Science Gone Wrong:

Lysenko and the Great Leap

Forward
Prof. Mark A. McGinley
Director, Core Curriculum and General Education
Professor of Teaching & Head of Science Unit
Lingnan University
Attributes of a Lingnan Graduate
• Scholarly and Interdisciplinary
• LU graduates will have a secure grounding in a chosen
academic field(s) and cross-disciplinary applications.
• Digitally Literate
• LU graduates will have proficiency in technology.
• Skilled Communicator
• LU graduates will have excellent communication skills,
including oral and written English and Chinese
(Putonghua as well as Cantonese) skills.
• Critical and Analytical
• LU graduates will demonstrate independent critical
thinking and strong analytic competence.
• Creative and Entrepreneurial
• LU graduates will be creative problem-solvers and be
capable planners, and entrepreneurs.
• Committed to Service
• LU graduates will have a commitment to
service to the community.
• Glocally Minded
• LU graduates will have a global and local (a
Glocal) outlook with the ability to
understand various cultural perspectives.
• Personally and Socially Responsible
• LU graduates will have tolerance, integrity,
civility and a sense of responsibility.
• Committed to Life-long Learning
• LU graduates will have a desire for life-long
learning.
Why Teach a Class on the Process of
Science?
• “Can scientists share the admired successes of science in a manner that leads
citizens to embrace for themselves the essence of science?

• This essence of science is to demand evidence at every turn and to discard

ideas when they are shown not to comport with the evidence.

• This thinking is not reserved solely for scientists, and one need not be an expert
to demand evidence.”
• Democracy’s Plight
• Rush Holt. chief executive officer of AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science)
• Science http://science.sciencemag.org/content/363/6426/433
• February 2019
“We must find an opening to reinforce among citizens a
renewed appreciation for evidence.
Approaching an understanding of the actual state of
things is what science does well.”
When people reject science, it’s because they’re asked to believe
something that conflicts with a deeply held view, whether political
(my party does not endorse that), religious (my god did not say that) or
personal (that's not how I was raised).”
Nature Doesn’t Care!!!
Lysenko

• Trofim Lysenko
• born in Ukraine in 1898
• Peasant family
• Trained as agronomist (studied
seed crops such as wheat) at Kiev
Agricultural Institute
Lysenko’s Rise to Influence

•  In the late 1920-30s he made many claims about how to increase
crop production
• Agricultural production in USSR was suffering from drought and from
collectivism of farms
• famine
Science Thinking Gone Wrong!!
• Data from other Soviet scientists refuting his ideas was ignored
• Definitely not how science would determine which are the best ideas

• Lysenko also stated that statistics were of no value in science.

• Statistics helps us to draw conclusions based on the evidence/data

• Lysenko falsified his results and reported made up increases in crop

yields.
• Scientific dishonesty!!
Why Did He Act This Way? Ideology over
Evidence
• “Having grown up desperately poor at the turn of the 20th century,
Lysenko believed wholeheartedly in the promise of the communist
revolution.”

• “So when the doctrines of science and the doctrines of communism

clashed, he always chose the latter—confident that biology would
conform to ideology in the end. It never did.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/12/trofim-lysenko-soviet-union-russia/548786/
Lysenko’s Rise to Influence

• Lysenko met the needs of the Communist government in several ways

1. Government needed to quickly and massively increase agricultural
production
• Lysenko told the government what it wanted to hear
2. His views of science matched Soviet Communist ideology
3. Lysenko who was from a peasant family, was also a proletarian
• “barefoot scientist”, “genius from the people” “new Soviet man”

• All of these would seem to be unscientific reasons for having influence on science related
matters
• Bad strategy for deciding how you were going to try to meet the food needs of your
population
 Brief Aside: Increase in Agricultural Production is
One of the Great Accomplishments of Science
Human Population Size (Billions)

• In 1800 there were less than

one billion people living on the
planet. Today there are almost
8 billion.

Time
Thomas Malthus
• British Cleric and Scholar
• 1798- An Essay on the Principle
of Population
• http://
www.esp.org/books/malthus/popula
tion/malthus.pdf
Malthus’ Postulates
• I think I may fairly make two
postulata.
• First, That food is necessary to the
existence of man.
• Secondly, That the passion
between the sexes is necessary
and will remain nearly in its
present state.
These two laws, ever since we have
had any knowledge of mankind,
appear to have been fixed laws of
our nature, and, as we have not
hitherto seen any alteration in them,
we have no right to conclude that
they will ever cease to be what they
now are, without an immediate act
of power in that Being who first
arranged the system of the universe,
and for the advantage of his
creatures, still executes, according to
fixed laws, all its various operations.
Malthus’ Conclusions
• Thought that human populations had the potential to increase
exponentially but he anticipated only linear increases in food
production
Malthus’s Predictions

Exponential Growth Linear Growth

Food production
 Malthus’s Conclusion

• Predicted there would not be

enough food to feed the rapidly
growing population
• “War, famine, pestilence”

Do You Think Malthus Was Right or Wrong?? Why?

