Trofim Lysenko, left, speaking at the Kremlin in 1935, with Joseph Stalin standing, right. (Wikimedia Commons) Trofim Lysenko was an agronomist who in the 1930s caught Stalin’s ear with a bogus theory: that grain seed could be conditioned to grow quicker and more abundantly in all sorts of climates, like growing bananas in New York and apples in the Arctic. Stalin loved it and made Lysenko’s theory law. He became the Soviet Union’s leading geneticist. He was flacked in honors, including three Stralin prizes and six Orders of Lenin prizes. The moment scientists began questioning his method and evidence, Stalin had them fired, exiled or shot. (It was the reverse in the United States: an Oregon State University professor was fired in February 1949 for supporting his theory, though no one was shot over it.)