Time to dust off an old post I made about this guy. He was still majorly wrong in important ways, but like most things involving the USSR, the story we’re told isn’t very accurate. He wasn’t just a dumb pseudoscientist who killed eveyone who disagreed with him:
Lysenko is actually pretty misrepresented in the West. He wasn’t, like, totally opposed to Mendelian genetics or Darwinian evolution. He believed that some acquired traits were heritable, and while he was wrong about what traits, exactly, could be inherited, he was broadly correct. Hence, you know, epigenetics. This is especially true of plants, which can pass on acquired traits to multiple successive generations (not so much in animals). He did good work as a plant physiologist before he got into genetics, being the first to describe vernalization. Then things got out of control, mostly because of a lack of formal scientific education among the government and general public, and also Lysenko lacking a rigorous scientific background himself (coming from a poor peasant background):
To sum up briefly: Lysenko’s vernalization was received by the agricultural specialists as a very interesting and promising method that deserved intensive investigations. He had made a fruitful impact on research in plant physiology though his experiments were sloppy, his theoretical explanations were disputed, and the real usefulness of his practical proposals was still unproved. But the general public, including political leaders, did not see the crucial difference between an idea being accepted as a fruitful working hypothesis and its being taken to be an established scientific fact. The methodological revolution that was believed to have taken place paralysed traditional means of scientific criticism.
If Lysenko’s tests for vernalization were so poor, why was the method not criticized and rejected by agricultural experts? There can be no doubt that they saw the inadequacy of Lysenko’s evidence. As Joravsky has pointed out this was a time when many wild methods were tried in Soviet agriculture. 33 Furthermore, there had been the cultural revolution. Bourgeois specialists had learned to be careful about what they said, and they were aware that traditional scientific arguments were not necessarily listened to by officials and the public. They were biding their time, trusting that new experiments would sort the wheat from the chaff in Lysenko’s ideas. It was widely felt that vernalization was a promising method, and possibly Lysenko was on the right track with his hasty applications. Under the circumstances it was best not to risk one’s neck with precipitous criticism.
But criticism did eventually come–and it was effective. In 1936, the plant breeders P. N. Konstantinov and I. P. Lisitsyn led the attack. In numerous articles and lectures they argued that the method of vernalizing seed grain had not yet been worked out in sufficent detail or properly tested. The results in a particular region depended very much on choosing the right procedures and the right varieties. With the crude guidelines so far given the outcome would sometimes be positive and sometimes negative. The defects of Lysenko’s method of evaluating the results of vernalization were clearly pointed out. 34’ 35 Lysenko tried to disarm Konstantinov by labelling him a bourgeois specialist, but in the end he reluctantly admitted that the method was not properly developed and tested for all circumstances. 36 After this the vernalization of spring grain was apparently quietly dropped. 37 But Lysenko’s public reputation had already been made through the propaganda for his method in the mass media. The criticism does not seem to have had much impact outside the narrow circle of agricultural specialists. Even Soviet biologists continued to take Lysenko’s practical achievements in vernalization for granted, at least in public discussions.
It should also go without saying that the idea that he was personally responsible for starving tens of millions of people in the USSR and China is also complete bullshit.
