Lysenkoism and Neo-Lysenkoism – Effects of the Violation of the Norms of Truth-orientation and Objectivity

The anti-genetic campaign launched in the USSR in the late 1920s was the strongest ideological attack on science and scientists in the USSR and in the modern history of science in general, leading to a complete transformation of a discipline into pseudoscience. It had its roots in the nineteenth century, when Darwin’s materialistic ideas played a major role in secularizing Russian society, and Mendel’s new genetic concepts were shunned as an attack upon Darwinism and the accepted materialist view (Lazcano Reference Lazcano2010).

Trofim Lysenko was an agronomist from Ukraine who, in the 1930s and 1940s, became the leader of biology and agronomy in the Soviet Union. The strong anti-Mendel and pro-Darwin tendencies among the Russian leftists formed the ideological background against which Lysenko built his anti-genetic doctrine of heredity, but the devastating situation in Soviet agriculture after the large-scale collectivization of private farms was as important for his success. Lysenko raised hopes for the rapid breeding of new crops through novel methods. He became known in the public in 1928 when his publication on ‘jarowisation’ (vernalization) was sensationalized in Pravda.

The idea of vernalization, a practice that originated outside Russia, was that by treating seeds with moisture or cold, they could be induced to produce a crop with different properties. For example, winter wheat would germinate even in spring. Unlike the scientists who first conducted the research on vernalization, Lysenko claimed to have succeeded in producing ‘vernalization’ on a large scale and to have increased crop yield. His later claims that the ‘vernalization’ effects were inherited and that he could transform one species into another (both baseless) marked the beginning of his fight against established genetics (Deichmann Reference Deichmann2014).

Lysenko’s opposing ‘genetics’ did not originate from scientific discussions about heredity or other topics; his ideas were not derived from Lamarckism or Lamarckians’ discussions in the Soviet Union (Joravsky Reference Joravsky1970), although he later used the notion of the inheritance of acquired characteristics as an ideological tool. In the main, he derived his ideas from practical agriculture and popular beliefs. His model was Ivan V. Michurin, a popular agricultural practitioner and breeder of fruit trees, whose basic principle was ‘the purposeful and directed training of hybrids’ by the environment (Yakovlev Reference Yakovlev1949), likewise an unfounded idea.

Lysenko vehemently rejected the distinction between genotype and phenotype, which he equated with ‘Mendelism-Morganism-Weismannism’. To him, the established genetics was ‘the same as idealism in biology’ that he contrasted with the ‘Michurin trend in biology, … a materialistic trend because it does not separate heredity from the living body and the conditions of life’ (Lysenko Reference Lysenko1948). Lysenko denied the relevance of mathematics and statistics for biology, using extremely small and genetically heterogeneous samples and almost no controls.

Lysenko’s work became politically ideologized starting around 1930 when he joined forces with Isaak I. Prezent, a Communist party ideologue who recognized the ideological potential of Lysenko’s ‘genetics’. A pseudoscientist, Lysenko disregarded or rejected well-established theories and practices in genetics and cell theory. He was supported by political power and terror in a way that was unprecedented in modern science. Starting in the 1930s, institutes of genetics were closed down, journals ceased to appear, books were removed from library shelves, texts were revised, and names became unmentionable. Opponents of Lysenko’s genetics lost their jobs or were forced into other areas of work. Dissident scientists, among them Nikolai I. Vavilov, an internationally renowned geneticist and botanist, and the Jewish geneticists Israel Agol, Max Levin, and Solomon Levit, were murdered, many of them denounced by Lysenko himself.