Remarkable Increase in Food Production
Per Capita Food Production
Total Food Production (food/person)
Was Malthus Right?
Malthus Was Wrong
• In 1800, about 20% of people at
risk of starvation
• Today the fraction of
malnourished people worldwide
is approximately 15 %
• Decrease in proportion of
population malnourished
Malthus Was Right
• 20% of 1 Billion
• 200 million malnourished people-
1800
• 15% of 7.7 billion
• 1.15 billion malnourished people
today
• Increase in the total number
What have we done to increase food
production in the last 200 years?
What Led to the Increase in Food
Production?
• Farming More Land
• Machinery (Science)
• Fertilizers (Science)
• Irrigation (Science and Engineering)
• Crop Improvement (Science)
• Crop Improvement
• Since the beginning of agriculture
10,000 years ago people have
know that breeding two individuals
with desirable characteristics often
produced offspring with more
desirable characteristics
• Artificial Selection
• Now can genetically modify
organisms by moving genes from
one species to another
• GMOs
 Science of Crop Improvement
• Genes • Mendel
• molecules that determine our • Laws of Inheritance- 1860s
phenotypes/characteristics
• Chromosomes- early 1900s
• Genes found on chromosomes
• DNA structure
• Parents pass on half of their • Watson & Crick- 1950s
chromosomes to their offspring • Gene function
• The reason offspring resemble
their parents • Last 50 years
• Genetic Manipulation
• Last 40 years
Back to Lysenko

• Lysenko rejected Mendelian Genetics

• Genes, chromosomes, inheritance
• foreign, impractical, idealistic and a product of "bourgeois capitalism.“

“Lysenko promoted the Marxist idea that the environment

alone shapes plants and animals. Put them in the proper
setting and expose them to the right stimuli, he declared, and
you can remake them to an almost infinite degree.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/12/trofim-lysenko-soviet-union-russia/548786/
Lysenko’s Science
• Promoted the work of fellow countryman Ivan V. Michurin.
• Neo-Lamarckian form of evolution
• Lamarck proposed that characteristics were influenced by the environment
• Ex. Giraffe necks get longer over time because they stretched their neck to reach the highest
leaves in the tree
• Now know Lamarck was wrong
• Traits are formed by natural selection
• Darwin and Wallace
• This was well known in Lysenko’s time…. He just chose to ignore it.
Lysenko’s ideas fit political ideology of
USSR at that time
Marxist-Leninism stated that all organisms, including humans, are the result
of environmental conditions and can quickly be changed by a different
environment.

Lysenko’s Lamarckian view of heredity and his supposedly valid scientific

studies fit with communist ideology
E.g., Close planting
plant seeds from same species close together
- will not compete, but will cooperate to help each other to
grow better
Lysenko Gains Power
• In 1938 Lysenko was named
President of the Academy of
Agricultural Sciences
• Lysenko and his followers made
increasingly fantastic claims
• Could change one species into
another, could fertilize fields
without adding nutrients, increase
yield by deep plowing, …
• accomplished through the careful
application of Lysenko’s agricultural
science.
 Lysenko Uses Power
• In 1948 the V.I. Lenin Academy of
Agricultural Sciences announced that
Lysenkoism would be taught as the only
correct theory. 
• All Soviet scientists were required to
denounce any work that contradicted
Lysenkoism. 
• Claimed geneticists were "fly-lovers and
people haters"
• Ultimately, Soviet geneticists resisting Lysenkoism
were imprisoned and even executed!!!
• Dominated Soviet science until the 1960s
Soviet Union Was Not a Scientifically
Backwards Country!!
• Sputnik
• First man made object that
orbited the Earth was launched in
1957
Lysenko and Famine

• Estimates are that over 7 million

died in famines in USSR

• To Learn More: The Disasterous

Effects on Lysenkoism on Soviet
Agriculture
• https://www.encyclopedia.com/sc
ience/encyclopedias-almanacs-tra
nscripts-and-maps/disastrous-effe
cts-lysenkoism-soviet-agriculture
Lysenko and the Great Leap Forward in
China
• The Great Leap Forward was an
economic and social campaign
by the Communist Party of
China (CPC) from 1958 to 1962.
• Mao aimed to rapidly transform
the country from an agrarian
economy through
rapid industrialization
and collectivization.
Communal Living
Great Leap Forward
Lysenko and the Great Leap Forward

