tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/francis-galton-21380/articlesFrancis Galton – The Conversation2021-01-15T13:16:30Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1444652021-01-15T13:16:30Z2021-01-15T13:16:30ZFrancis Galton pioneered scientific advances in many fields – but also founded the racist pseudoscience of eugenics<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/377066/original/file-20210104-17-54ld8q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C263%2C3449%2C2891&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A man of genius – but his ideas were not to the benefit of all humankind.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/united-kingdom-london-national-portrait-gallery-whole-news-photo/843192936">Mondadori Portfolio/Hulton Fine Art Collection via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A popular pseudoscience was leaving its mark on American culture a century ago in everything from <a href="http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/html/eugenics/essay9text.html">massive reductions</a> in quotas for immigration to the U.S., to thousands of “<a href="http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/eugenics/topics_fs.pl?theme=8">fitter family” contests</a> at county fairs, to a growing acceptance of <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/pill-eugenics-and-birth-control/">birth control</a> by those who thought it could curtail the fertility of “undesirables.”</p>
<p>These are just a few examples of the influence of eugenics in the early 20th century. The idea of scientist Francis Galton, eugenics suggested that negative traits could be bred out of the human species by discouraging reproduction by those considered inferior. It laid the groundwork for <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/03/07/469478098/the-supreme-court-ruling-that-led-to-70-000-forced-sterilizations">forced sterilization laws</a> in the U.S. and <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-biological-state-nazi-racial-hygiene-1933-1939">Nazi “racial hygiene”</a> programs and the Holocaust. </p>
<p>While Galton is primarily remembered today, 110 years after his death, as the father of the shameful pseudoscience of eugenics, during his life he was considered one of the most influential thinkers of his day. He made seminal contributions in fields as diverse as statistics, geology, meteorology, anthropology, psychology, biology and psychometrics. My interest in Galton was renewed through my university’s decision to remove from buildings the name of one of its past presidents – <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/09/28/indiana-u-rename-landmarks-named-david-starr-jordan">David Starr Jordan</a> – who also happened to be a eugenicist.</p>
<h2>Scientific contributions</h2>
<p>Galton was a pioneer in meteorology, the study of weather. His 1863 book “<a href="http://galton.org/books/meteorographica/galton-1863-meteorographica-color-alt.pdf">Meteorographica</a>” was the first to describe weather on a continental scale. He developed instruments for measuring different weather parameters, described the use of barometric pressure in weather prediction, and devised systems for recording weather information. He <a href="http://galton.org/meteorologist.html">published the world’s first weather map</a> in a newspaper, showing the reported weather in England on March 31, 1875.</p>
<p>Galton was an innovator in the field of statistics, the first to recognize the “wisdom of the crowd.” He once attended a livestock fair where villagers were asked to guess the weight of an ox. Nearly 800 people participated. When Galton looked at their estimates, he found that while almost all the guesses were wrong, both the middle guess and the average of the guesses were almost exactly correct. From such observations he <a href="http://galton.org/statistician.html">helped to develop</a> the concepts of mean and variation, leading him to formulate the essential statistical concept of standard deviation.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/377067/original/file-20210104-19-129kafb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Scotland Yard detectives comparing fingerprints" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/377067/original/file-20210104-19-129kafb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/377067/original/file-20210104-19-129kafb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377067/original/file-20210104-19-129kafb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377067/original/file-20210104-19-129kafb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377067/original/file-20210104-19-129kafb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377067/original/file-20210104-19-129kafb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377067/original/file-20210104-19-129kafb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Scotland Yard detectives pore over fingerprints.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/comparing-fingerprints-in-an-effort-to-identify-a-suspect-news-photo/514900860">Bettmann via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Galton helped forge a new science of forensics. <a href="https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1968/1/10/confessions-of-a-palmist-pithe-name/">Fortune tellers</a> and others had long scrutinized the lines and creases on the palms and fingers, which had been described in general terms by scientists and physicians. But Galton was the first to suggest that they could be the basis for a new science that he called dermatoglyphics – or “skin carvings.” Galton <a href="https://www.criminaljustice.ny.gov/ojis/history/fp_sys.htm">demonstrated that fingerprints are unique</a>, stable over a lifetime, and could be classified and used to identify individuals who had left prints at the scene of a crime. Scotland Yard adopted his system.</p>
<p>Galton used scientific inquiry to investigate what proponents of religion had long preached was the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/05/AR2008120502813.html">power of prayer</a>. Reasoning that if prayer works, it should be possible to measure its effects, Galton set out to discover “whether those who pray <a href="http://galton.org/essays/1870-1879/galton-1872-fortnightly-review-efficacy-prayer.html">attain their objects more frequently</a> than those who do not.” In 1872, he published “Statistical Inquiries into the Efficacy of Prayer,” in which he found that prayer produces no measurable difference in outcomes. This conclusion is supported, he argued, by the fact that insurance companies take no interest when setting their rates in whether their clients pray or not.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/377069/original/file-20210104-13-101xbem.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Galton's first anthropometric laboratory, 1884-1885." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/377069/original/file-20210104-13-101xbem.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/377069/original/file-20210104-13-101xbem.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377069/original/file-20210104-13-101xbem.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377069/original/file-20210104-13-101xbem.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377069/original/file-20210104-13-101xbem.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=589&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377069/original/file-20210104-13-101xbem.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=589&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377069/original/file-20210104-13-101xbem.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=589&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Galton’s laboratory at the International Health Exhibition at the South Kensington Museum.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/galtons-laboratory-at-the-international-health-exhibition-news-photo/90735101">Science & Society Picture Library via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>Classifying and enhancing human beings</h2>
<p>Galton founded the field that became known as psychometrics, the measurement of psychological faculties such as intelligence. One of Galton’s most famous works is “Hereditary Genius” (1870), in which he argues “each generation has enormous power over the <a href="https://www.branchcollective.org/?ps_articles=rebecca-n-mitchell-francis-galtons-hereditary-genius-1869-1892">natural gifts of those that follow</a>.” If people would only direct a fraction of the time they spend on improving on cattle to the human race, he lamented, “what a galaxy of genius might we not create!”</p>
<p>Galton credited reading his cousin Charles Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species” (1859) about the <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/natural-selection/">theory of natural selection</a> with initiating him into “<a href="https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/francis-galton">an entirely new province of knowledge</a>,” paving the way for his studies of inheritance.</p>
<p>In 1884, Galton set up an “<a href="http://galton.org/anthropologist.htm">Anthropometric Laboratory</a>” at the International Health Exhibition in London. There he collected data on the physical characteristics and abilities of visiting members of the public. They paid to be measured, and he provided them with a copy of their data. He believed that such data could be used to compare individuals across different places of origin, residences, occupations, races and so on.</p>
<p>It was Galton who <a href="https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/origins-eugenics">coined the term eugenics</a>, from the Greek for “good stock.” He argued that the tendency of successful families to have few children relatively late in life was “dysgenic,” or bad for the stock, while capable people should be given incentive to marry early and have many children.</p>
<p>Galton thought he had discovered principles that would enhance human life, and he also spoke against what he regarded as “unreasonable” opposition to “the extinction of an inferior race.”</p>
<p>He himself had been born in 1822 into a prominent British family. He was a grandson of Erasmus Darwin, a physician, scientist and prominent abolitionist, and his family included multiple fellows of the Royal Society. His position of privilege likely influenced both his willingness to classify humankind into groups and his sense of what counted as good stock versus what sort of person belonged to an inferior race.</p>
