ON OUR THREE QUOTES CONCERNING GALTONIAN EUGENICS AND FALSELY OBJECTIVE STATISTICS by Tom Leonard

                                                        In her fascinating article

                                                         BECOMINGS OR FIXITY 

                              (International Review of Theoretical Psychologies, 2021)  

                                                   

                                                       ANN ALISON PHOENIX 

                                                          Professor of Education 

                                                      University College London

                                                           cite my blogpost

                              THE LIFE OF SIR  FRANCIS GALTON (High Class Operator)        

                                           

             and includes my quote to the 2019 UCL Commission of Inquiry:,

             ""Eugenics was not universally popular in its heydays. Early critics of Eugenics included Lester Frank Ward, GK Chesterton(see his 1917 book Eugenics and Other Evils), Franz Boas, Halliday Sutherland, and Aldous Huxley, Liberal MP Josiah Wedgwood would speak against the 1913 Mental Deficiency Act. This Act, though containing elements of welfare state provision, also made judgements on mental abilities as if they were fixed and biological rather than the result of material social conditions

      The early eugenicists cannot therefore be exonerated on the grounds that their preachings were unquestioned at that time.""

                                                

                   Tom was also cited on in Professor Phoenix's  public lecture at Aarhus University 

                   (video) after about 20 minutes.

                                                                                      

As we explained to the UCL Commission of Inquiry in 2019, Aldous Huxley is controversial. He supported some Eugenics policies before writing Brave New World, which GK Chesterton regarded as anti-eugenic----but others didn't.  Huxley may have been a Fabian and a supporter of MONDISM.

                                                                        

Named after the industrialist Alfred Mond, Mondism was a system first mooted in Britain during the late 1920s whereby trade unions would attempt to maintain working-class living standards and assist industrial efficiency by cooperating with employers. Strongly supported by right-wing trade union leaders, it was condemned on the left as class collaboration.

Professor Phoenix also joined us in her article by heavily criticising the racist and ableist manner in which Karl Pearson and Sir Ronald Fisher distorted Statistics while imposing Eugenics on the population, and endorsing settler colonialism and population eugenics on a global scale. We agree with the South African graduate Nathaniel Joselson, who is also cited in Ann's article, that it is essential to now decolonialise the false objectivity in Statistics. See my  interview in 2014 to Statistics Views, in which I say

"I believe that most statistical investigations are inherently subjective in nature, and that statisticians should no longer attempt to achieve ‘false objectivity’. Rather than attempting to educate the public in a possibly misleading manner, I think that our leading statistical societies should focus on encouraging their members to invariably insist on fairness, professionalism, and impartial honesty, while acknowledging the subjective nature of their conclusions. It is only then that we can hope to properly educate the public regarding the real benefits that can be gained from statistical investigations." 

                                                             Pearson: Falsely Objective

Fisher : Falsely Objective

   See also: MY INTERVIEW BY DIEGO PFREZ in ISBA BULLETIN, 2016, in which I say

 "When I was at UCL, I was taught to revere Karl Pearson and Ronald Fisher. Fisher was professor of Eugenics at UCL and so like Pearson and of course Galton before him, was associated with the Galton Laboratory. A lot of Fisher’s work in Genetics concerned Eugenics. A lot of Pearson’s work in Statistics which was published in Biometrika concerned Eugenics. In other words, comparisons were made of the attributes of different ethnic groups. I don’t know whether their motives were good or not but what came out of the subsequent Eugenics movement around the western world during the 20th century is absolutely terrifying, for example, forced sterilizations, racial discrimination, the CIA mind control program MK Ultra, and genocide."

CLICK HERE FOR  

FIFTY OR MORE PRE-EMINENT STATISTICIANS AFFILIATED WITH THE

EUGENICS MOVEMENT

Professor Phoenix was a member of the Commission of Inquiry when we gave expert witness testimony at UCL in July 2019.

See THE FORSTER-LEONARD SUBMISSION TO THE UCL EUGENICS INQUIRY  

My co-author and historical advisor Scott Forster