Genetics was fully defeated in August 1948 at a session of the Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences headed by Lysenko and personally directed by Stalin. It marked the USSR’s commitment to developing a national science, separated from the global scientific community. This session is a prime example of the swiftness and efficiency with which scientific dissidents were silenced and forced into public retractions (Borinskaya et al. Reference Borinskaya, Ermolaev and Kolchinsky2019). The wave of suppression and murder of dissident scientists that followed Lysenko’s rise to power, especially from the late 1940s, has been documented by Zhores A. Medvedev (Reference Medvedev1969), David Joravsky (Reference Joravsky1970), Loren Graham (Reference Graham and Graham1993), Valery Soyfer (Reference Soyfer1994), Nikolai Krementsov (Reference Krementsov1997), Svetlana A. Borinskaya et al. (Reference Borinskaya, Ermolaev and Kolchinsky2019), and in articles in the Russian language. Not until Khrushchev’s fall from power in 1964 did Lysenko finally lose power, and his pseudoscientific doctrine lost government support.

It is most alarming the Lysenkoism re-emerged in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s. This neo-Lysenkoism is supported by ‘Putin’s revival of Soviet attitudes’ (Graham 2015) and is caused, among other things, by the old debate between national and global culture in Russia and the political fight against the West (Kolchinsky et al. Reference Kolchinsky, Kutschera, Hossfeld and Levit2017).

To conclude, Lysenkoism shows that, within a few years, ideologies combined with political pressure changed the ‘cultural norms of science’ and took precedence over the principles of truth-orientation, objectivity and universalism. The prevalent ideologies were an anti-Western, nationalist identity ideology and a populist anti-genetic ideology that was in line with the communist primacy of the environment and re-education. As a result, a flourishing science, namely genetics in Russia, was almost completely demolished in the past and is threatened again today.

Threats to Objectivity and Truth-orientation Posed by Current Identity Policies

The norms of scientific objectivity and truth have been repeatedly challenged in Western democracies, for example in philosophical–sociological discourses about the denial of the existence of scientific facts that are related to names such as Foucault, Latour, Bloor, Fuller, and others. However, in most cases, these discourses took place as intellectual discussions in the humanities and the public; they rarely affected the (natural) sciences. In contrast, identity policies today are not intellectual discourses, but powerful movements allegedly aiming at improving social justice in all academic disciplines and institutions. They are related to group identities of race and gender and operate under the labels of Decolonizing Science or Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. I demonstrate their power by first reviewing the case of Tomáš Hudlický and the journal Angewandte Chemie before offering a more general view.

Parallels and Differences Between the Current Identity Movements and Race Ideology in Academia in Nazi Germany

Unlike in the Soviet Union under Stalin, where the terror exerted by Lysenko and his political supporters was directed against all scientists who opposed the ideologically desired pseudoscientific doctrines, Nazi terror in science was mainly directed against a particular group of scientists who were defined by what was considered their race, namely, Jewish scientists. This was irrespective of their scientific or political views; scientific achievements did not play any role. Nazi race ideology was grounded in the Volkish movement, an ethno-nationalist movement of the nineteenth century, which promoted the idea of Volk (people or nation) as an organic unity.

Nazi race ideology affected the sciences and humanities in Germany in various ways. There were attempts to integrate racial ideology into research and teaching (see below), and some research content was geared towards nationalistic goals. But it had its most detrimental impact through the dismissal and forced emigration of Jewish scientists and scholars following the implementation of the ‘law for the resurrection of the professional civil service’ on 7 April 1933. This law provided for the dismissal of ‘non-Aryan’ university teachers defined as those with at least one Jewish grandparent, and a small number of leftist ones, many of whom were also Jewish or ‘non-Aryans’. This purge was followed by the dismissal of non-Jews who were married to a Jew, and of Jewish scientists in Austria after its annexation in 1938. The expulsions led to considerable losses in many academic disciplines (see below).

The law implied a fundamental change of scientific norms endangering scientific performance, a fact that was recognized by many German scientists, though most of them did not publicly object; this would increasingly have endangered their positions and worse. Yet a few non-Jewish scientists did not comply with certain anti-Jewish measures. To give just one example: the organic chemist and Nobel laureate Adolf Windaus defended his academic freedom by refusing to compromise with Nazi activists. When a group of National Socialist students attempted to expel the only Jewish doctoral student at the institute, Klaus Neisser, Windaus asked the Ministry of Education for his own dismissal, clearly stating that he would not tolerate political agitation. Interestingly, the Ministry accepted Windaus’ conditions for staying on: the main activists had to move to another university and the Jewish student could complete his doctorate. Windaus was persuaded to stay in his position; in his case the continuation of the research of a renowned chemist was considered more important to the politicians than the fulfilment of political and ideological demands (Deichmann Reference Deichmann1999). Many young scientists supported the political measures because they hoped to be appointed to the vacant positions. Political activism and antisemitism were particularly strong among students, who were the drivers of the ‘National Socialist revolution’ at universities.

