. He spent much of his life arguing that you could force summer wheat to grow in colder climates if you could force the plant to acclimatize to the colder climate in its growth process. Through what Loren Graham describes as cold stratification, Lysenko believed that given enough generations of wheat, it could grow in colder, more northern climates it had previously been unable to survive in. His experiments failed on a large scale, but he retained political support despite lacking scientific rigor and unsuccessful experiments.
Lysenkoism came to the significance and remained due to a mixture of three things, Stalin and Khrushchev’s respective ignorance regarding genetics and genetic theory, Lysenko’s strong ability to curry-favours, in particular by denouncing seemingly bourgeois geneticists who opposed his ideas — many of these scientists would die in the custody of the NKVD (the predecessor of the KGB) or a gulag. However, Lysenko was fairly successful in producing practical results for a state in crisis. As Graham explains, he successfully got the peasants to plant wheat for the Great Soviet Experiment rather than destroying it — a problem that had plagued the Soviet Union almost since its inception.
As a result, “a peasant agronomist who promised a revolution in agriculture had enormous political advantages over sober academic geneticists who — in a time of crisis — appeared to be restraining progress by crying “not so fast,” or “inadequate verification”.[10] Lysenko presented a quick and practical response to a state that was slowly starving itself to death and had failed to inspire the countryside to engage with collectivization. He could get the peasants to plant wheat. But, unfortunately, the academic scientists could not point to any concrete results or benefits their theories could have to the state at this time. As a result, Lysenkoism was adopted at official state policy over Mendelian genetics in 1948, partially a result of eugenics following WWII, and would last well into the 1960s.
Soviet Science and Social Construction
I have just explained to you some of the history of Lysenkoism, particularly how it came about, its unique characteristics, and its strength in seemingly practical results. Now it is time to turn to social constructivism, particularly the role Lysenkoism plays in our idea of science as a social construct. Graham asks, “To what degree is science a social construction and to what degree is it a reflection of the natural world?” — he spends the rest of his paper, “Russia, Science, and Social Constructivism”, attempting to answer this question.
He explains that in the 1970s, following the publication of Kuhn’s work, sociologists of science, people like David Bloor, whom you have read for today, began to address the question as to whether knowledge produced and accepted by scientists is shaped and formed by the society that surrounds it. According to Graham, even the hardest of sciences like mathematics, biology, physics, and chemistry, given this framework, can be and are socially formed.
This eventually leads us to the central concern of his work, where he asserts that “if the social constructivist thesis is correct, Russian science should be very different from Western science”[11], since their social frameworks are different and seemingly incompatible. Following this claim, he brings us to his thesis that Russian or Soviet science can reflect both the strengths and weaknesses of this social constructivist viewpoint. There are cases in which Soviet science is vastly different from Western science and cases where their sciences are quite similar, or sometimes even supplant each other.
It is clear from Graham’s introduction that he is sympathetic to the social constructivist viewpoint. However, he does not leave it unexplained for his readers who are less familiar with the concept, especially science. As he states:
For most people approaching this issue for the first time, the strength of the anticonstructivist viewpoint will probably seem obvious, while the constructivist approach will seem counterintuitive. Many people, after all, look on science as “truth,” or something close to it, and therefore fully expect science to be the same everywhere, to be “international.”[12]
He will spend the rest of the paper provides a strong argument supporting social constructivism in science and end with a weaker case — but overall, he settles on the point that there cannot exist a universal, absolute truth. So let us dive into it.
The Strength of the Social Constructivist Viewpoint
Graham begins with what he deems as the hardest to illustrate, which is the cases that support the social constructivist thesis that Russian science must inherently be different. But, first, he explains that, in particular Soviet science, can be reduced to Marxist influences: “In the Soviet period, both overt (and officially supported) Marxist influences and covert (and officially opposed) anti-Marxist influences were at work”.[13] This made Soviet science unique, especially because its science can be divided between Marxist theory in science supporters and those of its detractors. Alternatively, in simpler terms, Soviet science is divided between those sympathetic to the Communist Party line and those who are critical of it. He provides examples in support of both positions, but I will only address two.
A significant position in support of Marxist theories in science is the case of the “inflationary model” in astrophysics. A model even Stephen Hawking found compelling.
The influence of ideology on Soviet astrophysicists was noted by the British cosmologist Stephen W. Hawking in his best-selling book A Brief History of Time, in which he explained their opposition to “big bang” theories of the universe by Marxism; Hawking, no Marxist himself, was so impressed by their work that he came to oppose the big bang theory himself, supporting instead a version of an “inflationary model” worked out by Soviet researchers and others.[14]
The inflationary model or theory proposes a period of rapid and exponential expansion of the universe in the first few moments of its existence. It posits that the universe is gradually expanding over time and had gained popularity in the 1980s as an explanation for the holes present in Big Bang Theory. It is compelling that this theory arose out of opposition to the singular idea of the Big Bang on Marxist grounds. It seems to provide evidence in support of ideological science.
