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Series Editors: Morton L. Schagrin, SUNY College at Fredonia
Michael Ruse, Florida State University
Robert Hollinger, Iowa State University
“[T]he book is easy to read. It has a good index and a comprehensive bibliography.…[I]t is sufficiently accessible to be a useful introduction to the topic for those with no previous knowledge…he presents the story well and fairly enough for readers to be able to make up their own mind. The book is therefore recommended for the full range of readers, from those with a general interest to those professionally involved in the field.”
- Slavic Reviews
“[Nils Roll-Hansen] has achieved what no previous author has attempted: to take seriously the science propounded by Lysenko…the result is a refreshing look at a familiar but traditionally misunderstood episode in the history of science that has relevance for discussions about the organization of science, science policy and the relationship between scientific theory and technological practice today…a major contribution to our understanding of the Lysenko case…a significant addition to the literature on Russian biology, genetics and agriculture."
- Nature
"Roll-Hansen provides an intense re-examination of the Lysenko controversy introducing materials from previously inaccessible archives and from the public press and popular scientific journals not utilized in earlier accounts. ... he adds an important new interpretation of this devastating phase of Soviet science. His bold conclusions and their links to recent science - society debates are sure to create discussion and controversy among students of the social role and social structure of science...".
Everett Mendelsohn
Professor of the History of Science
Harvard University
Professor of the History of Science
Harvard University
Ukrainian agronomist T. D. Lysenko (1898-1976) was the leader of an influential Soviet agrobiological school that rejected standard genetics and instead promoted a brand of pseudoscience that held sway among Soviet biologists for over twenty-five years. The dominance of Lysenko’s pseudoscientific ideas has been characterized as the biggest scandal of 20th-century science. That it happened under a regime that took particular pride in building its policy on science makes the affair particularly interesting, even for Western observers free from totalitarian governments. The Soviet Union was the first country with a government policy and large-scale public support for science. Agricultural science was a main showcase for this unprecedented investment in science.
In this in-depth study of Lysenkoism, historian of science Nils Roll-Hansen seeks to understand how Soviet biology went so wrong. Unlike other scholars who have studied Lysenko’s influence, Roll-Hansen argues that the corruption of Soviet biology should not be explained primarily as the result of Stalin’s despotism and the willful intervention of party hacks into the objective methods of science. Because of ideological and economic pressures to produce tangible benefits to society, says Roll-Hansen, Soviet biology, under Lysenko’s leadership, succumbed to a wishful-thinking syndrome, which paved the way for Lysenko. By such thinking scientific objectivity was compromised in favor of ideas that accorded with progressive political ideals and economic goals as determined by the ruling politburo. Roll-Hansen draws provocative parallels between Lysenko’s bad science in mid-20th-century Russia and attempts by Western theorists today to construe science in social constructivist terms or to exercise political control over scientific research.
Based on archival materials not previously accessible, The Lysenko Effect is both a valuable contribution to the history of science and an instructive case study in the ways in which ideals of social progress can skew the results of objective science in any society.
Nils Roll-Hansen (Oslo, Norway) is professor of history and philosophy of science at the University of Oslo, the author of The Freedom and Necessity of Science: Pasteur’s Theories in Growth and Decline and the editor (with Gunnar Broberg) of Eugenics and the Welfare State.