Summary
Historically, intelligence tests were used to implement eugenic measures, as suggested by Galton.
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The eugenics movement was legitimized by pseudo-scientific support for policies such as forced sterilization and immigration laws.
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However, the data used to support the movement was incomplete and biased, and the assumptions were not verified.
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Summary
The eugenics movement, which gained prominence in the early 20th century, contributed to the atrocities of the Nazi Holocaust. It was legitimized by lending pseudo-scientific support to policies that aimed to "improve" society, such as forced sterilization of the "feebleminded" and "insane" and immigration laws designed to keep out eastern and southern Europeans. Today, eugenic ideas live on in coded statements that reduce members of entire groups to less-than-human statuses, and should be kept vigilant regarding the possibility of their re-emergence.
The Long Shadow of the Eugenics Movement | Psychology Today
psychologytoday.com
Summary
The Eugenics Record Office (ERO) was founded in 1910 by geneticist and physician David Davenport to study large human families in which a certain undesirable trait appeared, they could demonstrate a genetic pattern of inheritance for the trait and justify policies aimed at removing the related genes from the population. However, the ERO's data was incomplete and the research was biased towards certain traits, which were often based on subjectively quantified characteristics and were not based on the actual nature of complex human traits. Despite this, the eugenics movement was popularized by studies showing that mental illness, poverty, "criminality," and other complex human traits were inherited in a predictable pattern, and that the movement was largely driven by the lack of data to verify its assumptions.
Human Testing, the Eugenics Movement, and IRBs
nature.com
Intelligence, genius and mental ability were a cluster of traits that received much attention in eugenics discourse. Intelligence was regarded as one of the good qualities superior men possessed, in…
The Eugenics Archive
eugenicsarchive.ca
Eugenicists believed in a genetic link between crime, poverty, andlow intelligence, tending to lump the three into one blanket categoryof degeneracy. Margaret Sanger, an avowed eugenicist, notable femi-nist, and founder…
DePaul Law Review
depaul.edu
Galton defined eugenics as “the study of agencies under social control that may improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations either physically or mentally .” Galton claimed that…
Eugenics and Scientific Racism - Genome.gov
genome.gov
Eugenics is the selection of desired heritable characteristics in order to improve future generations, typically in reference to humans. The term eugenics was coined in the 1880s. It failed as…
Eugenics | Definition, History, & Facts | Britannica
britannica.com