Graham’s second significant example, this time coming from the critics of Marxism and Soviet policy, is a field I am much more familiar with, and that is Soviet ecology and environmentalism. Graham cites Douglas Weiner, the foundational historian in Russian and Soviet environmental history, who explains that resistance to Soviet industrialism on ecological grounds lead to the development of ‘biocenosis’:
…resistance to Soviet industrial development by ecologists strengthened their commitment to the theoretical concept of “biocenosis,” the self-enclosed ecological community protected from all industrial incursions. These ecologists created what Weiner has called “archipelagos of freedom” nature preserves (zapovedniki) off-limits to all intruders, including Soviet ideologists.[15]
Zapovedniki is foundational to Soviet environmentalism, and what Weiner describes is the strength in ideological opposition in the creation of different scientific frameworks.
For Graham, these examples highlight the strengths of the social constructivist viewpoint in science, especially because this is science directly influenced by the social milieu at the time. These are theories and positions developed out of a pro- or anti-Marxist position within the Soviet Union. It illustrates that science cannot be separated from the political, or at the very least, the ideological, as there seems to be science either for or against the given political framework/paradigm or ideology in vogue at the time.
However, it would be too easy to stop right there, and, at this moment, you are probably wondering why I spent so long diving into Lysenkoism and obscure genetic theories. Well, this leads to what Graham considers to be the weakness of social constructivism.
The Weakness of the Social Constructivist Viewpoint
Since I have already gone over the Lysenko affair and provided an idea of Lysenkoism as a theory, I do not need to go over it again. It is important to keep in mind his central point with regards to the Lysenko Affair, however, in revealing the weaknesses of the social-constructivist viewpoint, and that is: “The weakness shows up not in the onset of Lysenkoism but in its demise”.[16] This is important to remember because, if anything, the onset of Lysenkoism can serve as a strong example supporting social constructivism. It is a unique Soviet perception that arose out of the social milieu of the Soviet Union at the time, in particular a state in need of food production and a geneticist with the ability to make the peasants work, as opposed to the academic geneticists who were viewed as halting progress.
The demise of Lysenkoism is an interesting one because there was nothing dramatic with its slow decline from popularity. Instead, it seemed much more like a substitution of one scientific viewpoint with the other. Graham provides an in-depth account of Lysenkoism’s collapse and its significance. In the 1960s, we see the return of Mendelian genetics to the Soviet Union. As Graham states, “In other words, the socially constructed doctrine of Lysenkoism was being undermined by contradictory scientific evidence, a powerful alternative cognitive scheme, and the convincing results of agricultural practices based on Western-style genetics”.[17] Western genetics was much more scientifically rigorous than Lysenkoism and carried further explanatory power than Lysenkoism provided. Moreover, mendelian genetics agricultural applications had also led to outperforming agriculture in the West than anything the Soviet was able to provide.
Nowhere else is this better exemplified than in Nikita Khrushchev’s visit to the United States in 1959:
When Nikita Khrushchev visited Roswell Garst’s corn farm in Iowa in the early 1960s, he was staggered to learn that no farmers in Iowa still grew their seed corn; instead, they all purchased their seed corn from commercial breeders, who used the principles of Mendelian genetics that Lysenko denied.[18]
There was substantial and irrefutable proof by Khrushchev’s visit in support of Mendelian genetics and its explanatory and practical powers. Moreover, western agriculture was thriving, as opposed to Soviet agriculture, which was always markedly slow and relatively inefficient in comparison.
In the 1930s, when Lysenkoism was gaining traction among Western geneticists, there was still a sense of uncertainty regarding heredity and genetics. For example, scientists were unsure whether heredity was carried in proteins or whether DNA was a significant substance. This scientific uncertainty provided an opening for Lysenkoism to apply its explanatory powers onto the nascent Soviet state.
By the 1960s, however, the concept of heredity and Mendelian genetics was much more concrete — Lysenkoism seemed backwards in comparison. As a result, we eventually see Lysenkoism undergoing rigorous critique and condemnation. Lysenkoism was being challenged by Western scientific development and agricultural practices, and it was a system deemed wanting.
However, Graham hesitates to assert that Lysenkoism was overthrown or supplanted by Mendelian genetics. Instead, he uses the term substitute. As he explains:
…what was happening is not best described as the refutation of Lysenko’s genetics by scientific and agricultural reality but the substitution of one social construction of genetics by another — the replacement of Lysenko’s genetics by Western genetics, both of which are social constructions.[19]
Graham almost single-handedly, with his last comment, dismisses the notion that Western science is superior to Soviet science. Instead, he reduces these scientific frameworks to the same level, stating that both result from their respective social milieu.
