The Technocrats Are Falling as Their Ideology Fails – Watts Up With That?

From Tilak’s Substack

In a panel discussion and book launch on The War on Science hosted by the Free Speech Union on Saturday in London, Richard Dawkins reminded his audience of the Lysenko saga in the Soviet Union. The famed British evolutionary biologist noted the parallel between today’s pseudoscience regarding gender and Soviet pseudoscience regarding plant genetics.

In the annals of scientific infamy, few episodes rival the Lysenko tale. Under the iron patronage of Joseph Stalin and later Nikita Khrushchev, the pernicious Soviet doctrine subordinated biology to Marxist-Leninist ideology. The charlatan agronomist Trofim Lysenko peddled the delusion that acquired traits could be inherited — a scientific fantasy dressed in proletarian garb. He promised bumper harvests through “vernalisation” of seeds and other quackery, rejecting the “bourgeois science” of Mendelian genetics as elitist sabotage.

The result? Purges of genuine scientists, like the tragic Nikolai Vavilov, who starved in a gulag for daring to defend empirical truth; famines that claimed millions of lives; and a generation of Soviet biology crippled by dogma. Lysenkoism wasn’t mere error; it was the weaponisation of science for political ends where dissent was treason and evidence was expendable.

Fast-forward to our own era, and the parallels are as chilling as they are uncanny. Over the past two decades, we have witnessed an ideological capture of science no less insidious, though cloaked in the virtuous robes of DEI, ‘climate justice’ and public health. In the realms of climate policy and COVID-19 response, institutions that were once bastions of rigorous inquiry — the United Nations, the European Union, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) and peer-reviewed journals — have been co-opted by a progressive ideology.

Here, ‘consensus’ trumps data, alarmism supplants scepticism and dissenting voices are not imprisoned but ‘cancelled’, smeared as ‘climate deniers‘ or “fringe epidemiologists“. The human toll? Skyrocketing energy prices that impoverish the working classes while denying fossil fuels to the energy-starved in the developing world; Covid lockdowns that ravaged economies and children’s futures; and mRNA ‘vaccines’ rushed to market without full transparency, now linked to mounting reports of adverse events. Billions worldwide have borne the brunt, from African villages ‘leapfrogging’ onto unreliable green energy at the behest of Western moralisers, to schoolchildren masked and isolated in the name of a virus that posed them negligible risk.

Yet, in a twist that history’s ironists might appreciate, the re-election of Donald J. Trump in 2024 has ignited a counter-revolution. His Executive Order issued in May 2025, ‘Restoring Gold Standard Science in America‘, is no mere bureaucratic flourish. By mandating transparency, reproducibility and the open exchange of ideas in federal science, the Trump administration has begun dismantling the edifice of politicised expertise. Emerging data on the harms of Net Zero dogma and Covid interventions — grounded in physics, economics and evidence-based medicine — bolster this fight.

For the first time in many years, there is genuine hope. The populist revolt may yet vanquish the forces that held science hostage in many realms of contentious public policy, restoring it as a tool for human flourishing rather than elite control.

The Ghost of Lysenko: Ideology Over Evidence in Modern Dress

To grasp the depth of our contemporary Lysenkoism, one must revisit its archetype. Lysenko’s rise in the 1930s was greased by Stalin’s hunger for rapid industrialisation sans ‘Western’ genetics, which he deemed incompatible with ‘dialectical materialism’. Lysenko’s ‘Michurinist’ biology posited that the environment could swiftly remake organisms — crops ‘toughened’ by cold exposure, for example. Dissenters were branded ‘wreckers’, their careers ruined, their lives often forfeited. Agricultural output plummeted, exacerbating the Holodomor famine and other disasters. Khrushchev, succeeding Stalin in 1953, doubled down, turning arable steppes into dustbowls. Only after Khrushchev’s 1964 ouster did the Politburo, under Brezhnev, allow modern genetics’ quiet revival — Lysenko retired in obscurity, dying in 1976, his legacy a scar on Soviet science.

Today’s variant is subtler, yet no less destructive. In climate science, the alarmist cult of anthropogenic global warming is epitomised by Michael Mann and his concocted ‘hockey stick’ graph which has been de-bunked as a statistical sleight-of-hand. Mann himself has been exposed as someone who “acted in bad faith” in court when he and his lawyers “presented erroneous evidence and made false representations to the jury”. Yet, his alarmist hockey stick chart has been enshrined by powerful institutions such as the UN and its agencies such as the IPCC. Net Zero by 2050 isn’t policy; it’s dogma, enforced through subsidies for intermittent wind and solar that balloon energy costs.

