It was a scandalous story of the first seed bank operators literally starving to death around food to protect their peoples future post war, American attempts to help with corn crops failing (the two politically were already distrustful), and an insane farmer favored politically.... literally putting his critics in front of firing squads.
Science makes "mistakes" most of the time, but documents the process to improve the accuracy of models that represent reality.
It is notable many westerners recognize the first seed bank scientists, and in particular Nikolay Vavilov.
The legal process can't enforce research ethics, but on rare occasion people are stripped of their credentials for egregious behavior.
Despotism is ugly, and it is arrogant to think any one is immune to the phenomena:
Part of this is because the modern academy holds thinkers who are just as fraudulent in high regard today, and they are unwilling to hold them accountable.
Most of the academy holds Freud, and most of his followers in very high regard despite zero of his analysis being reproducible, falsifiable, replicatable, or coherent.
Modern social sciences are infected with a modern version of Lysenkoism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism