Russia’s science and higher education ministry has dismissed the head of a prestigious genetics institute who sparked controversy by contending that humans once lived for centuries and that the shorter lives of modern humans are due to their ancestors’ sins, state news agency RIA-Novosti said Thursday.

Although the report did not give a reason for the firing of Alexander Kudryavtsev, the influential Russian Orthodox Church called it religious discrimination.

Kudryavtsev, who headed the Russian Academy of Science’s Vavilov Institute of General Genetics, made a presentation at a conference in 2023 in which he said people had lived for some 900 years prior to the era of the Biblical Flood and that “original, ancestral and personal sins” caused genetic diseases that shortened lifespans.

  • Diplomjodler@feddit.de
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    9 months ago

    How did that numpty ever end up in the Academy of Science in the first place?

    • skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de
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      9 months ago

      maybe he was banned from academia in soviet times for being a religious nutjob, and then he shown that “political discrimination get into any position free” card and they let him in no questions asked

    • andrew_bidlaw@sh.itjust.works
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      9 months ago

      Top guys are aging. Maybe he sold them an idea thet he can fix it? I mean, there’s many gossips about rich men turning from cosmetic surgery and sports to all kinds of fake science and mysticism just to stay there a little longer.