However, he does seem to assert that there are limits to social construction. It does not have universal explanatory power. He argues that social construction stops at the demise of Lysenkoism. Social construction is not what kills it either, but rather is the role of cognitive factors, theoretical rigour, and practical success. This seems to be the key to Graham’s argument. What causes the demise of socially constructed paradigms is when their practical successes, theoretical rigour, and cognitive factors no longer seem to work or work less efficiently compared to the theory it is up against. According to Graham, this does not mean Mendelian genetics represents absolute truth, and he refuses to accept that Mendelian genetics is not socially constructed in the same way Lysenkoism is. However, “Experimental evidence and straight thinking do matter, and Lysenko was deficient in both”.[20]
For Graham, this is why Lysenkoism failed. Not because of the supposed inferiority of political and ideological science, but rather due to the lack of scientific rigour. Something Graham seems much more offended by concerning Lysenkoism than its ideological bent. The leash of reality is long and slack, as Graham states, but it is still present and still reinforces the strength of the theories, even if socially constructed.
Post-Kuhnian Anarchy
Paul Feyerabend will also look at the Lysenko Affair but takes it in a much more radical direction than Graham does — seemingly taking Kuhn’s relativistic idea of paradigms to their logical extremes. Seemingly fascinated with Kuhn’s tentative assertion that Newtonian Physics can be put on the same pedestal as Aristotelian Physics, Feyerabend asserts that there should be more Lysenko Affairs in science. Who is Paul Feyerabend, and what is the purpose of this claim?
Paul Feyerabend was born in 1924 and died in 1994. He was born in Vienna, served on the Eastern Front in WWII, and is best known for his work at the University of California, Berkeley. There he wrote his three major works: Against Method, Science in a Free Society, and Farewell to Reason.
But besides that, he is best known for his controversial and supposedly anarchic views towards science, particularly with his rejection of universal methodological rules. However, he is significant in the establishment of the sociology of science. I think we get this sense from the reading you had to do for today, “How to Defend Society Against Science”, that Feyerabend is a man testing the waters and almost purposely shit-disturbing to make a point. While there is a lot to talk about in his work, with many controversial and wild assertions made in his paper, I am concerned with his support of Lysenkoism and the power he thinks affairs such as Lysenkoism have on complicating science.
Feyerabend says this about science and Lysenkoism:
Considering the sizeable chauvinism of the scientific establishment, we can say the more Lysenko affairs, the better (it is not the interference of the state that is objectionable in the case of Lysenko, but the totalitarian interference which kills the opponent rather than just neglecting his advice).[21]
The chauvinism he seems to be referring to in this comment is that of doctrinaire science. He asserts earlier on in this section of his article that “science is just one of the many ideologies that propel society and it should be treated as such”.[22] As a result, for Feyerabend, science is inherently ideological. It cannot separate itself from the social milieu, the social ideologies, the social paradigms that are present. The chauvinism that Feyerabend is referring to then, regarding Lysenkoism, is that of science playing the role of gatekeeper. He directly responds to those who cried out in outrage of the relativism that Kuhn’s theory of paradigms had suggested — that perhaps Lysenkoism and Mendelian genetics can sit on the same pedestal.
Feyerabend is arguing for a conversation between theories, an interaction between ideologies and paradigms. He does not see why Mendelian genetics but be held up as the pinnacle of genetics when Lysenkoism could provide an interesting rebuttal to Mendelian genetics seeming monopoly on hereditary knowledge. As Feyerabend explains, “Ideologies are marvelous when used in the company of other ideologies. They become boring and doctrinaire as soon as their merits lead to the removal of their opponents”.[23] For Feyerabend, we need to engage with all ideas, not just the supposedly superior ones. T
he Lysenko Affair provides an interesting alternative in much the same way that Flat-Earth theory presents an alternative and critique of round Earth. Unfortunately, there is no such thing as a universal truth for Feyerabend. As a result, he sees only a benefit to engaging with these supposed inferior theories. To ignore them is to create instead totalitarian, dogmatic science and makes us no better than Trofim Lysenko in denouncing and removing his most ardent critics.
Lysenkoism in Science Today
Despite the concept of acquired genetics being out of vogue in the West since the early twentieth century and controversial in Russia since the 1960s, the fact that the theory of acquired genetics has actually gained traction as a legitimate and substantial theory has gained traction since 1991. Loren Graham discusses the rise of acquired genetics, or what has become the accepted term for it, Epigenetics, in his 2016 book. Since the publication of a paper by O.E. Landman in 1991, there has been an increase is incredulity at the idea that acquired genetics is contradictory to inherited genetics.
