SCIENCE IN THE SOVIET

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 404, 21 March 1947, Page 5

SCIENCE IN THE SOVIET

Sir,-Professor Ashby’s recent report in The Listener-was on the whole most interesting and informative, but in fairness to the Soviet Union and to science, strong exception must be taken to some of his remarks, mainly concerning the Vavilov-Lysenko controversy. . In 1940, Vavilov, then director of the Institute of Genetics of the Academy of Sciences, was replaced by "a man called Lysenko whose contributions to science" according to Professor Ashby "are quite negligible." In the same paragraph Professor Ashby says "Lysenko got a strong following because he had worked himself into a position of great influence through his . .. . services to agriculture." Perhaps agriculture is not a science or perhaps even the Professor is sométimes unscientific on the question of the Soviet Union. He asserts that Lysenko’s theories are "contrary to the facts as we know them," This nonentity Lysenko, before he replaced Vavilov, was President of the Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences, has twice been awarded the First Stalin Prize, and for years previously he held

| a leading position at the Odessa Institute where he formed most of his theories. According to Hudson and Richens in their booklet (recently published by the Imperial Bureau of Plant Breeding and Genetics) "from these investigations (carried out before 1929) he arrived at his well-known theories of phasic development which, together with the practical technique of vernalisation, brought Lysenko world-wide fame." He has also bred the first varieties which would give economic yields under the most rigorous climatic conditions from the tropics of Central Asia to well above the Arctic Circle. In 1935 Lysenko -courageously attacked the whole body of Mendelian genetics and their exponents inside and outside the Soviet Union. His theories were at first popular only with the practical plant-breeders, farmers, and _ horticulturists for the simple reason that although his theories were "contrary to the facts as we know them," they enabled the practical men to breed better varieties of plants in a much shorter time than by using the ordinary theories; in other words, these unscientific theories worked in practice, at least in some fields better than those based on Mendel. How correct was the rest of Lysenko’s work will only be proved by further experimentation and practice. Lysenko replaced Vavilov because the authorities and, more important, the majority of scientists, considered him to be the better man. In the Soviet Union professors and directors are not appointed in perpetuity, but are answerable to the general body of scientists, students, and lecturers and to the practical people concerned, according to the principles of Soviet bureaucracy in contrast to those of Western democracy. When professors, etc., are replaced, they are either retired or placed in subordinate positions; and I nd it just as, difficult to see why they should be imprisoned as Professor Ashby will find it to prove that Vavilov was

imprisoned.

JOS

(Wellington).

(A photograph of Lysenko, together with another opinion upon him, appears on page 10.-Ed.)