Soviet genetics and world science : Lysenko and the meaning of heredity / [Julian Huxley].
- Julian Huxley
- Date:
- 1949
Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)
Credit: Soviet genetics and world science : Lysenko and the meaning of heredity / [Julian Huxley]. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![character was already present in the strain of apples used as scions. I could multiply examples, but these must suffice. They do not carry on discussion in a scientific manner. I have already given some examples of this in the preceding chapter, and though I would have liked to substantiate this too by further citations, I have space but for one ( 3 p. 558). Professor Nemchinov, the director of the Timiriazev Academy of Agriculture, was speaking:— I do not go so far as to share the views of the comrades who assert that chromosomes have nothing to do with the mechanism of heredity. ( Commotion.) A voice: There are no mechanisms ... Nemchinov: . . . I would not consider it right of A. R. Zhebrak, who committed an anti-patriotic act [in writing a letter to the American journal Science, in which he criticized Lysenko] ... I do not consider that it is necessary because of this to close down his work on amplidiploidy [doubling of chromosome- number in plants, with associated change of properties]. A voice: You ought to resign. This is certainly not the way in which a scientific discussion would be carried on in the Royal Society or the National Academy of Sciences. For further examples, I must refer my readers to the verbatim report of the discussion ( 3 ). They neither demand nor accept the same kind of evidence as professional scientists elsewhere ; they confuse fact with doctrine and theory with hypothesis or with belief ; they misuse or redefine terms to suit themselves ; they appeal to past authority instead of to present established fact and to utility instead of truth ; they accept other than scientific criteria, or even insist upon them, in what purports to be a](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b18022777_0084.JP2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
