Lysenko in Sweden

In the wake of the Lawrence Summers affair, Norwegian blogger Secular Blasphemy translates an article in Swedish paper Aftenbladet

In one respect Sweden’s government is unique in the world. It has a definite opinion about a scientific controversy: whether women’s and man’s brains are different, or not. The first time I realised that the government had involved itself in neurobiology, was when gender equality minister [!] Jens Orback in a speech about sexual deviations and living with horses [!!], affirmed:

– The government considers female and male as social constructions, that means gender patterns are created by upbringing, culture, economical conditions, power structures and political ideology.

Apart from taking a position on this scientific question, the government has decided to side with the most extreme researchers: gene theoreticians who for ideological reasons state that biology can not have any saying in explaining why male and female behaviour differs.

This reminds me about the Soviet biologist Trofim Lysenko. Lysenko was by Stalin proclaimed a scientific genius and his “creative darwinism” was hailed as a huge step forward for genetic research. Lysenko argued that learned traits could be inherited and that by manipulating the environment one could easily cause fundamental changes in plants and animals. Career hungry politicians loved him. Ideology meant everything, experiment and science nothing.

The real scientists, who protested, were cleaned out (and executed).

One of the reasons I write this is that the county government (länsstyrelsen) in Norrbotten has banned the publication of a book about gender equality because it contains an interview with a scientist who argues that the difference between men and women is not only caused by the environment, but a combination of inheritance and environment.

According to professor Annica Dahlström, one of the world’s leading neurobiologists, men’s and women’s brains are different. Thus she has entered an area where Sweden’s government has already ruled what is scientifically true and false.

The result is that the book is being censored. The county government has demanded that the interview with Dahlström has to be removed, or there will be no money and no book.

The county government doesn’t hide what this is about:

– Since our job is to execute Swedish policy, we cannot stand behind a book that expresses these opinions.