SOUND and FURY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 501, 28 January 1949, Page 16

SOUND and FURY

(By Airmail — Special to "The Listener" ) DECEMBER 22 HE great Lysenko controversy (with which The Listener has already made its readers conversant*) has just been aired by the BBC, which persuaded Professor J. B. S. Haldane to come to the microphone with three other scientists. The occasion might have been more interesting than it was, but even so the News Chronicle printed a querter-page spread by Ritchie Calder, ‘| explaining what significance it ‘could have, and why it was likely to mean little; namely, because Professor Haldane was expected to withhold his judgmeént on Lysenko’s theories until a full translation has been published of the 500 pages of discussion at the August Conference of the Soviet Academy. That is just what did happen. Professor Haldane said that he disagreed with a lot of Lysenko’s theories, but declined to pass any judgment until he has seen the transJation. Until it comes out, he has several more months in which to consider in advance his position as a Communist and a geneticist whose theories are now denounced by Lysenko (and by the Soviet Academy of Agricultural Sciences). In the meantime, he is accused by Dr. O; H, Frankel in a letter in the BBC Listener of misleading the public: "He

does not ‘talk Lysenko’ to scientific audiences; he speaks with one voice to scientists, with another to the public." Dr. Frankel says that a man of Professor Haldane’s standing as a popular writer on science "may be in a position to convert single-handed a_ clear-cut issue into a ‘quarrel among specialists’ where ‘there is right on both sides.’ " * bo a [Tt is proposed in London to establish an Institute of Recorded Sound; articles of association are being drafted and headquarters are being sought. The project is to build up sound-archives on similar lines to those of the British Film Institute, and 25 learned and technical bodies are ready to assist, including the Ministry of Education, the great recording companies, the BBC, the Arts Council, and the British Council. It would establish a library of gramophone discs and other types of recording going back to the Edison period, strengthened by current output in four main categories: languages and dialects; speeches and historical events; scientific and. medical; and music, Western and exotic. There are already some great commercial and private collections in Britain and if these were wholly or partly deposited with the Institute, the archives would soon contain about 200,000 discs. There would be vocal records from the Caruso epoch, folk-song, animal sounds, and bird-song, irregular heartbeats, stammering and its stages of cure, and the instructions and comments uttered by a surgeon during a major operation. e * x Ea LL all England eventually talk BBC English? Sir Ernest Gowers, a former Civil Servant, whose book Plain Words (from His Majesty's Stationery Office) was a _ best-seller some months ago seems to think so. The BBC Year Book of 1948, which is just out, contains an article by him in which he says that in the BBC England has created the Academy of English

speech for which Swift and other lovers of the language have hankered, and that BBC usages will gradually find their way into the dictionaries and grammar books. He reluctantly agrees- that the announcers must speak with the accent of the few and not of the many, though it may destroy the richness of English dialect, and marvels at the trouble taken to pronounce foreign words "with a native, if mot more than native, accuracy." He wishes the News would let people "assert" rather than "claim" things; and blames Stewart MacPherson (a popular quizmaster here) for the growing use of | "I wouldn’t know" in place of "I don’t | know." * * * HE BBC has introduced (without announcement) a "New Every Morning’ prayer book which has_ the approval of the Archbishop of Canterbury and other Church leaders. It is a revised version, by the Rev. Eric Fenn, of the daily prayer book first used over the air in 4936 for all interdenominational studio services; and costs 1/6. During the war there was a modified version, and this first postwar version includes suitable prayers for friends, night-workers, and briefly | "takes notice of the Cee. increasing regard fof animals. Mr. Fenn " Presbyterian) told one of the newspapers that he worked on it for three years. He is reported to have added, in words which might attract the attention of Sir Ernest Gowers: "I | believe we have now a stock of prayers which is interdenominationally acceptable." -_ -_-$-$-$- $$

*T. D. Lysenko succeeded N. I. Vavilov as head of the Soviet Institute of Plant Industry about 1941. According to Professor Eric by, formerly scientific attaché to the Australian Legation in Moscow (who discussed the relationship between Vavilov and Lysenko in a talk recorded for the NZBS about two years ago), Lysenko has more influence in political ci in Russia than he has standing in the scientific world. According to him, the principles by which heredity is studied all over the world are wrong principles and contrary to Marxian philosophy. In The Listener of May 9, 1947, Dr. O. H. Frankel, of Christchurch, wrote, ". . . The greatest contribution the world of science can make... towards a full resumption of -the great work Russian geneticists and plant geographers did in the 'twenties and ‘thirties under the leadership cf N. I. Vavilov is to expose the medieval quackery of the Lysenko school."