The UK’s pursuit of this mirage has saddled households with electricity prices four times those in the US, driving de-industrialisation and £220 billion in excess consumer costs since 2006. Green levies added $17 billion to UK bills in 2023-24 and are projected to hit $20 billion by 2029-30.

This isn’t science; it’s Lysenkoism redux. The IPCC’s RCP8.5 model scenario is now admitted as being extremely implausible by its own authors. Yet it is pushed by billionaires Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg among others to justify hamstringing fossil fuels, the bedrock of human progress.

Developing nations fare worse: the illusion of African countries ‘leapfrogging‘ into renewables denies them coal and gas for power plants, condemning billions of people to energy poverty. Meanwhile, the larger developing countries such as China and India which are not at the mercy of climate-related financial vetoes imposed by the World Bank and the IMF build coal-fired plants unabated at a sharp pace.

Chris Wright, US Energy Secretary, has argued that fossil fuels have lifted billions of people from destitution and that blocking coal plants in Africa is hypocritical and tantamount to “carbon colonialism”. The UN’s globalist agenda, seeded by billionaire foundations like the Gates and Soros foundations and assorted front organisations, funnels billions to NGOs like Greenpeace, WWF and Friends of Earth, which lobby for policies that enrich the ‘climate industrial complex‘ while pauperising the masses.

No less egregious is the Covid saga, where Lysenko-like figures — Anthony Fauci, former head of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Francis Collins, former director of the National Institutes of Health — orchestrated a censorship blitz against evidence-based dissent. The Great Barrington Declaration, published in October 2020 by Jay Bhattacharya (Stanford), Martin Kulldorff (Harvard), and Sunetra Gupta (Oxford), advocated “focused protection” for the vulnerable over blanket lockdowns in keeping with pre-2020 public health orthodoxy. Fauci and Collins, in leaked emails, plotted to “take down” this “fringe” threat, smearing its authors as dangerous quacks. Further lockdowns ensued: schools shuttered, economies cratered and children — forcibly face-masked and socially starved — suffered developmental delays, mental health spikes and learning losses equivalent to half a year’s progress according to UNESCO data.

The global Covid hysteria was fuelled by a March 2020 bombshell report by Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College, London, which forecast 510,000 deaths in the country without immediate lockdowns. Within a few weeks, Ferguson’s predicted half a million fatalities in the UK was adjusted downward to “unlikely to exceed 20,000”, reducing the fearful statistic by 25 times. It was later found that Dr Ferguson’s model was not fit for purpose.

This modern-day British Lysenko later resigned his governmental advisory position after being busted for breaking the very same lockdown rules he helped impose on the country. His junk model played a key role in the rationale for lockdowns around the world, particularly after the United Kingdom and United States governments explicitly invoked his report as a justification for lockdowns.

The cost of the Covid lockdowns runs into trillions. According to IMF data, global GDP declined by 3.0% in 2020, a stark reversal from the 2.8% growth recorded in 2019. In absolute terms, with global GDP at approximately $84.9 trillion in 2020, the 3.0% contraction equates to roughly $2.5 trillion in lost output — equivalent to the combined economies of several major nations. The IMF projected a cumulative impact over the two years 2020-21 of an estimated $9 trillion. The human toll, especially in the developing countries without welfare nets from broken supply chains, loss of trade and livelihoods can only be guessed at.

These policies were not born of evidence but of ideology. They were a technocratic fusion of precautionary panic and fanciful model-building. As in Lysenko’s era, the epidemiological modelers and bureaucrats working in captured regulatory agencies such as the CDC and the NIH ascended, while sceptics – such as Robert Malone who played a role in inventing mRNA technology – were exiled to Substack purgatory.

The Populist Reckoning: Trump’s Gold Standard for Scientific Research

Enter Trump 2.0 — a populist bulldozer against the modern Lysenkoist edifice. Trump’s 2025 executive order on “gold standard science” isn’t ‘anti-science’ as Left-liberal outlets like Nature and Science charge. When the act of exposing ideological science is branded ‘ideological’, psycho-political projection is complete. Reinstating scientific integrity policies, mandating data transparency and protecting dissenting views are antidotes to weaponised science. Agencies must now disclose uncertainties, falsify models rigorously and eschew political meddling.

For instance, it is not ‘anti-science’ to ensure that the farce of the extended Covid school closures, imposed by CDC guidance which was influenced by the country’s second largest teachers’ union, does not ever occur again. Making implausible climate modelling scenarios like RCP8.5 no longer credible in publicly-financed climate research is not ‘Right-wing’ science. Rather it keeps scientists honest, however committed they might personally be to tell the ‘noble lie‘ for a greater cause.

Lysenko fell amid continued crop failures after the protection Khrushchev’s patronage ended. Anthony Fauci now faces continued Congressional probes and possible charges for perjury and other offences in his role over public health policy during the Covid hysteria despite his pre-emptive pardon by president Biden.

