Халдейн писал, что ученые заинтересованы в поисках правды и только правды, и как людям занятым поиском правды, им должны быть даны особые права и привилегии.
Так ли это?
В 1940 году он писал о генетиках в СССР:
In view of the decreasing support given to this branch of biology in England, it is probable that, in spite of the dismissal [sic!] of several Russian workers during the last year [1939], the prospects for genetical research are considerably better in the Soviet Union than in the British Empire.
и в 1948:
You may have been told that Vavilov, a famous Russian plant breeder, died in prison. His research station outside Leningrad became a battlefield in 1941, and according to a very anti-Lysenko article in the Journal of Heredity he appears to have died at Magadan in the Arctic in 1942 while breeding frost-resistant plants.
Статья в Journal of Heredity, на которую Халдейн ссылается, принадлежит Добжанскому и вот цитата из нее:
After the 1939 Genetics Conference, a shroud of silence envelops Vavilov. The closing chapter can be reconstructed only from unofficial, fragmentary, but apparently reliable information. Vavilov was arrested, probably in 1940. Part of the time during the winter 1941-1942, he was a prisoner in a concentration camp at Saratov (ironically, it was at the University of Saratov that he held his first post under the new revolutionary regime), and whence he was transported to Siberia. His destination was Magadan, on the Sea of Okhotsk, the capital of a rich gold-bearing region, but a place of sinister reputation, because of its deadly climate and even worse because it was built and operated by forced labor. According to some information, Vaviov was put to work on breeding varieties of vegetables capable of growing in Magadan's climate, but this information is not certain. The release, through death, probably came in late 1942. No mention of N. I. Vavilov's name can be found in the list of living and recently deceased members published by the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in connection with its 200-years jubilee celebrated in 1945
Увы, занятие наукой не означает, что ученый не будет врать, как сивый мерин :(
Ну и
Ты слыхал про Магадан?
Не слыхал?! Так выслушай: