Power of Phonies According to Polish author Tomak Jankowski, the biologist Trofim Lysenko sought to make a name for himself in the early days of the Soviet Union. In 1927, he announced that he had successfully grown peas in the Russian winter and didn’t even use fertilizer. Lysenko proceeded with a series of announced and amazing agricultural accomplishments while charging that skeptics of his work were philosophically tied to the science of the Western bourgeoisie. The Soviet leadership was so impressed that he was named head of the Soviet Academy of Agricultural Sciences in 1935, and those who had criticized him were sent to prison or had ruined careers. Today’s environmental activists contend that biotechnology is dangerous...