= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
moridinamael comments on The Cold War divided Science - Less Wrong Discussion
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (53)
I am not able to access my resources at the moment, but if I recall from school, a particular politically powerful Russian scientist essentially mandated that the abiogenic petroleum theory would be the one accepted by the Russian establishment. At the time, they justified this by pointing to large oil fields for which source rocks (underlying rock containing thermally decomposed organic matter) had not been discovered. Of course since then the source rocks have been discovered.
Amusingly, if you Google "abiogenic petroleum theory" you will find lovely quack articles explaining how plausible the theory is and how it means we will never run out of oil.
Do you mean Kudryavtsev?
What kind of school was this? Russian? American? Geology? History of science?
How can you tell the difference between a "mandate" and an argument? CellBioGuy compares your story to Lysenkoism, but Lysenko called his opponents "wreckers" and had them executed. I can imagine that his example had a chilling effect on future disagreement with superiors, but if this were a systematic problem with Soviet science, why don't we have more examples?
Unfortunately I am going to have to call "pause" until I can get some books from my office, or otherwise track down exactly the details I'm half-remembering.
Unfortunately Google has been totally worthless, in that the first several pages are things like "Peak oil a myth? The shocking secret of oil's abiogenic origin!" It's really quite mindkilling.
Much like Lysenkoism in biology.