Matthew 7:3-a response to Kingsland and Taiz (2024).

Abstract

I present here a rebuttal to an article in this volume wherein Kingsland and Taiz (2024) cast aspersions about an article I have written concerning Sir Jagadis Chandra Bose (Minorsky PV, in Plant Signal Behav 16:1818030, 2021) a brilliant Bengali scientist who was a pioneer not only in physics (microwaves and semi-conductors), but also in elucidating the electrophysiological responses of plants to environmental stimuli. The charge of racism that I have levelled at Bose's most powerful and well-connected botanical adversary in the 1920s, Daniel T. MacDougal, is irrefutable: MacDougal was a racist, his racism extended to South Asians, and he used racist epithets in referring to Bose. MacDougal offered no cogent arguments against Bose's electrophysiological measurements but attacked Bose with the racist trope that South Asians were "mystics." MacDougal wielded his political and editorial clout to publicize faulty research in opposition to Bose while ignoring a sizable body of contemporaneous evidence in support of Bose's ideas. Unfortunately, given MacDougal's stature as the General Secretary of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the racist tenor of the time, many Western scientists were too ready to accept uncritically MacDougal's proclamations that Bose was a fraud, an incompetent, and a "Hindoo" mystic. Bose was one of the greatest minds to ever contemplate plant function. It is high time that we, in the West, redress this historical wrong, and acknowledge Bose's enormous and revolutionary contributions to plant physiology.