Fritz Haber was a chemist who probably embodied the hopes, success and, finally, failure of German-Jewish scientists more than anyone else. In 1909 he succeeded in synthesizing ammonia from its elements, thus securing the supply of fertilizers and ammunition during the First World War, an achievement for which he was awarded a Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1918. A German patriot, he pioneered chemical warfare, which earned him the praise of German nationalists and the condemnation of the Western Allies. From 1911 until 1933 he was a professor of physical chemistry at the University of Berlin and director of a prestigious research institute, the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry. In 1933 Haber was temporarily permitted to remain in his position because of his contributions to the German war effort during the First World War, but after having communicated their dismissal to his Jewish workers, Haber resigned from his position. His letter of resignation to the Minister of Education clearly points to the violation of long-standing academic norms (unlike in the case of Windaus, the Minister of Education did not try to persuade him to stay put):

A year later, Haber died in exile.

The purge of Jewish scientists was preceded by campaigns of non-Jewish students demanding quotas for German-Jewish students (and also students from East European countries) to curb their rising number in Germany. The call for quotas or a numerus clausus to restrict the number of Jews at universities was not unique to Germany. Many other countries introduced quotas to limit or deny access for Jews to universities, such as Canada, Hungary, Russia and the Soviet Union, and some private universities in the United States.

In Germany, the expulsion of Jewish scientists and scholars from universities in 1933 ended a long period of their increasing participation and success. Following the legal emancipation of Jews in Germany in 1870, Jewish scientists and scholars were admitted to academic positions and became prominent in such fields as biochemistry, chemistry, medicine, mathematics, the classics, law, sociology and psychology. Thus, the purge in 1933 had far-reaching consequences (Bergmann et al. Reference Bergmann, Epple and Ungar2012; Deichmann Reference Deichmann1996, Reference Deichmann2001). Chemistry, mathematics, and medicine were affected to a much larger extent than biology and physics: about 25% of academic chemists and 33% of biochemists and mathematicians were forced to leave their positions; many of them emigrated. The loss of prominent Jewish biochemists was a major reason for the decline of formerly world-renowned German biochemistry. Many Jewish refugees helped significantly raise the scientific level of certain disciplines in their countries of refuge; among them, biochemistry in the United States and the United Kingdom, and mathematics in the United States. Many excellent German or Hungarian Jewish physicists and mathematicians contributed decisively to the Manhattan project.

The expulsion of Jewish scientists was the single most important reason for the decline of some sciences in Germany after the Second World War, a decline to which the international isolation and self-isolation of German scientists greatly contributed (Deichmann Reference Deichmann2001). With slogans such as ‘science is a product of blood’ (a metaphor of race) and ‘scientific universalism is a manifestation of past liberal and Jewish ways of thinking’, ideologues such as Hitler’s race representative, Alfred Rosenberg, also aimed – largely unsuccessfully – at instilling political ideology into the content of research and teaching. The movement of ‘German physics’, launched by the two physics Nobel laureates Philipp Lenard and Johannes Stark in the 1920s, rejected quantum mechanics and relativity theory as Jewish science and succeeded in filling some university chairs of theoretical physics by applied physicists (see, for example, Beyerchen Reference Beyerchen1977). But these campaigns came to an end during the Second World War and did not succeed in committing scientists to a pseudoscience.

