Ivan Ivanovich Schmalhausen (Russian: Ива́н Ива́нович Шмальга́узен; 23 April 1884 – 7 October 1963) was a Ukrainian and later Soviet zoologist and evolutionary biologist of German descent.
[4] On 23 August 1948 he became victim of order 1208, one of a series signed by Minister of Higher Education in the USSR, Sergei Kaftanov [ru], which led to the mass dismissals of many university professors.
This action came about due to accusations of Weismannism and pro-Morganism, and of promoting the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution by natural selection, at a time when Trofim Lysenko and his followers were emphasising a process of heredity that focused on interaction with the environment and the inheritance of acquired characteristics along Lamarckian lines.
Lysenkoism played a major role in Stalin's politics, stressing that hard work led to improvement in future generations.)
Therefore, the variance of data is not simply noise interfering with the detection of so-called "main effects", but also an indicator of stressful conditions leading to greater vulnerability.