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The Soviet agronomist Trofim Lysenko became one of the most notorious figures in twentieth-century science after his genetic theories were discredited decades ago. Yet some scientists, even in the West, now claim that discoveries in the field of epigenetics prove that he was right after all. Seeking to get to the bottom of Lysenko’s rehabilitation in certain Russian scientific circles, Loren Graham reopens the case, granting his theories an impartial hearing to determine whether new developments in molecular biology validate his claims.
In the 1930s Lysenko advanced a “theory of nutrients” to explain plant development, basing his insights on experiments which, he claimed, showed one could manipulate environmental conditions such as temperature to convert a winter wheat variety into a spring variety. He considered the inheritance of acquired characteristics―which he called the “internalization of environmental conditions”―the primary mechanism of heredity. Although his methods were slipshod and his results were never duplicated, his ideas fell on fertile ground during a time of widespread famine in the Soviet Union.
Recently, a hypothesis called epigenetic transgenerational inheritance has suggested that acquired characteristics may indeed occasionally be passed on to offspring. Some biologists dispute the evidence for this hypothesis. Loren Graham examines these arguments, both in Russia and the West, and shows how, in Russia, political currents are particularly significant in affecting the debates.
- Sales Rank: #183980 in Books
- Published on: 2016-04-11
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.60" h x .80" w x 5.80" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 224 pages
Review
The ways that politics, religion, cultural norms, and ideologies of all kinds distort science is at the heart of Lysenko’s Ghost. Those ideologies can alter our interpretation of facts and reshape our understanding of natural events. (Maggie Koerth-Baker Technology Review 2016-03-01)
Graham has delivered an account of one of the most infamous and important, yet least-known episodes in twentieth-century science―one on which he is the leading scholar. (Edward O. Wilson)
This book adds valuable new insights into the current debates concerning elements of the newly emerging field of epigenetics and its connections to the older debates about the inheritance of acquired characteristics, especially in the context of Russia and the theories of Lysenko. Graham is in command of the materials throughout and in many cases he is one of the few who knows the materials at hand. (Everett Mendelsohn, Harvard University)
A thoughtful, historically grounded, and engaging commentary on current Russian perspectives on Lysenko and his legacy in the context of recent developments in epigenetics and Russian politics and culture. (Daniel Todes, Johns Hopkins University)
Graham’s book is a timely and important antidote to the idea that everything that is not mainstream heredity is Lysenkoism. (Maurizio Meloni Science 2016-04-22)
[Graham’s] survey of the terrifying milieu in which Lysenko thrived includes a discussion of the eugenics movement in the Soviet Union, and the short book thus encompasses two major types of threat to the integrity of scientific inquiry: institutional interference from without and political infection from within. The latter threat, in particular, is ever present…Graham’s survey of Lysenkoism and eugenics in Soviet Russia contains important lessons about threats to the health of science. (Nicholas Wade Wall Street Journal 2016-06-17)
About the Author
Loren Graham is Professor Emeritus of the History of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Most helpful customer reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
Exceptionally Good Work on Lysenko and the Soviet Academy
By Dr. Terrence McGarty
Graham has written a wonderful book on Lysenko and the Russian School of Genetics during the Stalin era. Lysenko viewed inheritance in the sense that certain characteristics could be handed down in generations based upon environmental factors experienced by parents. That is the change in a genetic makeup was not solely due to genetic changes per se. He could turn summer wheat to winter wheat by getting it used to a change in weather. Thus he did not need a genetic alteration but an environmental alteration was sufficient. In a sense the concept did play into the hands of the Marxist reasoning.
Graham blends the understanding of epigenetic changes that are currently being understood with the ideas of Lysenko and asks if this new understand then justifies Lysenko's ideas. On the other hand, Graham details Lysenko's way of dealing with his academic adversaries often resulting in their imprisonment and demise. The current understanding of gene expression and thus phenotype is that genes can be turned on and off by such epigenetic factors as methylation. Methyl groups bind to the nucleotides and also suppress expression directly by blocking the gene or indirectly by blocking transcription factors.
This is somatic epigenetics. Germ line epigenetics, parent to child has also been observed. Namely effects on the parent causing epigenetic changes can be handed down to the child, where it was assumed that the methylation of certain bases was eliminate but somehow they can be preserved. Thus, in a simplistic sense, an environmental change imprinting the parent can imprint the offspring. This may or may not be consistent in a broad sense with Lysenko but the author discusses it in some detail. Graham's discussion is limited as one would expect in a short book of this type but he does explain some of the issues well including the event of the "Dutch Winter", an epigenetic benchmark.
Graham has a wonderful discussion of his opportunistic meeting with Lysenko at a lunch table in the Russian Academy, and the brief attempt to elicit some explanation from Lysenko. Lysenko was as one would expect defensive since this occurred after he was taken down from his perch yet retained his academic credentials. This discussion is quintessential east meets west based upon my personal experiences in Russia when first meeting some notable. It was clear from Graham's description that Lysenko was still wary especially since Graham had been critical of him in Graham's prior writings.
