LYSENKO v. VAVILOV

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 408, 18 April 1947, Page 18

LYSENKO v. VAVILOV

Sir,--Lysenko has certainly stirred up a hornet’s nest, some of the contents of which have reached and stung New Zealanders. As one. who has been stung I ‘would like to add a few comments on the letter by "Jos" in The Listener of March 21. I have just read a booklet by Lysenko outlining his "theories." As these are -based on experiments not quoted, but according to reliable information from a scientific worker who spent some time in the Soviet Union, inadequate in number and unchecked by modern statistical method, they are-to quote Dr. Goldschmidt-"worthless to science." Unless a biological worker is prepared to use statistical methods his conclusions may well be faulty; if any scientist will not publish to the world details of his experiments so that they can be verified by others he is rightly suspect. The fact that Lysenko discovered "vernalization" is very important, but it does not make him a good theoretical geneticist as he sets himself up to be. Burbank made many useful discoveries; so has Michurin, but neither has any claim to any great importance in the field of biological theory-any more than an early witch-doctor who discovered a useful drug would be regarded as a good’ pharmacologist. But Lysenko is suspect, not so much because of the omission of detail from his publications, as for the extraordinary statements he. has made about his theories. In one place he solemnly declares that -he has rejected the reactionary bourgeois theorv emanating from the clerico-fascist Mendel and substituted

theories derived by his. school, which has adopted an alogical dialectic as its guide. Fancy calling poor old Mendel a clerico-fascist! What utter nonsense! I suppose we will have next J. B. S. Haldane, who uses Mendelism as the basis of his genetics being called an "arch-reactionary-cleric" and asked (by Mr. Lysenko) to leave the Communist Party! And what on earth is an "alogical dialectic"? It sounds like thinking with one’s blood to me, V. I. Lenin, whose thinking was always ‘retnarkably logical and who had the greatest respect for scientific method, will be rotating in his grave or whatever it is he is in. However, joking apart, Lysenko’s apparently unscrupulous rise to power by exploiting the lack of scieritifice knowledge of his political superiots has reésulted in a tragedy for science-the derating and probably consequent death of ore of the Soviet’s greatest men, Vavilov. It is only to be hopéd that, as is normal in the course of sciénce, Lysénko’s scientific absurdities will find him out and that Vavilov’s spirit will again carry on the fine tradition which he established in Soviet biology.

A VERY PUZZLED SCIENTIST

(Hamilton).