<h2>Long legacy of Galton’s eugenics</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/377070/original/file-20210104-21-1h959ul.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="photo of Galton circa 1890" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/377070/original/file-20210104-21-1h959ul.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/377070/original/file-20210104-21-1h959ul.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377070/original/file-20210104-21-1h959ul.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377070/original/file-20210104-21-1h959ul.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377070/original/file-20210104-21-1h959ul.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377070/original/file-20210104-21-1h959ul.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377070/original/file-20210104-21-1h959ul.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Galton, around 1890.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/francis-galton-british-man-of-science-born-in-sparkbrook-ca-news-photo/526673778">adoc-photos/Corbis Historical via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Sir Francis Galton died in the U.K. on Jan. 17, 1911, but his work shaped government policies on both sides of the Atlantic for decades. Eugenics policies encouraged the most valued people to procreate in large numbers, while also aiming to prevent reproduction by those considered to be less fit.</p>
<p>Politicians including Theodore Roosevelt expressed the concern that failure of Anglo-Saxons to produce large families would result in “<a href="http://exhibits.hsl.virginia.edu/eugenics/2-origins/">race suicide</a>.” Many states enacted <a href="https://theconversation.com/forced-sterilization-policies-in-the-us-targeted-minorities-and-those-with-disabilities-and-lasted-into-the-21st-century-143144">forced sterilization laws</a>, later backed by a <a href="https://www.npr.org/2017/03/24/521360544/the-supreme-court-ruling-that-led-to-70-000-forced-sterilizations">Supreme Court ruling</a> declaring that “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”</p>
<p>As ethically faulty as eugenics was, Galton made errors in the science as well. Traits such as intelligence are not the <a href="https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/human-testing-the-eugenics-movement-and-irbs-724/">expression of single genes</a>, and the intelligence of children can differ markedly from that of their parents. Time after time, <a href="https://healthcare.utah.edu/the-scope/shows.php?shows=0_2afdowlt">eugenicists promoted traits</a> such as blond hair and blue eyes that reflected not objectively superior attributes but their own mirror images. The Nazi genocide programs, aimed at promulgating a “<a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/peoplescentury/episodes/masterrace/description.html">master race</a>,” opened many eyes to eugenics’ sinister implications. </p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>Today Galton’s star has fallen. This past summer, University College London announced that it was <a href="https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2020/jun/ucl-denames-buildings-named-after-eugenicists">removing his name from a building</a>, for instance, with his role as the father of eugenics far outweighing his other scientific contributions.</p>
<p>Yet Galton’s legacy has not entirely vanished. It was recently announced that in Europe, the number of babies being born with <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/birthdefects/downsyndrome.html">Down syndrome</a> has <a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/12/201218131911.htm">fallen by half</a>, the result of prenatal testing and selective pregnancy termination. People are still choosing who can and cannot be born based on genes.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/144465/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Gunderman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Smart people can have really bad ideas – like selectively breeding human beings to improve the species. Put into practice, Galton’s concept proved discriminatory, damaging, even deadly.Richard Gunderman, Chancellor's Professor of Medicine, Liberal Arts, and Philanthropy, Indiana UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1431442020-08-26T12:20:42Z2020-08-26T12:20:42ZForced sterilization policies in the US targeted minorities and those with disabilities – and lasted into the 21st century<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353240/original/file-20200817-18-b7q561.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1165%2C26%2C2383%2C2314&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An operation taking place in 1941 on South Side of Chicago.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.rawpixel.com/image/2301130">Library of Congress</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In August 1964, the North Carolina Eugenics Board met to decide if a 20-year-old Black woman should be sterilized. Because her name was redacted from the records, we call her Bertha. </p>
<p>She was a single mother with one child who lived at the segregated O'Berry Center for African American adults with intellectual disabilities in Goldsboro. According to the North Carolina Eugenics Board, Bertha had an IQ of 62 and exhibited “aggressive behavior and sexual promiscuity.” She had been orphaned as a child and had a limited education. Likely because of her “low IQ score,” the board determined she was not capable of rehabilitation. </p>
<p>Instead the board recommended the “protection of sterilization” for Bertha, because she was “feebleminded” and deemed unable to “assume responsibility for herself” or her child. Without her input, Bertha’s guardian signed the sterilization form.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353451/original/file-20200818-14-mzzs17.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A 1950s era pamphlet that reads: The average feebleminded parent cannot be expected to provide good heredity, a normal home, intelligent care - to say nothing of the many other things needed to bring up children successfully." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353451/original/file-20200818-14-mzzs17.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353451/original/file-20200818-14-mzzs17.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353451/original/file-20200818-14-mzzs17.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353451/original/file-20200818-14-mzzs17.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353451/original/file-20200818-14-mzzs17.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=644&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353451/original/file-20200818-14-mzzs17.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=644&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353451/original/file-20200818-14-mzzs17.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=644&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A pamphlet extolling the benefit of selective sterilization published by the Human Betterment League of North Carolina, 1950.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://digital.ncdcr.gov/digital/collection/p249901coll37/id/14974/">North Carolina State Documents Collection/State Library of North Carolina</a></span>
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<p>Bertha’s story is one of the 35,000 sterilization stories we are reconstructing at the <a href="https://ssjlab.weebly.com">Sterilization and Social Justice Lab</a>. Our interdisciplinary team explores the history of eugenics and sterilization in the U.S. using data and stories. So far, we have captured historical records from North Carolina, California, Iowa and Michigan. </p>
<h2>Eugenics</h2>
<p>More than <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/sterilization-united-states_n_568f35f2e4b0c8beacf68713">60,000 people were sterilized in 32 states during the 20th century</a> based on the bogus “science” of eugenics, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1051/medsci/2009256-7641">a term coined by Francis Galton in 1883</a>.</p>
<p>Eugenicists applied emerging theories of biology and genetics to human breeding. White elites with strong biases about who was “fit” and “unfit” embraced eugenics, believing American society would be improved by increased breeding of Anglo Saxons and Nordics, whom they assumed had high IQs. Anyone who did not fit this mold of racial perfection, which included most immigrants, Blacks, Indigenous people, poor whites and people with disabilities, <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674445574">became targets of eugenics programs</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353242/original/file-20200817-14-rlngdx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An old map of the United States showing the status of state eugenics laws in 1913. About half the states either have laws or are in the process of creating them." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353242/original/file-20200817-14-rlngdx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353242/original/file-20200817-14-rlngdx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353242/original/file-20200817-14-rlngdx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353242/original/file-20200817-14-rlngdx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353242/original/file-20200817-14-rlngdx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=639&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353242/original/file-20200817-14-rlngdx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=639&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353242/original/file-20200817-14-rlngdx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=639&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">By 1913, many states had or were on their way to having eugenic sterilization laws.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://collections.countway.harvard.edu/onview/files/original/3f02811d6a83b0f896c4eaa6794ecffc.jpg">Boston Medical Library in the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine</a></span>
</figcaption>
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<p>Indiana passed the world’s first sterilization law in 1907. Thirty-one states followed suit. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr.114.3.776-a">State-sanctioned sterilizations</a> reached their peak in the 1930s and 1940s but continued and, in some states, rose during the 1950s and 1960s. </p>
<p>The United States was an international leader in eugenics. Its sterilization laws actually informed Nazi Germany. The Third Reich’s 1933 “<a href="https://www.ushmm.org/learn/timeline-of-events/1933-1938/law-for-the-prevention-of-offspring-with-hereditary-diseases">Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases</a>” <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691172422/hitlers-american-model">was modeled on laws in Indiana and California</a>. Under this law, the <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674745780">Nazis sterilized approximately 400,000 children and adults</a>, mostly Jews and other “undesirables,” labeled “defective.”</p>
<h2>Anti-Black racism and sterilization</h2>
