............................ "Just basic history but obviously hard for youngsters to comprehend..." ............................
I'm not too hard on him really,as I can remember(despite it all lol) being younger and much dumber(if that is possible)and couldn't see the subtleties and complexities for the trees.... I can remember too having authority figures whose word was truth too....now all I can see is that most things are tentative and conditional and subject to human nature, ie. greed, pride, and the rest of the sins in various permutations and combinations.Ah, life was much simpler then..
As for various scientific fads ie., Lysenkoism, eugenics,CAGW, global cooling,and various scares and panics along the way, they are always to do with getting at the public in some way, to tax them or manipulate them to serve a political agenda. Engineering on the other hand, seems to be non controversial, it either works or it doesn't, and if it doesn't can we make it work and if we can't even then let's move on. No manipulation of the public, just does it work, is it true, can we trust it and so on. Unlike something like climate "science".
