Word: geneticists
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Russian scientists, like Russian artists, must toe the party line. Soviet biologists who disagree with the scientifically naive theories of T. D. Lysenko, Communism's pet geneticist, run the risk of being "disciplined." The penalty for arguing is demotion, imprisonment or worse (TIME, Sept. 6). Economists and statisticians who have deviated from the official line have also suffered. But until recently, Russian physicists were left alone. The Soviet Union, struggling desperately to make an atomic bomb, needed all its physicists...
...Vavilov, president of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, explained: "A Soviet scientist considers any successful work as impossible, in any field of knowledge, without a thorough mastery of the laws of dialectical materialism." Professor Vavilov is something of an authority on such matters. His brother Nikolai, a famous Russian geneticist and an opponent of Lysenko, disappeared mysteriously about 1942 and is believed to have died in a concentration camp...
Back to Galileo. Western scientists are outraged by this Soviet attack upon scientific principle. It reminds them of Galileo, who was "disciplined" for asserting that the earth moves around the sun. They do not see how Haldane, who has enjoyed wide respect as a biologist and geneticist, can continue to toe the party line and remain a scientist...
Western scientists, approving this declaration, will follow Haldane carefully. If he goes to Prague, they will note what happens to him if he deviates from the party's scientific line. The line itself is none too clear, and devout Communist geneticists may eventually get into trouble if they stick to it. Last week Nobel Prizewinning Dr. H. J. Muller, a leading U.S. geneticist, pointed out a doctrinal time bomb that threatens Lysenko's followers. The Lysenko doctrine, said Muller, teaches that the heredity of organisms is shaped by their environments. When applied to the evolution of man, said...
Last week the Academy swung into action. It purged itself of two of its most noted members: Physiologist L. A. Orbeli and Morphologist I. I. Shmalgauzen; liquidated a laboratory on cytogenetics (the study of cell formation), and accused its director, world-famous Geneticist N. P. Dubinin, of having taken "antiscientific positions." All textbooks on biology were ordered rewritten; teaching will be oriented to the Lysenko doctrine...