tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21605329.post6809535042311598224..comments2024-03-22T00:30:09.536-07:00Comments on The Neurocritic: Distrust of PsychologyThe Neurocritichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08010555869208208621noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21605329.post-57262080645755926752013-03-27T14:37:27.533-07:002013-03-27T14:37:27.533-07:00Gaspy - Writing letters to Congress to recommend l...Gaspy - Writing letters to Congress to recommend limiting the immigration of Southern and Eastern Europeans goes a little further than "thought crimes."The Neurocritichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08010555869208208621noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21605329.post-30058005059612178592013-03-27T11:15:03.950-07:002013-03-27T11:15:03.950-07:00Wow, Yerkes was a thought criminal! Thanks for al...Wow, Yerkes was a thought criminal! Thanks for alerting me to that!<br /><br />Of course, poor old Yerkes didn't live to see the racial gaps in educational achievement in the West disappear, as they did in the late 20th century. Or the emergence of high tech idea centers in Africa.<br /><br />And he also didn't live long enough to hear God's Proclamation of 2012 in which he reassured us all that, even though He allows the existence of war, cancer, river blindness, Pol Pot's Cambodia death camps, etc etc, he draws the line at allowing the emergence of population differences in intelligence-related alleles.<br /><br />So we can't really blame old Yerkes for his Thought Crimes. But thanks for pointing this out. It needs to be mentioned every time someone brings him up, lest we lose sight of his thought crimes.Gaspynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21605329.post-42082697679708926132013-03-24T10:39:05.107-07:002013-03-24T10:39:05.107-07:00Semigrounded - Do you think it's fortunate tha...Semigrounded - Do you think it's fortunate that Yerkes believed in IQ-based racial superiority in the 1920's? We all know where those views led... and in fact there <b>was</b> a perverse social agenda behind it (<a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21259753" rel="nofollow">Yerkes, 1923</a>):<br /><br />"Far more interesting doubtless to the practical eugenist than occupational differences in intelligence or specifications are the racial differences which appear when the foreign-born American draft is analysed into its principal constituent groups. The difference even of median score or letter grade distribution are so great as to be significant alike to the American people and to the eugenists of the world."<br /><br />The word "eugenics" is a loaded term, for good reason. Scientists engaged in gene therapy research should avoid it. <br /><br />For an excellent recent discussion of modern studies on genetics and IQ, see <a href="http://www.denimandtweed.com/2013/03/false-discovery-how-not-to-find-genetic.html" rel="nofollow">False discovery: How not to find the genetic basis of human intelligence</a>.<br /><br />I'm glad you like my blog, by the way. :)The Neurocritichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08010555869208208621noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21605329.post-84583245726335625952013-03-23T09:55:47.684-07:002013-03-23T09:55:47.684-07:00Gaspy is kind of right, though. Your critique of ...Gaspy is kind of right, though. Your critique of Yerkes isn't that he was a eugenicist, but that he was a eugenicist a hundred years ago, which implies bad science and perverse social agendas.<br />What percentage of "high-impact" papers today are about the possible genetic underpinnings of depression, autism, schizophrenia? It feels like they're everywhere. Maintaining the stigma around the word "eugenics" could needlessly hinder or polarize discussion about the budding science of gene therapy. I know it's a silly semantic quibble, but you do write a blog. ;)<br /><br />Which I very much like, by the way.Semigroundednoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21605329.post-44640830499821736132013-03-22T02:50:02.315-07:002013-03-22T02:50:02.315-07:00I'm a bit skeptical. The "psychology cris...I'm a bit skeptical. The "psychology crisis" is manufactured and is something that blogs such as Retraction Watch like to hype. Even though these blogs don't make direct advertising money, the owners get some good ego massage (like being interviewed by NPR, getting their name in Nature blurbs, and so on). These are not incentives one should underestimate, as they can be quite addictive. Once you have been in the media spotlight, you've got to stay there to feel good about yourself. These blogs need a constant stream of catchy headlines to fulfill such purpose. Lately, RW seems to have been censoring all posts that are slightly critical. Just last week, I remember reading a good post against using this graph <br />http://retractionwatch.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/funding_retractions.jpg to conclude anything meaningful about the relationship between funding availability and retraction rates, but that post is now gone!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21605329.post-37194730898802572432013-03-21T11:11:11.361-07:002013-03-21T11:11:11.361-07:00from God and white men at Yale:
But when he came ...from <a href="http://www.yalealumnimagazine.com/articles/3456?page=3" rel="nofollow">God and white men at Yale</a>:<br /><br /><i>But when he came to Yale in 1924, as a professor in the new field of psychobiology, [Yerkes] was better known for developing the first national program of intelligence testing—a program that provided an ostensibly scientific basis for the fight against immigration in the early 1920s.<br /><br />Yerkes and a team of like-minded scholars had designed the test at the start of World War I, as a means “for the classification of men in order that they may be properly placed in the military service.” By war’s end, the US military had administered it to 1.7 million recruits. According to the test, the average native-born white American male had a mental age of 13. But his foreign-born counterparts were morons (a label coined by the eugenicists, from the Greek for “foolish”), with an average mental age barely over 11.<br /><br />Yerkes wrote to key congressmen during the immigration debate to remind them of what Army testing had said about the inferiority of southern and eastern Europeans. Fisher chimed in. “The facts are known,” he declared. “It is high time for the American people to put a stop to such degradation of American citizenship, and such a wrecking of the future American race.”<br /><br />In truth, the facts were badly flawed, and Fisher had reason to know it. Yerkes’s test, which supposedly gauged innate intelligence, was mainly a measure of how long a person had been in the United States and perhaps also how well he might fit in at the local country club.</i>The Neurocritichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08010555869208208621noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21605329.post-21325430567335029872013-03-21T11:06:05.253-07:002013-03-21T11:06:05.253-07:00Gaspy - Real thinking? Yerkes believed in racial s...Gaspy - Real thinking? Yerkes believed in racial superiority based on IQ tests. Is that label-free enough for you?The Neurocritichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08010555869208208621noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21605329.post-62918312580600890572013-03-21T10:39:59.764-07:002013-03-21T10:39:59.764-07:00Eugenics? Yes, let's all faint at the word. ...Eugenics? Yes, let's all faint at the word. But what do you think contemporary amniocentesis is for? What do you think the new wave of DNA-based prenatal tests are for? We loyal readers look to you for real thinking, not kneejerk thinking and not thinking in labels, Neurocritic!Gaspynoreply@blogger.com