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chazwomaq t1_iwmromi wrote

Reply to comment by TwoUglyFeet in Ask Anything Wednesday - Engineering, Mathematics, Computer Science by AutoModerator

Here's an interesting recent historical example of where a major superpower had a very different scientific (mis)understanding.

The Soviet Union's leadership rejected the scientific ideas of Darwin and Mendel, that genes were selected through evolution. Instead, they favoured the Lamarckian view that acquired characteristics could be inherited.

Geneticists were fired, imprisoned, and even executed, and Lysenko (the chief scientist) tried to increase crop yields using this technique, which of course failed. As a result crop yields fell and there were food shortages.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism

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noiamholmstar t1_iwqb1fb wrote

Technically, epigenetic inheritance is a thing, so they weren't entirely wrong.

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atomfullerene t1_iwqmid5 wrote

Epigenetics isn't really the inheritance of acquired characteristics, though. It's more the ability to alter what traits your offspring express in response to your environment. There's no requirement that those traits be the same as the ones you have. For example, you could imagine a situation where high food availability causes parents to lay down epigenetic markers that cause their offspring to also have a high tendency to gain weight. Or you could imagine a situation where high food availability causes parents to lay down epigenetic markers that cause their offspring to avoid gaining weight. Or a situation where high food availability cause parents to lay down epigenetic markers to suppress melanin production and produce lighter fur (although I have no idea why such a system would ever evolve). The point is, there's no necessary connection between the parent trait and the offspring trait. There can be a similarity, but there doesn't have to be. It just depends on what sort of adaptations the organism has.

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chazwomaq t1_iwqq18i wrote

Lysenkoism and Lamarckism are not the same as epigenetic inheritance and are entirely wrong.

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