Except that that ignores that if science is invented rather then discovered then science has a political agenda. So, well, you're simply wrong here. The idea of a non-clockwork universe where perfect knowledge isn't available is anathema to the Technocracy - it makes perfect sense as for the Etherite's though. Likewise eugenics was serious widely accepted science until after the Nazi's, who were so bad that they poisoned the well on the very idea - that's right up the Technocracy's thematic alley. And even after that we still had basically Nazi science done by the government in several first world countries afterwords... because it's still up their authoritarian scientific racist alley.
Trying to change or ignore either of those is "Let's rewrite the setting so the heroes are the bad guys, and the old bad guy's flaws are all erased, and new flaws are added to the old heroes to make them more ineffective before they're villainized."
So no, you don't get to do that.
Yes I do.
Because, yes, the Technocracy was clearly in favour of eugenics, because it fits the historical record and it fits the top-down support of large amounts of the scientific establishment and the centralising "improvement" paternalism of the organisation. I'm sorry, did you think I was denying it? Yes, the Technocracy was heavily into eugenics (and the same sentiments are behind modern Progenitor attempts to bring genetic engineering into paradigm). Yes, in the WoD the Technocracy probably has plans in twenty to forty years to begin widespread genetic modification to remove defects such as cystic fibrosis from the gene pool. Yes, the Technocracy was behind things like "exposing black people to syphilis".
Do you think I'm trying to white-wash them? No. The sins of the Technocracy are the sins of the scientific community and the sins of the West and the sins of capitalism. There are plenty of things in a secret history we can blame them for. They were totally backing the British Empire in the name of producing a one world order and all those dead in India from famine are just 'collateral damage'. They totally threw their weight behind the neo-conservative agenda on the grounds of 'bringing democracy' and 'also getting our hands on the oil' - and that was the
idealists in the Union who are responsible for that mess, because the old corrupt ones were totally fine with Saddam Hussein in power and using the oil-for-food programme, but the young-blooded idealists attempted to use force to impose their vision of society to "make things better" and fucked things up.
But part of that is actually taking into account history and not ascribing motives to the Technocracy which would make
no fucking sense given their overall motives and goals. And we can't just ascribe "everything bad people justified with science ever" to them, if it doesn't match with their goals, if we want to have a meaningful antagonist rather than a Kratman villain.
Therefore,
no, the Technocracy - which we have established to be strongly in favour of genes, eugenics, and suchlike would
not have been behind Lyshenkoism, which was a neo-Lammarckian rejection of gene theory. That's what it comes down to. If we have established that the Technocracy are eugenicists who are strongly in favour of genetic theory and Mendel's work and doing things with fruit flies and then declaring that the same applies to humans, then it makes no sense to ascribe to them a theory which is all about the rejection of the genetic theories that the Technocracy was pushing.
(Or are we going to start claiming that the Technocracy wasn't in favour of genes now?)
Seriously. Look at Lysenkoism. Not only is it an outright rejection of the mainstream genetics coming into mode at that point, but it also exults the work of one brave practical scientist who isn't in the ivory towers doing things with fruit flies, but is instead down in the fields practically helping the peasants. The use of Lysenkoism isolates the Soviet Union from the world's biological communities and gets called pseudoscientific crap. So at this point, to claim that the Technocracy was behind Lysenkoism you have to claim that either the Technocracy is hopelessly insane because it deliberately and wilfully acts against its own goals, interests, and logic, or that history has been rewritten by the NWO totally for... some reason.
And once you bring in "history re-writing", not only have you entered the land of "let's dismiss the evidence for the sake of my argument" (oh, the irony), but Ockham's Razor implies that a simpler solution is that Lysenko
was a Traditionalist and that his practices
did improve crop yields more than historically recorded and elements of the Russian Traditions were siding with Stalin as a way of trying to gain control of a society away from Syndicate influence, then the Technocracy covered up their successes in the biological fields because they were incompatible with their own Green Revolution because of the Lammarkian elements clashing with their own genetic things. Which has the advantage of, you know, ascribing people actions which match with their motives.
That's the thing. The Progenitors are evil collectivist geneticists. Therefore they're not going to be Lysenkoists. Lysenkoism is in fact a shining triumph from a certain point of view of a single man standing against the general opinion of the scientific establishment and forging his own way and swaying a nation to change its path to introduce a field of science viewed as rubbish by the mainstream. It is in fact perfect character material for Etherite players, changing the path of science for an entire nation to promote their pet theories...
... except it didn't work. Which
should actually reinforce things and give Etherites a good example of "you can do these things, but without solid grounding either the Technocracy will shut you down or Paradox will destroy your work", but... no.
And so by the same principle of "how about we ascribe people motives which actually... like, match with things at all?" Etherites, however, were
not in favour of quantum mechanics originally, and the fact that the text ascribes it to them is nonsensical in light of history and the nature of QM and Relativity. I don't give a shit that the text claims that they did it - the text was written by people who were using "quantum" to mean "magic" and understood nothing more about the development of science around the turn of the 20th century. What the text says is stupid when viewed in light of actual history and the scientific positions held at the time, and the people who are pro-luminiferous-aether are
not going to be pro-QM. The text claiming that the Etherites were anti-relativity as their cause celebre, but also pro-QM can be dismissed on the grounds of "oh my god so dumb, this is what happens when books are written by 90s counterculture sorts".
It's not the death of the author, but it is the committing of the author to an old person's home because they've started declaring that Gypsies have magic powers to help them steal.
Not everyone is Arete 6+ and capable of that kind of double think.