<p>The team at the Sterilization and Social Justice Lab has uncovered some remarkable trends in eugenic sterilization. At first, sterilization programs targeted white men, expanding by the 1920s to affect the same number of women as men. The laws used broad and ever-changing disability labels like “feeblemindedness” and “mental defective.” Over time, though, women and people of color increasingly became the target, as <a href="https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/fit-to-be-tied/9780813578910">eugenics amplified sexism and racism</a>.</p>
<p><iframe id="SIc36" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/SIc36/4/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>It is no coincidence that sterilization rates for Black women rose as desegregation got underway. Until the 1950s, schools and hospitals in the U.S. were segregated by race, but integration threatened to break down Jim Crow apartheid. <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/mothers-of-massive-resistance-9780190271718?cc=us&lang=en&">The backlash involved the reassertion of white supremacist control and racial hierarchies</a> specifically through the <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/155575/killing-the-black-body-by-dorothy-roberts/">control of Black reproduction and future Black lives by sterilization</a>.</p>
<p>In North Carolina, which sterilized the third highest number of people in the United States – <a href="https://journalnow.com/news/local/against-their-will-north-carolinas-sterilization-program/image_acfc2fb8-8feb-11e2-a857-0019bb30f31a.html">7,600 people from 1929 to 1973</a> – women vastly outnumbered men and Black women were <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9780807855850/choice-and-coercion/">disproportionately sterilized</a>. Preliminary analysis shows that from 1950 to 1966, Black women were sterilized at more than three times the rate of white women and more than 12 times the rate of white men. This pattern <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520299948/how-all-politics-became-reproductive-politics">reflected the ideas</a> that Black women were not capable of being good parents and poverty should be managed with reproductive constraint.</p>
<p>Bertha’s sterilization was ordered by a state eugenics board, but in the 1960s and 1970s, new federal programs like Medicaid also started funding nonconsensual sterilizations. <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/population-control-politics-women-sterilization-and-reproductive-choice/oclc/1003747011">More than 100,000</a> <a href="https://nyupress.org/9780814758274/women-of-color-and-the-reproductive-rights-movement/">Black, Latino and Indigenous women were affected</a>.</p>
<p>Many <a href="http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/films/no-mas-bebes/">felt shame and shrouded these experiences in secrecy</a>, not even telling their closest relatives and friends. Others took to the streets and filed law suits to protest forced sterilization. The powerful documentary “<a href="https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/films/no-mas-bebes/">No Más Bebés</a>” tells the story of hundreds of Mexican American women coerced into tubal ligations at a county hospital in Los Angeles in the 1970s. One of them, who became a plaintiff in a case against the hospital, reflecting back decades later said <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/no-m-s-beb-s-looks-back-l-mexican-moms-n505256">her experience “makes me want to cry.”</a></p>
<h2>Forced sterilizations continue</h2>
<p>In the years between 1997 and 2010, unwanted sterilizations were performed on <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/new-documentary-illuminates-the-forced-sterilization-of-women-in-california-prison">approximately 1,400 women in California prisons</a>. These operations were based on the same rationale of bad parenting and undesirable genes evident in North Carolina in 1964. The doctor performing the sterilizations told a reporter the <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/07/09/200444613/californias-prison-sterilizations-reportedly-echoes-eugenics-era">operations were cost-saving measures</a>.</p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>Unfortunately, forced sterilization continues on. <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2016/07/roma-women-share-stories-forced-sterilisation-160701100731050.html">Romani women have been sterilized unwillingly in the Czech Republic</a> as recently as 2007. In northern China, Uighurs, a religious and racial minority group, have been <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/china-forcibly-sterilizing-uighur-women-xinjiang-abortions-contraception-ap-2020-6">subjected to mass sterilization</a> and other measures of extreme population control.</p>
<p>All forced sterilization campaigns, regardless of their time or place, have one thing in common. They involve dehumanizing a particular subset of the population deemed less worthy of reproduction and family formation. They merge perceptions of disability with racism, xenophobia and sexism – resulting in the disproportionate sterilization of minority groups.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/143144/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alexandra Minna Stern receives funding from the National Institutes of Health-National Humane Genome Research Institute for portions of this research project. </span></em></p>The US has a long history of forced sterilization campaigns that were driven by the bogus ‘science’ of eugenics, racism and sexism.Alexandra Minna Stern, Professor of American Culture, History, and Women's Studies, University of MichiganLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1320552020-02-26T11:28:15Z2020-02-26T11:28:15ZThe eugenics debate isn’t over – but we should be wary of people who claim it can fix social problems<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/316881/original/file-20200224-24685-1khngqd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C6000%2C2901&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/genetic-engineering-gene-manipulation-concept-hand-607718810">vchal/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Andrew Sabisky, a UK government adviser, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/feb/17/boris-johnson-adviser-quits-over-race-and-eugenics-writings">recently resigned</a> over comments supporting eugenics. Around the same time, the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins – best known for his book The Selfish Gene – provoked controversy when <a href="https://twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/1228943686953664512">tweeting</a> that, while eugenics is morally deplorable, it “would work”. </p>
<p>Eugenics can be described as the science and practice of improving the human race through the selection of “good” hereditary traits. Eugenics inevitably brings to mind the atrocities committed by the Nazis, who used eugenic ideology as the rationale for large-scale forced sterilisation, involuntary euthanasia and the Holocaust. Given this sinister history, it’s bound to be alarming when government officials endorse eugenic ideas.</p>
<p>The eugenics movement of the past has been thoroughly discredited on both moral and scientific grounds. But questions about the ethics of genetically improving humans remain relevant.</p>
<p>The emergence of new genetic technologies often prompts renewed debate. Can eugenic ideas about improving the human race be divorced from the evils of the past and pursued through benign means? Or is there something inherently morally problematic about the idea of genetically improving humans?</p>
<p>A new, morally responsible eugenics may well be <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/cambridge-quarterly-of-healthcare-ethics/article/why-we-should-defend-gene-editing-as-eugenics/00B15AEB625379F8543C43E286160B87">defensible</a>, and new genetic technologies must be assessed on their own terms. But we also need to consider the broader political context. If the betterment of individual traits were to be presented as a key strategy to improve human welfare, this would look very much like the individualisation of social problems that was such a central feature of the old eugenics. </p>
<h2>Dark past</h2>
<p>The father of the eugenics movement was the English explorer and scientist <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-for-the-history-of-science/article/from-political-economy-to-sociology-francis-galton-and-the-socialscientific-origins-of-eugenics/D554ED0C9027F4E646D072C664529F2F">Francis Galton</a> (1822-1911). Influenced by his cousin Charles Darwin’s work The Origin of Species, Galton was interested in ideas about the heritability of different traits. He was particularly interested in the heritability of intelligence and how to increase society’s diminished stock of talent and character. He also believed that social problems such as poverty, vagrancy and crime were ultimately caused by the inheritance of degenerate traits from parent to child.</p>
<p>Galton embarked on an ambitious research programme with the explicit goal to “improve human stock” through selective human breeding. <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-for-the-history-of-science/article/from-political-economy-to-sociology-francis-galton-and-the-socialscientific-origins-of-eugenics/D554ED0C9027F4E646D072C664529F2F">In 1883</a> he named this research programme “eugenics”, meaning “good in birth”.</p>
<p>Galton’s ideas quickly became influential and were widely embraced, first in Britain but subsequently in many other countries, including the US, Germany, Brazil and Scandinavia. At a time coloured by widespread concerns about the state of the nation, lack of social progress and the “degeneration” of the population, Galton’s ideas inspired a popular movement for social reform through selective human reproduction.</p>
<p>The first half of the 20th century saw the enactment of a variety of eugenic policies. “Positive” eugenics focused on encouraging those of “good stock” to reproduce, such as through the “fitter family” contests put on across the US. “Negative” eugenics involved discouraging or preventing reproduction among those deemed “unfit”, such as the poor, criminals or the “feeble-minded”, predominantly by coercive means. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/316887/original/file-20200224-24690-uptmqg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/316887/original/file-20200224-24690-uptmqg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/316887/original/file-20200224-24690-uptmqg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/316887/original/file-20200224-24690-uptmqg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/316887/original/file-20200224-24690-uptmqg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/316887/original/file-20200224-24690-uptmqg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/316887/original/file-20200224-24690-uptmqg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Eugenics Fitter Families contest winners in Topeka, Kansas.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30135414">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Eugenics is often equated with Nazi atrocities, but many other brutal acts were committed in its name, usually targeting disadvantaged and vulnerable groups, such as the poor, disabled and ill. As part of the negative eugenic effort, forced sterilisation was conducted on a large scale, not only in Nazi Germany but also in the Scandinavian countries (in <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/background_briefings/international/290661.stm">Sweden</a>, this practice continued until the 1970s) and in the US (where it was revealed that <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/08/california-female-prisoner-sterilization">involuntary sterilisation of female prisoners</a> occurred as late as 2010). The US combined eugenic ideology with ideas about racial hierarchy and applied eugenic thinking to immigration. This led to the passing of the 1924 Immigration Restriction Act in order to curb the entry of “inferior” ethnic groups.</p>
