Interesting. He seems to have Wikipedia entries in several languages, but not in English.

Can you say what they believed about nutrition and diet? Do you have some source on this topic? I think that there is a lot of diversity of opinion in America, between the nutritionists, the cardiologists, and the general public. So I could just as well declare those to be isolated communities. (and I wouldn't be surprised if different countries have fairly different nutritional beliefs)

My understanding is that in the West, the question of the origin of sex is considered a great mystery. People like the Red Queen theory, but only because it exists, not because it is anywhere near proven. If the Russian view of Geodakian's theory were similar, there would be the mystery of why the two communities hadn't shared their hypotheses with each other, but I wouldn't say that they held conflicting views. I have heard it claimed, though, that when there is only one hypothesis, it often ossifies into an established belief with evidence ever turning up. But I don't think this example has gotten there yet.

An example from the "Distance from Harvard" thread is the study of language superfamilies in Russia. Westerners reject their techniques, but they don't have any particular conflicting conclusion, only agnosticism. Indeed, they have come around to accept the specific conclusions that the American Joseph Greenberg came to by the same methods. From this, I feel very safe in saying that their criticism of Greenberg was wrong, and thus their criticism of the Russians is unfounded. But I'm not willing to endorse the Russians with any certainty, as they may be pushing their techniques too far. What they need are statistics telling they how far is too far.