Trofim Lysenko, the Stalinist-era biologist who tailored his scientific ideas to suit the Soviet communist party. Denying natural selection and arguing that character traits developed in a parent’s lifetime could be passed onto offspring (like Lamarck), Lysenko put the study of biology in the Soviet Union back by decades. Many actual scientists he competed against went to prison. Lysenkoism is now a term used to describe the deliberate promotion of pseudo-science for the sake of a political agenda.