<h2>New genetic technologies</h2>
<p>After the second world war and the exposure of the Nazi regime’s atrocities, eugenics fell out of favour. But worries about eugenics often resurface with the introduction of new genetic technologies that allow us to “improve” humans in some way, most notably gene editing, such as <a href="https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/primer/genomicresearch/genomeediting">CRISPR-Cas9</a>, and reproductive technologies, such as <a href="https://www.hfea.gov.uk/treatments/embryo-testing-and-treatments-for-disease/pre-implantation-genetic-diagnosis-pgd/">pre-implantation genetic diagnosis</a>. Reproductive technologies mainly help prospective parents to have children free from genetically based disabilities and disorders, but as our knowledge of the human genome advances, the range of traits we may be able to select away or select for will probably increase, prompting fears of “designer babies”.</p>
<p>Such technologies are sometimes labelled “eugenic” by sceptics as a means to discredit them. Arguments then ensue about whether these technologies represent a form of “old” eugenics and are therefore unethical, or whether they represent a “new”, benign form of eugenics. Questions about the ethics of genetic technologies and the new eugenics are far from settled.</p>
<p>But even if our ethical analysis should deem such new genetic technologies permissible, it would be disingenuous to present these technological advances as “solutions” to complex problems such as poverty, unemployment, or poor physical or mental health. We should be wary of biological determinist narratives that blame various forms of disadvantage on individual traits, without acknowledging the importance of social and political factors. This kind of thinking is very much in line with the old eugenics.</p>
<p>We are right to be worried when government officials endorse eugenic ideas. It is reassuring that Sabisky’s comments provoked such outrage and that he was forced to resign. But in some respects, in the current age of austerity policies, the individualisation of social problems is an all too familiar theme.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/132055/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gry Wester does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>CRISPR isn’t a tool to fix social problems.Gry Wester, Lecturer in Bioethics and Global Health Ethics, King's College LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/995652019-03-27T16:16:44Z2019-03-27T16:16:44ZPrinciple behind Google’s April Fools’ pigeon prank proves more than a joke<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/264444/original/file-20190318-28499-66kcrw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=513%2C2506%2C3294%2C2255&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Consider the wisdom of the flock.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/hPOFScEaZcA">Zac Ong/Unsplash</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://archive.google.com/pigeonrank/">Google’s 2002 April Fools’ Day joke</a> purportedly disclosed that its popular search engine was not actually powered by artificial intelligence, but instead by biological intelligence. Google had deployed bunches of birds, dubbed pigeon clusters, to calculate the relative value of web pages because they proved to be faster and more reliable than either human editors or digital computers.</p>
<p>The joke hinged on the silliness of the premise – but the scenario does have more than a bit of the factual mixed in with the fanciful.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/264443/original/file-20190318-28512-g4b3sl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/264443/original/file-20190318-28512-g4b3sl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/264443/original/file-20190318-28512-g4b3sl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=354&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264443/original/file-20190318-28512-g4b3sl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=354&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264443/original/file-20190318-28512-g4b3sl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=354&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264443/original/file-20190318-28512-g4b3sl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264443/original/file-20190318-28512-g4b3sl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264443/original/file-20190318-28512-g4b3sl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A screenshot of Google’s explanation of how PigeonRank supposedly worked.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://archive.google.com/pigeonrank/">Google</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The prank had taken a page out of 20th-century behaviorist B. F. Skinner’s <a href="https://www.verywellmind.com/operant-conditioning-a2-2794863">operant conditioning</a> playbook by allegedly teaching pigeons to peck for a food reward whenever the birds detected a relevant search result.</p>
<p>It also adapted Victorian polymath Francis Galton’s <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/075450a0">vox populi</a> – or the voice of the people – principle by purportedly putting the web search task to something of a vote. The more the flocks of pigeons pecked at a particular website, the higher it rose on the user’s results page. This so-called PigeonRank system thus rank-ordered a user’s search results in accord with the pecking order of Google’s suitably schooled birds.</p>
<p>More than a decade later, we integrated elements of this spoof into <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0141357">our own serious research project</a> using a real mini-flock of four pigeons. Our research team included <a href="https://health.ucdavis.edu/publish/providerbio/search/11653">a pathologist</a>, <a href="https://winshipcancer.emory.edu/bios/faculty/krupinski-elizabeth.html">a radiologist</a> and <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=SIl5WVYAAAAJ&hl=en">two experimental</a> <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=CiWDe9EAAAAJ&hl=en">psychologists</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/264174/original/file-20190315-28483-11dzk01.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/264174/original/file-20190315-28483-11dzk01.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/264174/original/file-20190315-28483-11dzk01.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264174/original/file-20190315-28483-11dzk01.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264174/original/file-20190315-28483-11dzk01.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264174/original/file-20190315-28483-11dzk01.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264174/original/file-20190315-28483-11dzk01.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264174/original/file-20190315-28483-11dzk01.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The test chamber provided pigeons with an image to classify for the reward of a food pellet.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0141357">PLoS ONE 10(11): e0141357</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Exploiting the well-established <a href="http://crosstalk.cell.com/blog/pigeons-arent-just-rats-with-wings">visual and cognitive prowess of pigeons</a>, we taught our birds to peck either a blue or a yellow button on a computerized touchscreen in order to categorize pathology slides that depicted either benign or cancerous human breast tissue samples.</p>
<p>In each training session, we showed pigeons several slides of each type in random order on the touchscreen. Pigeons first had to peck the pathology slide multiple times – this step encouraged the birds to study them. Then the two report buttons popped up on each side of the tissue sample. If the tissue sample looked benign and the pigeons pecked the “benign” report button or if the presented tissue sample looked malignant and the pigeons pecked the “malignant” report button, then they received a food reward. However, if the pigeons chose the incorrect report button, then no food was given.</p>
<p>After two weeks of training, the pigeons attained accuracy levels ranging between 85 and 90 percent correct. Granted, this accomplishment falls short of their reading human text – although time will tell if that too is within <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1607870113">the ken of pigeons</a> – but the pigeons were quite able to make such highly accurate reports despite considerable variations in the magnification of the slide images.</p>
<p>We went on to test the pigeons with brand-new images to see if the birds could reliably transfer what they had learned; this is the key criterion for claiming that they’d learned a generalized concept of “benign/malignant tissue samples.” Accuracy to the familiar training samples averaged around 85 percent correct, and accuracy to the novel testing samples was nearly as high, averaging around 80 percent correct. This high level of transfer indicates that rote memorization alone cannot explain the pigeon’s categorization proficiency.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/264435/original/file-20190318-28487-14ykryc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/264435/original/file-20190318-28487-14ykryc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/264435/original/file-20190318-28487-14ykryc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=314&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264435/original/file-20190318-28487-14ykryc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=314&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264435/original/file-20190318-28487-14ykryc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=314&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264435/original/file-20190318-28487-14ykryc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264435/original/file-20190318-28487-14ykryc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264435/original/file-20190318-28487-14ykryc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pigeons were able to generalize the skill of classifying tissue samples.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0141357">PLoS ONE 10(11): e0141357</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Finally, we put Google’s PigeonRank proposal to the test. With an expanded set of breast tissue samples, we assessed the accuracy of each of four pigeons against the “wisdom of the flock,” a technique we termed “flock-sourcing.” To calculate these “flock” scores, we assigned each trial a score of 100 percent if three or four pigeons correctly responded, and we assigned a score of 50 percent if two pigeons correctly responded. Three or four pigeons never incorrectly responded.</p>