…O. E. Landman published an article expressing incredulity that so many biologists remained convinced of a basic contradiction between the principle of the inheritance of acquired characteristics and molecular biology. On the contrary, he wrote, the inheritance of acquired characteristics is “fully compatible with current concepts of molecular genetics,” and he pointed to examples of such inheritance. These developments provided an important background and a prehistory to the blossoming of epigenetics in the early years of the twenty- first century.[24]
The idea that these genetic theories are mutually exclusive appears to be reductive, although Graham goes on to explain that evidence of acquired genetics still isn’t solid enough to be universally accepted, it provides an interesting perspective and change to Mendelian genetics.
Graham explains that epigenetics is strongest in the cases of trauma, in which he explains that methylation, a response in times of extreme stress and trauma seems to affect DNA but is a physical configuration that is reversible. The Dutch famine and its generation effect, in particular, the increased generation rate of disabilities and obesity caused by extreme starvation is often used as an example in favour of the theory of epigenetics, although it is only tentatively accepted in the field of genetics.
However, the concern of epigenetics has become an incredibly politicized issue in Russia, particularly there has been a rebirth in Lysenkoism and the view that “Lysenko was right”. Wading through the neo-Stalinist hot-takes considering Lysenkoism you do end up getting some insightful points that seem to reaffirm Feyerabend approach to weighing both perspectives equally in scientific discourse. Graham paraphrases a Russian epigeneticist, Shatalkin who claims that: “Classical geneticists are ‘correct’, he says, in what they ‘affirm’ but incorrect in what they ‘deny’. They deny Lamarck’s and Lysenko’s valuable contributions to the science of heredity”.[25] This position has even been taken up by other Soviet historians, such as Kate Brown who has spent much of her career studying the history of nuclear power and its effects in the former USSR. She lauds Lysenko in making Soviet scientists sensitive to the intergenerational transfer of radioactivity and other toxins on DNA while acknowledging his detrimental role not only in genetics but in politicizing science in the Soviet Union. As much as science can truly be separated from politics, its ideologies, and the impact of the social milieu.
Concluding Remarks
I began this lecture commenting on our Western view of Soviet science, our position that we see it as a product of lies, that somehow it is inferior to the science we do and have done in the West. I hope this position doesn’t sit as right as it might’ve prior to this lecture, especially given Loren Graham’s strong position that what is discussed about Soviet science applies just as comfortably to Western science. The argument that Soviet science is socially constructed and overly politicized works in the reverse, our own Western scientific conceptions are as equally constructed as our Soviet and Russian counterparts.
Society frames and shapes what we consider to be ‘real’ science, what we deem acceptable. All of this is constructed around our social ideals and ideologies. Lysenkoism was the scientific ideology of Soviet genetics, Feyerabend would argue that Mendelism was the scientific ideology of Western genetics. In order to avoid the totalitarianism of both ideologies, the rise of dogmatism and chauvinism within science, these ideas must be weighed equally. Graham will argue that there are limits to the reality that counters Feyerabend’s extreme anarchy that everything is equal, but he still asserts that what ultimately impacts the rise of theories, their knowledge background, and their significance is all contingent on the social framework, the paradigm, that these theories emerge. He advocates for scientific rigour in this process, but even Feyerabend will argue that what we consider the scientific method or rigour is socially constructed.
I hope this idea feels destabilizing and unsatisfying because I think it’s supposed to. Even though Graham tries to assert that method will ensure science that reflects reality will flourish, there is this lingering uncertainty, especially with the Lysenko Affair. What is stopping Western science from having its own Lysenko Affair? And should we encourage more of them?
This was originally a lecture presented at the University of King’s College, on November 18th, 2021
[1] Graham, Social Constructivism, 468
[2] Graham, Lysenko’s Ghost, 82
[3] Graham, Social Constructivism, 472
[4] Graham, Lysenko’s Ghost, 60
[5] Ibid., 67
[6] Graham, Social Constructivism, 472
[7] Graham, Lysenko’s Ghost, 83
[8] Ibid., 89
[9] Ibid., 92
[10] Graham, Social Constructivist, 472–3
[11] Ibid., 469
[12] Ibid., 470
[13] Ibid.
[14] Ibid., 470
[15] Ibid., 471
[16] Ibid., 471
[17] Ibid., 474
[18] Ibid.
[19] Ibid., 474–5
[20] Ibid., 475
[21] Feyerabend, Defending Society, 7
[22] Ibid., 6
[23] Ibid., 7
[24] Graham, Lysenko’s Ghost, 201
[25] Graham, Lysenko’s Ghost, 122