• Mao incorporated some of

Lysenko’s ideas such as deep
plowing and close planting

• What are potential problems

with these two agricultural
practices?
Lysenko and the Great Leap Forward
• Just bad ideas!!
• Deep ploughing
• Nutrients added to the soil by
decomposition of dead plants
• Near the surface
• Close planting
• Plants compete with neighboring
plants for light, nutrients, and water
Four Pests Campaign
Four Pests Campaign
Four Pests Campaign
Four Pests Campaign
What is a Potential Problem That Could Arise
as a Result of Killing All of the Sparrows?
Why Might This Cause Problems?
• What happens if you kill all of the sparrows?
• Food Chain • Nothing eats the insects so insect populations
• Birds eat insects grow
• More insects means more animals eating crop
• Insects eat plants plants
• Less food

Sparrows
• This was a very bad idea!!!
• Due to ignorance of the field of ecology at the
time
Insects • Ecologist were just beginning to conduct experiments
to study interactions
• Had not yet thought about “indirect effects”
• Not due to ignoring good science that had been
Plants developed elsewhere
Falsification of Data During the Great Leap
Forward
• Under pressure to increase agricultural
production local leaders started making
up data about food production
• If the neighboring commune could increase
production by 5% then we must say we
have increased production by 10%!!
• Making up evidence sometimes hurt the
communes
• The central government did not get
information about the severity of famine
• The government took away more food to
send to the cities than they could afford
because they reported such large crop
yields
Faking Evidence

• Would dig up and replant healthy

crops along the road if Mao was
visiting so it would show that they
were working hard to meet
production goals.
Results

• Caused massive famine

• Estimates of 30 - 50 million deaths
Why I Think it is Important For You to Learn
About Science?
• Science “is a commitment to a systematic way of thinking, an
allegiance to a way of building knowledge and explaining the universe
through testing and factual observation”.
• “The thing is, that isn’t a normal way of thinking. It is unnatural and
counterintuitive. It has to be learned. Scientific explanation stands in
contrast to the wisdom of divinity and experience and common
sense.”
• Dr. Atul Gawande

• https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-mistrust-of-science
 
Current Resurgence of Interest in Lysenko in
Russia
“There’s something more going on here: a
mistrust of science itself….Lysenko’s new
defenders “accuse the science of genetics of
serving the interests of American imperialism and
acting against the interests of Russia.” Science,
after all, is a major component of Western
culture.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/12/trofim-lysenko-soviet-union-russia/548786/
Anti-Science Sentiment in USA
• “One of the things we know from • Many people “accept
studies about how people respond counterfactual statements about
to news is that nobody likes science and go along with efforts to
or empiricism when it conflicts with discredit scientists in order to
their deeply held views.”
delegitimize politically damaging
• “What’s happening now is that this statistics.”
crisis is locked into science and
partisanship in a way that really
strikes at the heart of the Republican
Party as it’s currently constituted”
• https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/stor
y/2020/10/what-caused-the-u-s-anti-s
cience-trend
/
Lack of Respect and Appreciation of
Expertise
• “We think expertise is this very
exclusionary idea, which it is,
because it’s supposed to be,
• Not everybody gets a vote on
how to fly the plane”
• T. Nichols “The Death of
Expertise.”
• “This rejection of science and of
expertise has become a
demonstration of political
loyalty.
• That’s the part I didn’t expect —
that there would be an entire
political movement, led by the
president of the United States, to
basically disavow science.”
• https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/
story/2020/10/what-caused-the-u
-s-anti-science-trend/
Anti-Science Sentiment
• Rush Limbaugh- conservative
radio host 15.5 million listeners
• The “four corners of deceit" 
• Science
• government
• academia
• the press
• https://
www.businessinsider.com/american-
anti-science-sentiment-comes-back-h
urt-us-wildfires-pandemic-2020-9
Conservative Views on Science
• Religious conservatives’ views on
climate science have been
studied
• Religious conservatives were not
unaware of scientific findings
• “… they resent the use of experts as
political authorities.
• And I think that is exactly what we
see here.”
• T. Skocpol, Professor,
• “wrong in assuming that
conservatives, like the maskless
crowds at Trump rallies, flout
public health advisories because
they’re uneducated or oblivious
to the potential health risks.”
• “Chances are, they’re aware that
the virus is dangerous”
• https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/st
ory/2020/10/what-caused-the-u-s-a
nti-science-trend
/
Science is the Way Out of COVID 19
Pandemic
• We need science and technology to save us.
• Government leaders are literally helpless without tools and techniques
provided by scientists and engineers.
• These tools and techniques are obvious now:
• a capacity to develop rapid testing
• swift contact tracing
• validated models for projecting disease spread and impact of interventions
• new treatments to reduce the severity of the virus's impact
• a vaccine
• a massive manufacturing
• systems engineering approach to deploy all of these fairly at enormous scale. 
• https://
www.businessinsider.com/american-anti-science-sentiment-comes-back-hurt-us-wildfires-pandemic-20
20-9