<p>The accuracy scores of the four individual pigeons were 73, 79, 81 and 85 percent correct. However, the accuracy score of the “flock” was 93 percent, thereby exceeding that of every individual bird. Pigeons <a href="http://news.mit.edu/2017/algorithm-better-wisdom-crowds-0125">thus join people</a> in evidencing better wisdom from crowds. Playing on Galton’s original term, you might call this vox columbae – or the voice-of-the-pigeons principle.</p>
<p>Although all of this may seem to be a bit of feathery fluff, over the past several years our report has resonated across several fields, going beyond pathology and radiology to include the burgeoning realm of artificial intelligence. It has been recognized in several articles including one <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/04/03/ai-versus-md">quoting Geoff Hinton</a>, a key figure behind modern AI: “The role of radiologists will evolve from doing perceptual things that could probably be done by a highly trained pigeon to doing far more cognitive things.” In other words, machines may eventually be programmed to match what pigeons can do, leaving the more interesting and challenging tasks to humans.</p>
<p>What began as an elaborate April Fools’ prank has thus proved to be more than a joke. Never underestimate the brains of birds. They’re really <a href="https://www.activewild.com/bird-intelligence/">brainy beasts</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/99565/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>After Google suggested PigeonRank was at the root of its search function, a group of researchers put a small flock of the birds to a different classification test in real life.Edward Wasserman, Professor of Experimental Psychology, University of IowaRichard Levenson, Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of California, DavisVictor Navarro, Graduate Student in Psychology, University of IowaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/628442016-07-26T07:56:33Z2016-07-26T07:56:33ZCan genes really predict how well you’ll do academically?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/131420/original/image-20160721-32606-11008mz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/s/university+graduation/search.html?page=3&thumb_size=mosaic&inline=183338696">Rawpixel.com/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Researchers at King’s College London say they are able <a href="http://doi.org/10.1038/mp.2016.107">to predict educational achievement</a> from DNA alone. Using a new type of analysis called a “genome-wide polygenic score”, or GPS, they <a href="https://theconversation.com/your-genes-can-help-predict-how-well-youll-do-in-school-heres-how-we-cracked-it-62848">analysed DNA samples from 3,497 people</a> in the ongoing <a href="https://www.teds.ac.uk/">Twins Early Development Study</a>. They found that people whose DNA had the highest GPS score performed substantially better at school. In fact, by age 16, there was a whole school-grade difference between those with the highest GPS scores and the lowest. The researchers herald their findings as a “tipping point” in the ability to use DNA – and DNA alone – in predicting educational achievement.</p>
<p>These findings will certainly generate debate, particularly about nature versus nurture. It’s a debate that forces us – often uncomfortably – to think about what makes us who we are. Are our careers, hobbies, food preferences, income levels, emotional dispositions, or even general success in life rooted in our genes (nature)? Or are we shaped more by our environment (nurture)? If it’s all down to our genes, what happens to the idea of determining our own destiny? </p>
<p>When it comes to the subject of intelligence, which today includes behavioural genetics research into “<a href="http://doi.org/10.2307/1412107">g</a> (a measure of intelligence commonly used as a variable in research in this area) and <a href="http://doi.org/10.1177/0956797612457952">cognitive ability</a>, the nature-nurture debate becomes that much more heated.</p>
<p>There is a growing body of research that suggests intelligence is a <a href="http://doi.org/10.1038/mp.2012.184">highly heritable and polygenic trait</a>, meaning that there are many genes that predict intelligence, each with a small effect size. While the connection between genetics research on educational achievement and findings on intelligence might not seem direct, studies like the one out of King’s establishes a biological connection between "g” and educational achievement. The findings mark the strongest genetic prediction for educational achievement so far, estimating up to 9% of variance in educational achievement at age 16. </p>
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</figure>
<p>But <a href="http://doi.org/10.1002/hast.497">despite claims</a> that this research moves “us closer to the possibility of early intervention and personalised learning”, there are important ethical concerns to take into account. For example, who would early intervention and personalised learning reach first? Is it possible parents with money, means, awareness and access would be first to place their children in <a href="http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1118482786.html">“genetically sensitive schools”</a> in the hope of getting an extra advantage? </p>
<h2>Dark past</h2>
<p>It is not a secret that the history of intelligence research, and by extension genetics research on cognitive ability or educational achievement, is <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/hast.492/abstract">rooted in eugenics and racism</a>, and has been used to validate the existence of racial and class differences. So how does this shameful past impact the field of behavioural genetics research today? </p>
<p>Many behavioural geneticists, like Robert Plomin, the senior author on the King’s study, believe the field has moved past this dark history and that the science is objective, neutral (as neutral as any research can be) and clear. The controversies that surround this research, at least in the eyes of Plomin and others, are fuelled by <a href="http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1118482786.html">media sensationalism</a>.</p>
<p>But many bioethicists and social scientists disagree with him. They argue that society values intelligence too much for this research to remain in neutral territory. Previously, the field was largely used to marginalise certain groups, particularly low-income or ethnic minority groups. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/131762/original/image-20160725-31165-8cxrvw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/131762/original/image-20160725-31165-8cxrvw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131762/original/image-20160725-31165-8cxrvw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131762/original/image-20160725-31165-8cxrvw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131762/original/image-20160725-31165-8cxrvw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131762/original/image-20160725-31165-8cxrvw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131762/original/image-20160725-31165-8cxrvw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Will genetic studies be used to justify inequalities?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/dl2_lim.mhtml?src=O6dTXcYeyM4LnDU-d3gMQw-1-1&clicksrc=download_btn_inline&id=106321706&size=medium_jpg&submit_jpg=">Olesia Bilkei/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For some, attributing intelligence to genetics justifies the adverse circumstances many low-income and ethnic minority groups find themselves in; it wasn’t nurture that led to the under-performance of <a href="http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/003465304323031049#.V5WyIDm7iko">low-income or ethnic minority students</a> in the classroom, it was nature, and nature cannot be changed. For bioethicists today, the question hanging over this branch of behavioural genetics is: who’s to say new research in this area won’t perpetuate the same social inequalities that similar work has done before? </p>
<p>Genetic research in an area once used to oppress people should openly acknowledge this past and explicitly state what its findings can and cannot prove (what many bioethicists call <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/hast.501/abstract">“trustworthy research”</a>).</p>
<p>Stark <a href="https://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/scale-economic-inequality-uk">class</a> and <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/britains-hidden-racism-workplace-inequality-has-grown-in-the-last-decade-9898930.html">race</a> divides still persist in the UK and US, two countries where this branch of research is rapidly growing. While the study mentions the impact of a person’s place in society with educational achievement, it links this status back to genetics, highlighting the genetic overlap between educational achievement, g and family socioeconomic status. </p>
<p>The possibility that this kind of research may influence attitudes towards certain ethnic minorities and the less well off is real, as is the risk that this work might be used to justify social inequality. These concerns should be admitted and addressed by behavioural geneticists. The alternative could be a <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02680939.2016.1139189">new form of eugenics</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/62844/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daphne Martschenko does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Research that finds links between genes and intelligence could worsen social inequality.Daphne Martschenko, PhD Candidate, University of CambridgeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/561152016-04-21T05:13:38Z2016-04-21T05:13:38ZGenetics: what it is that makes you clever – and why it’s shrouded in controversy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/115805/original/image-20160321-30912-12y3ejo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">SandraViolla/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>For nearly 150 years, the concept of intelligence and its study have offered scientific ways of classifying people in terms of their “ability”. The drive to identify and quantify exceptional mental capacity may have a chequered <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/hast.499/abstract;jsessionid=1C167A1612F22CDFE6340960AC893439.f04t03?userIsAuthenticated=false&deniedAccessCustomisedMessage=">history</a>, but it is still being pursued by some researchers today. </p>