It should be added that political ideology also provided the frame for scientists to conduct highly unethical and murderous research practices. Examples are psychiatrists who implemented euthanasia on a large scale and other medical scientists who took advantage of the possibility to carry out unethical and in part scientifically questionable experiments on ‘inferior people’, with Josef Mengele as the most infamous representative (see, for example, Baader Reference Baader1992; Müller-Hill Reference Müller-Hill1988 [1984]; Nyiszli Reference Nyiszli2012 [1946]). These aspects of Nazi race policy point to some of the major differences between science in Nazi Germany and in democracies today. Differences also exist in aspects that are otherwise similar: while in both cases race was made a central category for academic assessments, there is no parallel in the way this was done and in the consequences. Today, the suppression of freedom of expression in teaching and publications, the removal of publications by editors and publishers, and the use of racial categories in the hiring, promoting, and publishing of scholars and scientists are not followed by their loss of civil rights and confinements to concentration camps as in Nazi Germany. Nevertheless, some ideological content and mechanisms for its implementation are similar in both systems, similarities that I briefly summarize here to close this section.

• Race as a decisive category in academia

  In Nazi Germany, the allocation of academic positions or the right to study became linked to a racial precondition – to be an ‘Aryan’. Race was given priority. All Jewish scientists and those with Jewish ancestry, independently of any criteria of merit, were expelled and, some years later, Jewish students were completely denied access to universities. As with all other anti-Jewish policies, this one, too, was justified by being beneficial to the German people, in this case, to ‘remove’ numerically overrepresented Jewish scientists and restore justice to non-Jewish students.

  Despite large differences from the past, identity policy such as DEI practice is also a racist measure that is justified by benevolent intentions. It has already been used to discriminate against Asian Americans. Inherently, even if unintentionally, it will lead to de-facto quota systems for ‘over-represented’ minorities such as Jews and Asians (in North America). Quota systems, however, contradict the idea of equality of opportunity. Ethnicity appears to be confined to skin colour, which means it is a purely racial category. Other questions are ignored, such as how should equality of gender be achieved in minorities with patriarchal structures? Do different economic statuses also count as diversity? Or how can women or members of a dark-skinned minority be protected against the possible stigma, reproach, or self-doubt, of having received a position due to an institution’s need to demonstrate gender or ethnicity diversity?

• Self-censorship and denunciation

  In Nazi Germany, universities were forced by law to dismiss Jewish academics and students. But institutions and individuals also adjusted to the new political situation in anticipatory obedience. Scholars displayed their allegiance to the new regime by joining the Nazi party (which never became compulsory), denouncing colleagues, not greeting Jewish colleagues, or by hoisting the swastika.

  Today, the Nazi party and swastika are not acceptable, but denunciation is. According to the organization ‘Scholars under Fire’, incidents that target academics have been on the rise since 2015 and are ‘increasingly coming from within academia itself – from other scholars and especially from undergraduate students. These targeting incidents take a multitude of forms, including demands for an investigation, demotion, censorship, suspension, and even termination’ (German and Stevens Reference German and Stevens2021). This organization found that, in a most unfair way, ‘scholars were targeted most often for speech involving race (e.g., racial inequality, historical racism, racial slurs, BLM [Black Lives Matter], DEI)’, and, in addition, by gender and institutional policy. The number of examples of academics whose scholarly reputation and careers have been destroyed is rising, as the list of ‘cancelled’ professors indicates (Acevedo Reference Acevedo2023).

• Populism

  Unlike the intrusion of ideology into science in authoritarian countries in the past, the movement of DEI was not manufactured by political parties but by parts of society. But the National Socialist racial transformation of universities likewise made ample use of populistic sentiments and was driven in particular by students and young academics who resented the strong representation of Jewish scientists and students. In 1933, students protested against Jewish professors who, as former front-line soldiers, had been temporarily granted a special permission to retain their positions. It was also students and their organizations who organized the ‘book burning’ events in 1933, in which books by Jewish or left-leaning authors, and other undesirable books, were burned in many university cities. Today, other forms of protest are replaced by social media campaigns, particularly Twitter storms that target ideologically deviant behaviour. The resulting academic responses show that protesters often reach their goal (see, for example, Stevens et al. Reference Stevens, Jussim and Honeycutt2020).

