AHC the most popular alternative "science" movement possible.

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By alternative science I mean anti-vaccine movement, conspiracy theories, alterative medicine etc.
So, what do you think would be needed? How prevalent these believes can get?
 
Well, one can always try a TL where the USSR doesn't go through de-stalinization quite as much as OTL.

Lysenkoism was a pseudoscience which was heavily favored by Stalin & co, contributing heavily to their screwed-up agricultural policies and setting back the field of biology in the USSR for quite a while. In a USSR that still largely reveres Stalin after his passing, continued adherence to Lysenkoism is easy to imagine.
 
If there were some sort of massive screw-up on safety procedures for vaccines, and thouands of people get injured from some horrible side-effects, you might see a much stronger anti-vax movement, turning against vaccinations generally, not just the one that caused all the trouble.

Granted, thalidomide(as far as I know) didn't lead to a major backlash against anti-nausea medication, but given that in OTL there is already the basis for a populist anti-vax movement, then having an actual mass tragedy around vaccinations might very well exacerbate that.
 
To talk about this clearly, I think we need to distinguish between alternative science and quack science. Scientific study of traditional herbal medicine, for instance, can be legitimate if alternative (from a medical viewpoint) and legitimate in every sense from an anthropological viewpoint, while Lysenkoism was quack science pure and simple. The interpretation of Darwin by some 19th century philosophers (survival of the fittest as a sociological principle) was also quackery, as was the Nazi biology of racism (taken from occult teachings with a bow to science). But Darwin was not a quack--he had no control over what other people would do with his findings.

And we need to add a third element: embarrassing science, as when physicists expressed an exaggerated skepticism about Hugh Everett III's many-worlds theory of quantum mechanics. Just wait till quantum computers are on everyone's desk.
 
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