<p>Francis Galton, who was Charles Darwin’s cousin, is considered the father of eugenics and was one of the first to formally study intelligence. His 1869 work <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Hereditary_Genius.html?id=1h0Ztc1q-RoC&source=kp_cover&redir_esc=y">Hereditary Genius</a> argued that superior mental capabilities were passed down via natural selection – confined to Europe’s most eminent men, a “lineage of genius”. Barring a few exceptions, women, ethnic minorities and lower socioeconomic communities were labelled as inferior in intelligence. </p>
<p>Galton’s controversial theories on race, socioeconomics and intelligence have been highly influential and shaped the ideologies of numerous researchers and theorists around the world.</p>
<p>In the UK, proponents of a Galtonian view on intelligence included educational psychologist <a href="https://www.timeshighereducation.com/books/a-true-pro-and-his-cons/161397.article">Cyril Burt</a>, who helped formulate the 11-plus examination, and <a href="http://www.britannica.com/biography/Charles-E-Spearman">psychologist Charles Spearman</a> who is best known for his creation of the concept “g” – the innate general factor of human mental ability. Spearman’s background as an engineer in the British army gave him a statistical sophistication that proved instrumental in shifting the direction of the field of intelligence study. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/115800/original/image-20160321-30917-1i9hs6m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/115800/original/image-20160321-30917-1i9hs6m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=933&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/115800/original/image-20160321-30917-1i9hs6m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=933&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/115800/original/image-20160321-30917-1i9hs6m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=933&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/115800/original/image-20160321-30917-1i9hs6m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1173&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/115800/original/image-20160321-30917-1i9hs6m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1173&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/115800/original/image-20160321-30917-1i9hs6m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1173&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Spearman: statistician who delved into human intelligence.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AExposition_universelle_de_1900_-_portraits_des_commissaires_g%C3%A9n%C3%A9raux-Charles_Spearman.jpg">Eugène Pirou via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Spearman hypothesised that intelligence is comprised of “<a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/1412107?origin=crossref&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">g</a>” – or “general intelligence”, and two other specific factors: verbal ability and fluency. Spearman’s extensive work on the use of “g” within the field of statistics meant that some used the “hard” sciences and maths as instruments to argue that there were biological differences between races and social classes. “G” as a representation of the biological basis of intelligence <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/hast.494/abstract">is still being used today in research</a> within the current field of behavioural genetics. </p>
<h2>Political currency</h2>
<p>The concept of inheritance, and specifically the inheritance of intelligence, has carried over into political and educational spheres. A more recent advocate of Galtonian-inspired ideas is Dominic Cummings, who served as a special advisor to the former secretary of state for education, Michael Gove. Cummings wrote the following in a <a href="http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/804396/some-thoughts-on-education-and-political.pdf">237-page document</a> titled “Some thoughts on education and political priorities”: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Raising school performance of poorer children … would not necessarily lower parent-offspring correlations (nor change heritability estimates). When people look at the gaps between rich and poor children that already exist at a young age (3-5), they almost universally assume that these differences are because of environmental reasons (“privileges of wealth”) and ignore genetics.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>The birth of twins studies</h2>
<p>From the 1920s, when <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08856559.1932.10533098?journalCode=vzpg20">twin and adoption studies</a> set out to determine the genetic and environmental origins of intelligence differences, the study of intelligence began to converse with the early stages of human behavioural genetics. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/115802/original/image-20160321-30906-1lsndvw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/115802/original/image-20160321-30906-1lsndvw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/115802/original/image-20160321-30906-1lsndvw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/115802/original/image-20160321-30906-1lsndvw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/115802/original/image-20160321-30906-1lsndvw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/115802/original/image-20160321-30906-1lsndvw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/115802/original/image-20160321-30906-1lsndvw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Are you copying me?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Volt Collection/www.shutterstock.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Under the presumption that twins experience similar environmental aspects, <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023%2FA%3A1001959306025">twins studies enable researchers</a> to evaluate the variance of a given outcome – such as cognitive ability – in a large group. They can then attempt to estimate how much of this variance is due to the heritability of genes, the shared environment the twins live in, or a non-shared environment.</p>
<p>The 1980s and 1990s saw another rise in twin and adoption studies on intelligence, many of which were more systematic in nature due to advances in technology. Most supported earlier research and showed intelligence to be highly heritable and polygenic, meaning that it is influenced by many different genetic markers. </p>
<p>The researchers <a href="https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/en/publications/multivariate-behavioral-genetics-and-development-twin-studies%28f51376fe-96e6-4288-811f-9b44cead12c9%29.html">Robert Plomin</a>, <a href="http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.ps.29.020178.002353">JC Defries</a>, and <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023%2FA%3A1010257512183">Nele Jacobs</a> were at the forefront of this new wave of studies. But this research was still unable to identify the specific genetic markers within the human genome that are connected to intelligence. </p>
<h2>Genome – a new frontier</h2>
<p>Genome sequencing technologies have taken the search for the genetic components of inheritance another step forward. Despite the seemingly endless possibilities brought forth by the <a href="https://www.genome.gov/12011239">Human Genome Project in 2001</a>, actually using DNA-based techniques to locate which genetic differences contribute to observed differences in intelligence <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/hast.496/abstract">has been markedly more difficult</a> than anticipated. </p>
<p>Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) began to take hold as a powerful tool for investigating the human genetic architecture. These studies assess connections between a trait and a multitude of DNA markers. Most commonly, they look for single-nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs. These are variations between genes at specific locations throughout a DNA sequence that might determine an individual’s likelihood to develop a particular disease or trait. </p>
<p>Originally intended to identify genetic risk factors associated with <a href="http://doi.org/10.1126/science.1109557">susceptibility to disease</a>, GWAS have become a means through which to try and pinpoint the genetic factors responsible <a href="http://doi.org/10.1038/mp.2012.184">for cognitive ability</a>. But researchers have <a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/340/6139/1467">shown</a> that intelligence is a trait influenced by many different genes: they have so far been unable to locate enough SNPs to predict the IQ of an individual. </p>
<h2>Ethical questions</h2>
<p>There’s a long way still to go, but this field is receiving <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/11680895/Children-should-be-genetically-screened-at-the-age-of-4-to-aid-their-education-expert-claims.html">a great deal of publicity</a>. This raises several ethical questions. We must ask ourselves if this research can ever be socially neutral given the eugenic-Galtonian history underpinning it. </p>
<p>This kind of research could have an impact on <a href="http://nautil.us/issue/18/genius/super_intelligent-humans-are-coming">human genetic engineering</a> and the choices parents make when deciding to have children. It could give parents with the money and desire to do so the option to make their offspring “smarter”. Though genetically engineering intelligence may appear to be in the realm of science fiction, if the genes associated with intelligence are identified, it could become a reality. </p>
<p>Some <a href="http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1118482786.html">researchers</a> have suggested that schools which have a child’s genetic information could tailor the curriculum and teaching to create a system of “personalised learning”. But this could lead schools to expect certain levels of achievement from certain groups of children – perhaps from different socioeconomic or ethnic groups – and would raise questions of whether richer families would benefit most. </p>
<p>Whether calling it “intelligence”, “cognitive ability”, or “IQ”, behavioural genetics research is still trying to identify the genetic markers for a trait that can predict, in essence, a person’s success in life. Given the history of this field of research, it’s vital it is conducted with an awareness of its possible ethical impact on all parts of society.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/56115/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daphne Martschenko does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A short history of research into the links between genes and intelligence.Daphne Martschenko, PhD Candidate, University of CambridgeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/506292015-11-20T04:36:01Z2015-11-20T04:36:01ZHow science has been abused through the ages to promote racism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/102325/original/image-20151118-14189-1mpkamn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Scientific evidence shows overwhelmingly that people across the world are genetic refugees from Africa.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Race in <a href="https://www.cbd.int/gti/taxonomy.shtml">human taxonomy</a> – the science of classifying organisms – has a long, disgraceful history. </p>
