The unwelcome revival of ‘race science’
By Gavin Evans,
The Guardian
| 03. 02. 2018
One of the strangest ironies of our time is that a body of thoroughly debunked “science” is being revived by people who claim to be defending truth against a rising tide of ignorance. The idea that certain races are inherently more intelligent than others is being trumpeted by a small group of anthropologists, IQ researchers, psychologists and pundits who portray themselves as noble dissidents, standing up for inconvenient facts. Through a surprising mix of fringe and mainstream media sources, these ideas are reaching a new audience, which regards them as proof of the superiority of certain races.
The claim that there is a link between race and intelligence is the main tenet of what is known as “race science” or, in many cases, “scientific racism”. Race scientists claim there are evolutionary bases for disparities in social outcomes – such as life expectancy, educational attainment, wealth, and incarceration rates – between racial groups. In particular, many of them argue that black people fare worse than white people because they tend to be less naturally intelligent.
Although race science has been repeatedly...
Related Articles
By John H. Evans, Craig Callender, Neal K. Devaraj, Farren J. Isaacs, and Gregory E. Kaebnick, Issues in Science and Technology | 07.04.2025
The controversy around a ban on “mirror life” should lead to a more nuanced public conversation about how to manage the benefits and risks of precursor biotechnologies.
About five years ago, the five of us formed a discussion group to...
By Elizabeth Dwoskin and Yeganeh Torbati, The Washington Post | 07.16.2025
A group of well-heeled, 30-something women sat down to dinner last spring at a table set with pregnancy-friendly mocktails and orchids, ready to hear a talk about how to optimize their offspring.
Noor Siddiqui, the founder of an embryo-screening start-up...
By Joel Kotkin, UnHerd | 07.01.2025
Visionaries, dreamers, and autocrats have long dreamt of reshaping humanity to their preferred model. In the last century, eugenics was enthusiastically embraced among Anglo-Saxon elites, then by Communist Russia as a means of creating a hyper-selfless Homo Sovieticus...
By Al Letson, Reveal | 06.28.2025
Photo "Elon Musk Presenting Tesla's Fully Autonomous Future" by Steve Jurvetson on Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
What do Silicon Valley billionaires, religious parents of six, and eugenics-curious biotech founders have in common? Welcome to the world of pronatalism—a growing...