• Violation of the norm of universalism

  By making race an essential basis for admission to faculty, right to study, funding, and publishing, Nazi politicians as well as DEI promoters have violated the norm of scientific universalism, according to which scientific work has to be evaluated on the basis of impersonal criteria, not affiliation to race, gender, religion, etc. (Merton Reference Merton and Merton1973 [1942]). In Nazi Germany, the merit principle continued to apply, but scientists deemed racially not acceptable, that is Jewish scientists, were excluded. Unlike the social justice movements, which do not deny academic rights to ‘white men’ completely, universalism was essentially eliminated.

Summary: DEI, the Merit System, and Equity Versus the Maxim of Equality of Opportunity

By emphasizing group identities as criteria of assessments, DEI violates longstanding academic maxims that are based on individuals. DEI weakens the existing merit system that rewards individual talent and achievement. Even if the merit system was never fully realized, and has been criticized for its flaws (see, for example, Sandel Reference Sandel2020), it was – and remains – one of the foundations of scientific success, the results of which we perceive today in reliable theories about nature and the achievements in medicine and technology. Instead of dismantling the merit-based system, we should focus on fixing its imperfections. Aiming at predetermined numbers of people representing social, ethnic or gender groups, the equity principle leads to the marginalization of individual qualifications. The danger of the push for equity, as political scientist Charles Lipson (Reference Lipson2021) observes, is that it paradoxically challenges America’s (and also other Western countries’) principle that people should be treated equally and judged as individuals, not preferentially judged as members of certain groups.

DEI overrides the individuum-based maxim of ‘equality of opportunity’ that has to be distinguished, as sociologist Daniel Bell (Reference Bell1972) emphasized, from ‘equality of result’. Equality of opportunity does not necessarily lead to equality of outcome. The term ‘equal opportunity’, which originated in different ways in different countries, is usually understood as the absence of discrimination based on personal attributes, such as gender, race or ethnicity, religion or belief, disability, or age. It implies fair competition for limited positions and funding.

The increasing suspension or limitation of the merit system through the implementation of DEI in the United States and the ensuing lowering of scientific standards inflict serious damage not only to individual scientists but also to the international position of its science. Deift et al. (Reference Deift, Jitomirskaya and Klainerman2021) warn of a strong decline of the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics system (STEM) in the United States, believing that the country is at risk of losing the dominant position in the mathematical sciences that it has held since the forced emigration of Jewish scientists from Europe in the 1930s. In addition to the low level of mathematical education and other countries’, in particular China’s, aggressive competing with the United States to recruit top talent, the authors see the reasons for their concern in the ‘nationwide effort to reduce racial disparities’, which has weakened the connection between merit and scholastic admission and also served to discriminate against certain groups, mainly Asian Americans. The authors hold that ‘the social-justice rhetoric used to justify these diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs is often completely at odds with the reality one observes on campuses’, because the concept of ‘fighting white supremacy’, doesn’t apply to the mathematical sciences where ‘America-born scholars of all races now collectively represent a small (and diminishing) minority of the country’s academic STEM specialists’.

In conclusion, the authority that science has in modern societies is grounded in the fact that scientific methods and reasoning are best suited to generate reliable objective knowledge and solve outstanding problems in many fields. This authority is dependent on competent researchers, independent of their gender and ethnic group or race.

As pointed out by Sergiu Klainerman in his article in this Focus, racial and gender inequalities in the sciences are not only the result of workplace discrimination. They are also, and sometimes primarily, the result of biological, cultural and environmental factors that include differences between men and women in career and lifestyle preferences. Ethnicity and gender influence, among other things, scholars’ and scientists’ motivation, ability and perseverance. Different ethnic groups, men and women, and individuals within each group, differ in one or more of these and other characteristics. This explains, for example, why in the United States Asian Americans are disproportionately successful in some sciences and mathematics. Therefore, basing employment, promotion, or funding on the categories of race and gender to reach equity endangers scientific achievement. In addition, the suppression of a free debate about what the conditions for good science are, contributes to its decline.