<p>Individuals have used race to divide and denigrate certain people while promoting their claims of superiority. Some of these individuals were, and are, respected in their time and their fields. They include philosopher and scientist <a href="http://global.britannica.com/biography/Robert-Boyle">Robert Boyle</a> and sociologists like <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=IWDyVPi6pHgC&pg=PA35&lpg=PA35&dq=Hans+G%C3%BCnther+1891+%E2%80%93+1968&source=bl&ots=-UUgXQRqQO&sig=XAyokkxiY_wknDBWZyJ2GEvzsSU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CC0Q6AEwBGoVChMI5KapqZGcyQIVRlkUCh3E1AbV#v=onepage&q=Hans%20G%C3%BCnther%201891%20%E2%80%93%201968&f=false">Hans Günther</a>. Others who’ve been guilty include biologists like <a href="http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/haeckel.html">Ernst Haeckel</a> and historians such as <a href="http://global.britannica.com/biography/Henri-de-Boulainvilliers-comte-de-Saint-Saire">Henri de Boulainvilliers</a>. </p>
<p>What is the history of racially based classifications of humans? And does it have any scientific validity?</p>
<h2>Starting with Kant</h2>
<p>The eminent philosopher <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=TE021UmMiAsC&pg=PA513&lpg=PA513&dq=Immanuel+Kant,+stupid,+trifling&source=bl&ots=FcD4KcVfoq&sig=-2rG2Iqv9Keq2adOa0Wb3PMV6u8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CEwQ6AEwCWoVChMIhq7_xpuXyQIVAW8UCh3t5QFM#v=onepage&q=Immanuel%20Kant%2C%20stupid%2C%20trifling&f=false">Immanuel Kant</a> was arguably the first “scientific racist”. He maintained that dark-skinned Africans were “vain and stupid”. He insisted that they were only capable of trifling feelings and were resistant to any form of education other than learning how to be enslaved.</p>
<p>By contrast, Kant maintained, light-skinned Caucasians were “active, acute, and adventurous”. </p>
<p>Renowned German anthropologist <a href="https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/johann-friedrich-blumenbach-1752-1840">Johann Blumenbach</a> used skull anatomy to divide humans into five races:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Caucasians (Europe and western Asia);</p></li>
<li><p>Mongoloids (eastern Asia);</p></li>
<li><p>Malays (south-eastern Asia);</p></li>
<li><p>Negros (sub-Saharan Africa); and</p></li>
<li><p>Americans (North and South America).</p></li>
</ul>
<p>But he disagreed with the common view that humans from sub-Saharan Africa were inferior. Blumenbach’s “benign” racial categorisation persisted well into the 20th century.</p>
<p><a href="http://global.britannica.com/biography/Samuel-Morton">Samuel Morton</a> drew on refined, quantitative assessments of skull anatomy to provide further “scientific evidence”. He claimed that interracial intellectual variation is reflected by the interior volume of the skull, and that this justified the use of Blumenbach’s groupings to determine relative racial superiority. </p>
<p>He regarded the Caucasian as:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… distinguished by the facility with which it attains the highest intellectual endowments</p>
</blockquote>
<p>and Africans as</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… joyous, flexible, and indolent; while the many nations which compose this race present a singular diversity of intellectual character, of which the far extreme is the lowest grade of humanity. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>“Scientific racism”“ was used to justify the ownership of <a href="http://abolition.e2bn.org/slavery_40.html">slaves</a>, as well as colonialism. It reached its pinnacle in eugenics, a "science” espoused by the British statistician and sociologist <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11700278">Francis Galton</a> at the end of the 19th century. </p>
<p>Eugenicists advocate the “improvement” of humanity by promoting reproduction between people with desired traits and reducing reproduction between people with less-desired traits. Eugenics featured in race-related legislation like Nazi Germany’s <a href="http://www.ushmm.org/outreach/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007695">Nuremberg Laws</a> and <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/apartheid-and-reactions-it">apartheid-era</a> South Africa’s edicts.</p>
<h2>Genetic evidence</h2>
<p>Genetic studies have examined “racial” variation from a molecular perspective. My early mentor <a href="http://sandwalk.blogspot.co.za/2008/07/good-science-writersrichard-lewontin.html">Richard Lewontin</a>, an evolutionary biologist from the University of Chicago, was a pioneer in this. His research suggested that 90% of modern human genetic diversity is found between individuals within populations. The tiny balance is due to variation between populations. </p>
<p>This view was confirmed by subsequent studies based on DNA by, among others, <a href="http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v36/n11s/full/ng1435.html">Lynn B. Jorde and Stephen P. Wooding</a>. The DNA among all human populations is 99.5% similar. Populations of the geographically much more restricted chimpanzee exhibit more than four times the <a href="http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/genetics/skin-color/modern-human-diversity-genetics">genetic variation</a> that’s found between human populations. Chimpanzees are humans’ nearest living evolutionary “relative”.</p>
<p>Their research shows that when humans are studied from genetic or anatomical perspectives, the pattern that’s discovered is not diagnosable geographically discrete clusters. The norm is gradual, geographically uncorrelated variation in traits and genes. This is even true within peoples who are traditionally thought to be racially homogeneous. There is no evidence of evolutionarily significant racial variation in either genes or anatomy. </p>
<p>The exception is skin colour. Around 10% of the variance in skin colour occurs <a href="http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/genetics/skin-color/modern-human-diversity-skin-color">within groups</a> and about 90% between groups. People living near the equator have darker, more melanin-rich skin than those who live at higher latitudes. Darker skin is strongly selected for because it is a natural sunscreen that limits harmful effects of high ultraviolet rays. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520275898">Recent genetic studies</a> indicate that skin colour may change radically within 100 generations because of natural selection.</p>
<h2>Genetic racism revived</h2>
<p>This overwhelming scientific evidence has not prevented recent studies based on <a href="http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/glossary=allele">DNA allele frequencies</a> from claiming that there are as many as <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12493913">eight races of humans</a>. </p>
<p>British scientific journalist <a href="http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/a-troubling-tome">Nicholas Wade</a> used these studies to claim that natural selection between “races” produced differences in IQ, the efficacy of political institutions and countries’ levels of economic development. </p>
<p>These genetic studies are fundamentally flawed for three reasons: </p>
<ul>
<li><p>Taxonomic studies aimed at determining the validity of races should be based on characters. These are features that are invariant within populations. They should not be based on traits like eye colour and gene alleles, which vary within populations.</p></li>
<li><p>Samples used in the DNA-based studies mentioned above were “cherry picked” geographically to maximise differentiation between human populations, and </p></li>
<li><p>The DNA-based evolutionary racial “trees” were generated by a statistical technique that is designed to produce tree-like patterns which reflect average, not absolute, differences between sampled items. This technique formed the basis of an approach to the construction of evolutionary trees called “phenetics”. It has been decisively discredited and generally abandoned.</p></li>
</ul>
<h2>Evolutionary origins</h2>
<p>DNA and anatomy-based findings support the <a href="http://anthro.palomar.edu/homo/homo_2.htm">“Out of Africa” theory</a>. This holds that modern humans originated in Africa. Archaic African Homo erectus immigrated into Eurasia between 1.4 million to 1.6 million years ago. </p>
<p>About 90,000 to 92,000 years ago, a second form of humanity, modern H. sapiens, also emigrated out of Africa. This species replaced populations of Homo erectus already in the north. </p>
<p>Attempts to justify the scientific reality of human races warrant no further discussion. They cannot be used to assess racial “superiority”. “White” and other non-African people are in fact evolutionary refugees from Africa. After settling in Eurasia, it took only an evolutionary heartbeat for them to lose much of their epidermal melanin. </p>
<p>Dark-skinned humans outside of Africa are descended from migrants who “regained” their “blackness” in <a href="http://faculty.washington.edu/charles/562_f2011/Week%201/Jablonski%202004.pdf">equatorial regions</a> elsewhere.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/50629/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>While he was an academic at the University of Cape Town, his and his students' research was supported by South Africa's National Science Foundation, in some instance in collaboration with other international agencies.</span></em></p>Despite science refuting the existence of different human races, people have used “race” throughout history to divide and denigrate certain people while promoting their claims of superiority.Tim Crowe, Emeritus Professor, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/454442015-10-09T04:25:05Z2015-10-09T04:25:05ZShow us your smarts: a very brief history of intelligence testing<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97869/original/image-20151009-25766-k6ov15.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Who's a clever boy?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/alicejamieson/3164148439/">alicejamieson/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The scientific study of human intelligence dates back well over 100 years. In that time there have been numerous schools of thought about how to measure intelligence. The core disagreement between researchers and theorists about intelligence is around whether it’s genetic or largely influenced by the environment; whether it’s nature or nurture. </p>
