Word: lysenko
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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J.B.S. Haldane, Britain's leading geneticist and a staunch Communist, has been beset for some time now by a problem of basic loyalties. Should he follow the Moscow-approved genetics line of Trofim Denisovich Lysenko (briefly, that environment controls the heredity of organisms)? Or should he follow the Morgan-Mendelian theory (that the genes in the reproductive cells control heredity), generally accepted outside the U.S.S.R., but formally denounced by Soviet officialdom as unscientific and un-Marxist...
...them, they would doubtless deserve severe criticism." But he pleads also for open-mindedness on the part of the West: "It is of the utmost importance that biologists in this country should be able to appreciate both the positive and the negative elements in the views put forward by Lysenko." As a scientist, he begs both sides to assume that one of the two concepts does not necessarily rule out the other, and to work at the problem with ultimate truth as the goal...
With the patient care of a scientific researcher gathering evidence, Professor Huxley reviews the enslavement of Soviet scientists. The test case is biology, his own science. He tells how, step by step, Trofim Lysenko, a "scientifically illiterate" plant-breeder, was enthroned as absolute boss of Soviet biology with all his opponents "dismissed or disgraced." Dr. Huxley knows Lysenko and considers him a better politician than a scientist. In conversations he found that Lysenko and his followers "simply do not talk the same language as Western men of science." Much of Professor Huxley's long article consists of quotations from...
Spitzer, in the letter, took issue with an article in the News which attacked the Lysenko theory of genetics. The point of the Spitzer letter was that the Lysenko theory had not been given a scientific trial and that "in the interests of scientific objectivity" it would be wise to read the theory from source material rather than from condensed translations. Spitzer gave the impression that there was some evidence in support of the Russian theory, which is held in low repute by almost all western geneticists...
Strand, again in his statement charged. "He (Spitzer) supports the charistan Lysenko in preference to what he must know to be the truth." Spitzer answered. "I did not support Lysenko in my letter in any case, it is aboard to reason that agreement with a Soviet scientific theory is evidence of adherence to a party line...