Graham also presents a clear and coherent discussion of the players in this tragedy, the geneticists following the true path and how Lysenko and his actions resulted in their fall.
The only point that would have been useful to explore would be the need by the Marxist theorists to have a Lysenko position versus a Darwinian one. I had seen this battle with the probabilists. Marxist theory is deterministic and probability is its enemy. Yet many probabilists managed to work and prosper. Individuals like Gnedenko, Kolmogorov, Stratonovich, Markov and others developed the basis for stochastic processes that we see used in fields as broad as finance with the Black-Scholes theorem in options trading, a thought anathema to the Marxists. Graham does provide some insight but it would be worthwhile to have a more in depth discussion of this potential conflict.
Overall the book is an excellent addition to understanding both the Russian Academy and its functioning, the Stalinist management of the overall society, and a petri dish model of Academic infighting. It is very worthwhile for those seeking to understand both Russia as well as the politics of Science, albeit in a different vein.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Does Epigenetics Rescue Lysenkoism? A Fascinating Little Book
By DonL2507
Science prides itself on peer-reviewed objectivity but the fascinating experience of Trofim Lysenko's dominance of biology in the Soviet Union in the 1930s to the 1050s shows how ideology can corrupt the scientific process, and in this instance made Soviet genetics a backwater for a generation. Loren Graham, a science historian, brings Lysenkoism up to date by addressing the issue of whether developments in epigenetics, which seem to suggest a form of Lamarckism, have not vindicated Lysenko after all. This is a scholarly but very readable and well-balanced book that neatly integrates Lamarckism (the inheritance of acquired characteristics), Lysenko and Soviet biology, epigenetics, and the Russian reaction to epigenetics and Lysenko's legacy. The book has extensive footnotes and a wonderful bibliography. It also contains a fascinating account of Graham meeting and talking with Lysenko after his downfall in 1971 while the author was studying in Russia.
I give the author credit for tying together the implications of epigenetics for Lamarckism and thus for Soviet-era Lysenkoism. Briefly-stated, epigenetics demonstrates the presence of environmentally-induced gene expression that may persist for several generations; however, the genome (DNA) is unaltered. I'm not a biologist so I can't say whether epigenetics opens the door, even slightly, for Lamarckism, but Graham, who believes in the inheritance of acquired characteristics, seems to think so, and most of Lysenko's Russian nationalist defenders seem to think so, too, according to this book. There are fascinating reviews of these Russian nationalist writers in the Putin era, some with impressive scientific credentials, who favorably contrast Lysenko, Russian practical science, and environmental factors with the molecular biology and genetics of the west. But it's fair to note that Graham includes Russian geneticists who remain critical of Lysenko.
The whole story of Lysenko's influence is a fascinating one. His peasant background was viewed favorably by Stalin and the party while Soviet-era geneticists were viewed suspiciously due to their bourgeoisie backgrounds. Moreover, Lysenko's plans to jumpstart Soviet agriculture by generating better and more productive seeds induced by environmental factors, e.g., cold, humidity, and his rejection of the concept of the gene and natural selection, seemed to accord very well with Soviet Marxist-Leninism and its hurried efforts to remake the world and plan for a more productive future. Natural selection works too slow! Graham tells us that while some Soviet-era ideologists wanted to develop the "New Soviet Man", Lysenko was only interested in plants --- and in keeping his geneticist rivals oppressed. (I guess Stalin left that remolding to his writers who he famously called: "engineers of human souls.")
Francis Crick seemed to shut the door on Lamarckism by what he called the "The Central Dogma of Molecular Biology" (the atheist Crick regretted using the word "dogma") which stated that genetic information (for making an organism) flows in only one direction, i.e., from genotype to phenotype, or alternatively, from nucleic acids to proteins. The other direction would imply a form of Lamarckism, such as an environmentally-induced change in the phenotype that would somehow affect the genome. Molecular biologists for decades vainly struggled to imagine how this reverse flow of information could happen; they of course were not counting direct mutations of DNA from environmental toxins or radiation. Epigenetics doesn't change the genome but shows how environmental factors have affected which genes turn "on" and which turn "off." Does epigenetics suggest, perhaps, a weak form of Lamarckism, and is Lysenkoism a form of Lamarckism. The author would appear to think so, but it should be noted that he remains critical of Lysenko as a poor scientist who was inept at statistics, and who used his power to hound his scientific rivals to the gulag and to death for some of them.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Who was Lysenko?
By Amazon Customer
Extreemely well written. Based on authors very long term involvement in research on Lysenkoism and Lysenkovshchina. The topic is highly important in view of the increasing Russian efforts to rehabilitate Lysenko (and other components of Michurinist biology)
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