<p>In the late 1800s, Englishman <a href="http://www.galton.org/">Sir Francis Galton</a> (1822-1911) became one of the first people to study intelligence. He tried to measure physical characteristics of noblemen and created a laboratory to measure their reaction time and other physical and sensory qualities. </p>
<p>Regarded as one of the fathers of modern-day intelligence research, Galton pioneered psychometric and statistical methods. Given the technology of the day, he wasn’t particularly successful at measuring biological parameters. But he did create testable hypotheses about intelligence that later researchers used.</p>
<h2>The first IQ tests</h2>
<p>It wasn’t until the turn of the 20th century that <a href="http://www.intelltheory.com/binet.shtml">Frenchman Alfred Binet</a> (1857-1911) developed the first test resembling a modern intelligence test. Binet designed a series of questions aimed at distinguishing children who may have learning disabilities or need special help, which he thought children of different ages could answer correctly. His test was based on the assumption that intelligence developed with age but one’s relative standing among peers remained largely stable. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.intelltheory.com/stern.shtml">German psychologist William Stern</a> (1871-1938) introduced the idea of intelligence quotient, or IQ. This entailed a formula for mental age that could be assessed by a test, such as the one devised by Binet, divided by chronological age, multiplied by 100.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.intelltheory.com/terman.shtml">Lewis Madison Terman</a> (1877-1956), a cognitive psychology professor at Standford University, redeveloped the Binet test for use in the United States. Terman updated the test in many ways, most significantly by making a version that could be used for adults. And in the 1930s, another American psychologist, <a href="http://www.intelltheory.com/wechsler.shtml">David Wechsler</a> (1896-1981), further expanded the idea of assessing adult intelligence using written tests. </p>
<p>Modern-day Wechsler and Stanford-Binet tests have undergone considerable scientific developments over the last century. They represent a significant achievement in psychological testing and measure a wide range of cognitive processes – vocabulary, knowledge, arithmetic, immediate and long-term memory, spatial processing and reasoning – with considerable precision. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97871/original/image-20151009-25766-1lsee3h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97871/original/image-20151009-25766-1lsee3h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=536&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97871/original/image-20151009-25766-1lsee3h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=536&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97871/original/image-20151009-25766-1lsee3h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=536&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97871/original/image-20151009-25766-1lsee3h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=673&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97871/original/image-20151009-25766-1lsee3h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=673&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97871/original/image-20151009-25766-1lsee3h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=673&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The idea of assessing adult intelligence using written tests was developed in the 1930s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/caseorganic/4037982956/">Amber Case/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>One controversy around these tests involved <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_the_United_States">the eugenics movement</a>, but that’s beyond the scope of this introductory article. You can read more about that aspect of intelligence testing <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_the_United_States">here</a>. </p>
<h2>Where intelligence comes from</h2>
<p>Scores on the tests have been <a href="http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/what-do-iq-tests-test-interview-with-psychologist-w-joel-schneider/">shown to predict</a> a wide range of scholastic, academic and organisational variables. There have also been other types of intelligence tests that measure only non-verbal abilities. </p>
<p>The US military used <a href="http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095424949">Army Alpha and Beta tests</a>, for instance, to measure the intelligence of candidates, some of whom were illiterate. For those who couldn’t read or write, the tests involved using a series of non-verbal reasoning questions to assess differences in intelligence. </p>
<p>These types of tests were regarded by many as “culturally fair” – that is, they didn’t discriminate against people who had poor education or lower levels of reading and language ability. And some researchers and theorists argued they could be used “fairly” and “objectively” to assess a person’s true underlying intellectual capabilities.</p>
<p>Researchers have often identified a strong relationship between <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve">IQ test performance and educational achievement</a>; scores from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Piagetian_theories_of_cognitive_development">even an early age</a> can predict academic achievement and scholastic performance in later years.</p>
<p>One reason why IQ tests predict scholastic performance might be that they cover similar ground and were constructed for this purpose. Since problem solving and reasoning are taught within education systems, longer and better education often results in improved IQ as well as scholastic performance. Children who miss school often show deficits in IQ; older children in the same class who have access to an extra year of education <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=_R2ZIqKSClcC&lr=&redir_esc=y">often score significantly higher</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97872/original/image-20151009-25751-5wwhd0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97872/original/image-20151009-25751-5wwhd0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97872/original/image-20151009-25751-5wwhd0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97872/original/image-20151009-25751-5wwhd0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97872/original/image-20151009-25751-5wwhd0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97872/original/image-20151009-25751-5wwhd0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97872/original/image-20151009-25751-5wwhd0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">One reason why IQ tests predict scholastic performance might be that they cover similar ground and were constructed for this purpose.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/ludwg/8668129713/">Ludwig/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This has led many psychologists and teachers to question whether IQ tests are fair to certain groups. But <a href="http://www.cengage.com/search/productOverview.do?N=14+4294964452&Ntk=P_EPI&Ntt=4991515981798751072642113811961538108&Ntx=mode%2Bmatchallpartial">others have argued</a> that a third factor – socioeconomic status – is also at play here. It’s likely that more affluent parents spend more time with their developing children and have more resources to help them. </p>
<p>While this is a popular belief, research shows it’s not the whole story. When parental socioeconomics status is taken into account, IQ still predicts scholastic performance. But when IQ is controlled, socioeconomic status only weakly predicts scholastic performance.</p>
<p>All this suggests that while socioeconomc status is an important factor to consider in a child’s development, there are <a href="http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199585595.do">other reasons for the relationship</a> between IQ and academic achievement.</p>
<h2>Nature and nurture</h2>
<p>Many researchers still argue that cognitive abilities measured by IQ tests have a predominantly <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23501967">genetic basis</a>. But there’s very little evidence to support the view, despite hundreds of millions of dollars spent on research to identify genes responsible for intelligence and cognitive ability. </p>
<p>The argument has shifted over time from hoping to identify a small set of genes associated with intelligence to accepting that, if there is such a basis to intelligence, thousands of genes contribute small variance in IQ scores.</p>
<p>Even if we could identify intelligence genes, the assumption that they work independently of the environment is incorrect. We know that <a href="http://psych.colorado.edu/%7Ecarey/pdfFiles/IQ_Plomin02.pdf">genes get turned on and off</a> depending on environmental cues and triggers. </p>
<p>Creating better environments at sensitive periods of development is likely to have <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214109X15700021">profound effects</a> on our intelligence. Some studies show, for instance, that <a href="http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fnhum.2013.00097/abstract">nutritional interventions</a> can improve cognitive performance, although there’s much work still to be done in this area.</p>
<p>IQ tests have had many detractors. Some have suggested that intelligence becomes <a href="http://news.sciencemag.org/2011/04/what-does-iq-really-measure">whatever IQ tests measure</a>. One of the first historians of psychology, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Boring">Harvard professor Edwin Boring</a>, for instance, said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/A_History_of_Experimental_Psychology.html?id=L7Z-AAAAMAAJ">Intelligence is what the tests test</a>. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The construct of human intelligence is fundamental to the sort of society that we live in; intelligence is central to new discoveries, to finding solutions to important problems, and to many other important qualities we value. Numerous questions remain about not just how to measure intelligence but also how we improve intelligence and prevent our cognitive abilities from declining as we get older.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/45444/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Con Stough has received funding from the ARC and NHMRC. He is a member of the International Society for Intelligence Research and on the editorial boards of the journals Intelligence and the Journal of Intelligence.</span></em></p>The study of human intelligence dates back well over 100 years. And the core disagreement between researchers and theorists is whether differences are genetic or largely influenced by the environment.Con Stough, Professor &Co-Director, Swinburne Centre for Human Psychopharmacology, Swinburne University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.