Nov 11, 2022 01:15 PM - 03:15 PM(America/New_York)
20221111T131520221111T1515America/New_YorkRace, Science, and Race Science
Efforts to rationalize racial injustice and colonialism by appealing to the epistemic authority of science - race science - have waxed and waned over the last several decades. Even when it is regarded as discredited or pseudoscientific, race science has been actively maintained on the fringes of mainstream scientific communities, and practitioners have shown remarkable ingenuity in appropriating cutting-edge research methods and organizational forms, including behavioral genetics in the 1960s, genomics in the 2000s, and open access publishing in the 2010s. This interdisciplinary symposium will apply techniques from across the history, philosophy, and social studies of science to offer critiques of the claims, methods, and organization of race science. The first two talks discuss race science in the second half of the twentieth century, from computational social science (Lobato and Hicks) and historical (Jackson) perspectives. The second two talks use more typical philosophy of science approaches, examining the appropriation of population biology by the "human biodiversity" movement (Diamond-Hunter) and the scientific standing of race science (Smith).
Efforts to rationalize racial injustice and colonialism by appealing to the epistemic authority of science - race science - have waxed and waned over the last several decades. Even when it is regarded as discredited or pseudoscientific, race science has been actively maintained on the fringes of mainstream scientific communities, and practitioners have shown remarkable ingenuity in appropriating cutting-edge research methods and organizational forms, including behavioral genetics in the 1960s, genomics in the 2000s, and open access publishing in the 2010s. This interdisciplinary symposium will apply techniques from across the history, philosophy, and social studies of science to offer critiques of the claims, methods, and organization of race science. The first two talks discuss race science in the second half of the twentieth century, from computational social science (Lobato and Hicks) and historical (Jackson) perspectives. The second two talks use more typical philosophy of science approaches, examining the appropriation of population biology by the "human biodiversity" movement (Diamond-Hunter) and the scientific standing of race science (Smith).
Race: It’s Just Not ScienceView Abstract SymposiumValues in Science01:15 PM - 03:15 PM (America/New_York) 2022/11/11 18:15:00 UTC - 2022/11/11 20:15:00 UTC
Race science recruits scientific work in the biological, behavioral, and social sciences in the service of legitimating the presupposition that there are biological races which map on to social racial systems. But the biological structure of human populations is not synonymous with particular racial social order. Racial science is not science about biologically discrete populations. Such work serves to stamp social arrangements and outcomes with scientific respectability. In the public’s mind it is consequential that scientists have found correlations between certain kinds of aptitude and certain groups of people; or that they have found a disease with greater frequency amongst people with certain external physical characteristics; or that people from certain social classes endure lives of greater need. I aim to show in this talk that racial science is scientifically bankrupt. I hope to make obvious that despite the gloss of science; such work has no standing. We should refrain from calling this scientific work.
Subrena Smith Professor, University Of New Hampshire
Population Biology and the implicit scientific backing of the “Human Biodiversity” movementView Abstract SymposiumValues in Science01:15 PM - 03:15 PM (America/New_York) 2022/11/11 18:15:00 UTC - 2022/11/11 20:15:00 UTC
Directly after the release of Nicholas Wade’s *A Troublesome Inheritance*, population geneticists, biologists, and biomedical researchers wrote an open letter to the *New York Times* stating that “We reject Wade’s implication that our findings substantiate his guesswork." Given their clear denunciation of Wade's book, it seems that the furor should be over. This paper, however, argues otherwise. This paper makes the argument that a number of population geneticists have done enough work in their own reputable academic publications over the last two decades to provide fertile ground and academic justification for repugnant and racist views.
The Scientific Racism of Arthur JensenView Abstract SymposiumValues in Science01:15 PM - 03:15 PM (America/New_York) 2022/11/11 18:15:00 UTC - 2022/11/11 20:15:00 UTC
Arthur Jensen (1923-2012) was one of the most prolific and well-cited psychologists of the twentieth century. We have two pictures of Arthur Jensen. The first is the meticulous and careful psychologist crowned “a king among men” by his colleagues. The second Jensen repeatedly voiced eugenicist concerns about the genetic deterioration of society. The second Jensen lent his name to neo-Nazi organizations and figures and published research with racial segregationists. I argue that there is only one Arthur Jensen. His political allies and affiliations with reactionary and racist figures are embedded in his psychological work.
Mainstreaming Scientific RacismView Abstract SymposiumValues in Science01:15 PM - 03:15 PM (America/New_York) 2022/11/11 18:15:00 UTC - 2022/11/11 20:15:00 UTC
In the mid-twentieth century, as mainstream scientific opinion turned away from eugenics and the most explicit versions of race science, two organizations were formed to preserve and continue research in defense of white supremacy. The Pioneer Fund has supported and the journal Mankind Quarterly has published the work of researchers such as Hans Eysenck (University College London), Arthur Jensen (UC Berkeley), and J. Philippe Rushton (University of Western Ontario). In this talk we use text mining methods and Fernández Pinto's analysis of the "tobacco strategy" to examine the ways in which Pioneer and Mankind Quarterly legitimized race science.