Here’s a whole thing that puts him in the proper context:
spoiler
We read with great interest the recent article ‘Some pioneers of European human genetics’ by Peter Harper.1 This comprehensive review is very informative and highly appreciated. But a somewhat misleading statement needs to be reconsidered. Harper regarded Lysenko as a fraudulent agronomist. We disagree with him on this fundamental point. We are thinking that he was greatly misled by Medvedev’s book, The Rise and Fall of TD Lysenko,2 which he cited in his article. It should be noted that there are many misleading statements in this book. For example, in chapter 8, Medvedev argued against the validity of Lysenko’s work on plant graft hybridization, and pointed out that ‘serious and precise experiments by many scientists have failed to prove the possibility of transfer of hereditary stable properties from stock to scion’,2 thus regarding graft hybridization as Lysenko’s fraud. To our knowledge, it is Darwin who put forward the concept of graft hybridization. He described many cases of graft hybrids, and considered it to be special importance for understanding the mechanism of inheritance and variation. Later, Michurin invented the so-called ‘mentor-grafting’ method, which greatly enhanced the induction of graft hybrids. Lysenko not only recognized the existence of graft hybrids, but also applied the method of graft hybridization to the practice of plant breeding. Over the past several decades, extensive experiments on graft hybridization have been carried out and numbers of new crops and varieties were developed by grafting, indicating that graft-induced variant characteristics were stable and inheritable.3 Now it has been proposed that graft hybridization may serve as a mechanism of horizontal (or lateral) gene transfer. Thus, it is not proper to continue to regard Lysenko as a fraudulent agronomist.
Harper considered the inheritance of acquired characteristics as the defining feature of Lysenkoism, and referred to it as false science.1 Actually, the inheritance of acquired characters has been the subject of passionate debate and heated controversy since the days of Lamarck. Even Darwin accepted the Lamarckian inheritance of acquired characteristics as an established fact, and had assumed that it was of importance in evolution.4 He considered natural selection, the inheritance of acquired characteristics and mutation as three factors influencing evolution. It is true that Lysenko was a keen supporter of the inheritance of acquired characteristics. He claimed that the environmentally induced changes were transmitted to the progeny by demonstration of the conversion of spring wheat into winter wheat and vice versa. In recent years, there has been a substantial body of reliable experimental evidence for the inheritance of acquired characteristics.4, 5 Lysenko’s work on the conversion of spring wheat into winter wheat can be explained by transgenerational epigenetic inheritance.6 Now it seems that Lysenko was not wrong in believing the inheritance of acquired characteristics.
Harper also mentioned Lysenko’s errors and crimes, as well as the death of numerous researchers in genetics.1 The impression which one gets from reading this paragraph is that Lysenko was responsible for the death of these geneticists. We fear that this view is too one-sided and not supported by historical evidence. It is true that Lysenko disputed with Vavilov and many other geneticists on some genetic viewpoints. But we must know that Lysenko was a leading Soviet scientist in agriculture and genetics. He was not the NKVD chief, thus he had no power to arrest geneticists. Lysenko himself repeatedly maintained that he was not personally responsible for Vavilov’s arrest and death. He recalled that the investigator of Vavilov had come to see him and asked: ‘What can you say in general about the wrecking (spying, counterrevolutionary) activities of Vavilov?’ Lysenko replied: ‘There were and are some differences of opinion on scientific matters between myself and Vavilov, but I have no knowledge of any wrecking activities of Vavilov’.7 In addition, Haldane, one of the towering figures of twentieth century biology, also denied that Lysenko had been responsible for Vavilov’s arrest and death.8
It is not our intention to minimize Lysenko’s mistakes and to exalt his contributions, but we must try to see things in their right proportion. Actually, some of Lysenko’s work had a certain scientific merit, which was recognized internationally. For example, it was Lysenko who coined the term vernalization, which is now still an extant scientific term and frequently appears in Nature, Science, Cell and many prestigious journals. In addition, some of Lysenko’s work was highly praised by world-famous scientists. For example, in early 1930s, Vavilov repeatedly place a high value on Lysenko’s contributions to science and agricultural production. As he said, ‘Lysenko is a careful and highly talented researcher. His experiments are irreproachable’.9 In 1964, Haldane made an objective comment: ‘In my opinion, Lysenko is a very fine biologist and some of his ideas are right’.10 Of course, we also recognize that some of Lysenko’s ideas were wrong and badly wrong. His biggest mistake was mixing science and politics. He regarded Mendelian genetics as ‘bourgeois science’ and forced Soviet geneticists to accept Michurinism, for which he got a bad reputation.