History saw rehabilitations of Soviet scientists who followed Lysenko like Andrei Sakharov and others who quietly preserved genetic research. In our times, we see Jay Bhattacharya, once accused of being “fringe” and cancelled by mainstream media, is now the NIH newly appointed Director. He is guiding the agency towards evidence-based medicine and vowing probes into mRNA transparency lapses. Robert F. Kennedy Jr, the scourge of Big Pharma and now US Health Secretary, champions vaccine injury compensation and transparent, randomised and placebo-controlled trials to measure vaccine efficacy.

The Restoration of Reason

Trump’s re-election does not guarantee a new golden age of science. Bureaucracies are resilient; vested interests die hard. The climate-industrial complex — banks, consultancies, NGOs and subsidy-hungry, rent-seeking corporations in the renewables space — will not surrender easily. Nor will Big Pharma, whose financial windfalls from the Covid pandemic fuelled intense lobbying in the US Congress and bought political loyalty across both parties.

Yet there is something profoundly hopeful in the moment. For the first time in decades, the presumption of infallibility that shielded technocrats is cracking. The dogma of ‘settled science’ is being replaced by renewed curiosity, even humility. Physicists, economists and epidemiologists are reclaiming the terrain of open inquiry. Social media platforms like YouTube and Facebook are now openly claiming that they will now not censor dissenting voices with ‘fact-checks’ like they did under the previous administration.

In energy, this means acknowledging physical realities: that wind and solar cannot replace dense and reliable fossil fuels without catastrophic costs; that hydrocarbons remain indispensable to modern life; and that innovation, not prohibition, drives environmental progress. In medicine, it means demanding long-term safety data, transparent trials and honest communication about health risks and benefits.

These are not partisan demands. They are the foundations for human flourishing. When societies abandon them, suffering follows — whether in Stalin’s Ukraine or in the self-inflicted energy crises of Europe.

The New Enlightenment or the Last Stand?

The parallels between Lysenko’s Soviet Union and the Western technocracies of the early 21st century are sobering. Both replaced empirical inquiry with ideological certainty. Both persecuted dissenters as enemies of the state. Both sacrificed the well-being of millions on the altar of utopian theory.

Despite censorship, truth eventually emerges. The physics of energy, the economics of growth, the biology of disease — these are realities that cannot be legislated away. As evidence accumulates on the failures of Net Zero policies and the harms of pandemic overreach, the edifice of progressive technocracy is crumbling under its own contradictions.

The great art historian Kenneth Clark, reflecting on the fragility of civilisation, remarked that Western man had survived the Dark Ages “by the skin of our teeth”. We might say the same today. The victory of a populist coalition over the globalist establishment — symbolised by Trump’s return — has bought us time. We can also perceive a wider populist wave in the resurgence of parties such as the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in Germany, Reform UK and the National Rally in France. The momentum of the populist wave in the collective West can also be seen in the recent election victory of the conservative-populist Andrej Babis – a self-proclaimed “Trumpist” — in the Czech Republic and the shock win in Japan’s LDP party elections by “conservative” leader Sanae Takaichi – an admirer of Margaret Thatcher – who is set to be the next Prime Minister of Japan. We also see the Rightward shift in politics in the continued opposition of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and Slovakia’s Robert Fico against the globalist policies pushed by Brussels’ sprawling EU bureaucracy.

The battle, however, is far from over. The same foundations and billionaires — Gates, Soros, Bloomberg, Rockefeller — continue to pour billions into NGOs that propagate climate alarmism and pandemic fears. The modern-day clerics of virtue will not yield easily. But the tide seems to be turning. Independent journalists, scientists and citizens are reclaiming the narrative. Platforms once silenced are now flourishing. The public appetite for truth, after years of manipulation, is insatiable. The explosive growth of X, reaching over 560 million active users, attracts users weary of censored platforms and is one indicator of the public’s desire for un-curated news.

The story of Lysenkoism is a warning from history: when science serves ideology, catastrophe follows. The 20th century paid that price in blood and famine. The 21st has flirted with a softer, subtler version — one that replaced gulags with cancellation, executions with de-platforming, but sought the same end: control.

Trump’s re-election represents a repudiation of that control in the West. For now, at least, reason has a fighting chance.

This was first published at the Daily Sceptic ( https://dailysceptic.org/2025/10/10/the-technocrats-are-falling-as-their-ideology-fails/ )

Dr Tilak K. Doshi is the Daily Sceptic‘s Energy Editor. He is an economist, a member of the CO₂ Coalition and a former contributor to Forbes. Follow him on Substack and X.

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