Talk:Eugenics

Content forks?

These pages all have some overlap. Some merging or distinction may be in order.

• Eugenics
• New eugenics
• Human germline engineering
• Directed evolution (transhumanism)
• Designer baby

The guidelines Wikipedia:Content forks and Wikipedia:Subpages are relevant here. For articles that might be or become "about a term", WP:NOTDICT determines which terms should have articles.

Scattered thoughts:

• I am concerned about the divergence in attitude. The articles range from largely negative to largely positive to barely considering themselves part of a controversy at all. Broad consensus seems to be lacking.
• This article has a section on the therapy–enhancement distinction while another article has a section on therapeutic and non-therapeutic use.
• Maybe this article could be delineated in some way that keeps it from being a magnet for sections on broad economic policies / narrow medical pursuits / what might be ethically permissible to do with PGD / which logical fallacies everyone else is committing. We could scope this article to a date range, or to state mandates, or to "the pseudoscientific parts". Not by taking a definitive stance on what "eugenics" means, just wiki stuff like "This article is about X, for modern medical practices see Human germline engineering". Maybe.

Jruderman (talk) 08:53, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

We should consider merging first:

• For one, "designer baby" is a POV term and if it is to remain, the debate there should be mostly about fallacies employed in using it, and not in taking an artificial ethical controversy seriously. (*for such a purpose we should point to a different article).
  • Alternatively, we may make it a new section of "new eugenics".
• "Human germline engineering" may need to be merged into "new eugenics" entirely.
• Would leave "directed evolution" alone for now

More generally, if you want to scope this article to a date range, hence exclude recent bioethical discussions entirely, this would necessarily make the article 30% more negative. Since this is the main article regarding the concept, that would be a dubious strategy. Biohistorian15 (talk) 09:14, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

That's kind of the point. It's okay if one article is negative and another article is positive if they're clearly about different topics.

It's always an alternative, of course, to have one article where it's very clear what it's positive and negative about.

If we're allowed to POV-push for anything here, it's for readers to come away informed. My capacity to care about which term is used is limited. Jruderman (talk) 10:26, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

Might I add:

• Human genetic enhancement

... and the former article:

• Reprogenetics

Biohistorian15 (talk) 19:32, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

Lee Kuan Yew statements

Hi User:Biohistorian15, seems we have a dispute about whether to include this in the Singapore section:

A proponent of nature over nurture, he stated that "intelligence is 80% nature and 20% nurture", and attributed the successes of his children to genetics.

80% is probably an overestimate. The part about Lee's children makes it seem like he might not know how to reason about the multiple ways parents influence their children (genes but also rearing, wealth, connections, and more).

As is, the section misleads some readers by not providing a rebuttal. Changing "stated" to some other verb would help but only slightly. While the second one uses the verb "attributed" for one claim, it leaves a hidden statement of fact (the success of his children) that rubs me the wrong way in the context of this article.

If we add rebuttals, the section turns into "Based on these questionable beliefs, Lee implemented a program...". This would be misleading in another way: these weren't his only motivations for the program.

More generally, let's try not to fill the article with claims-by-insinuation, whether it's about hereditarianism or anything else. This goes for the "Darwin–Wedgwood and Huxley families" stuff too. Clearly stated claims are better for the encyclopedia: they can be cited and attributed; they don't make some readers suspicious; they don't bifurcate WP:BALANCE into balance-of-insinuations and balance-of-statements.

Can we remove the sentence for now and start looking for other information about Lee to replace it? Perhaps some quote that gets at Lee's motivations (rather than his beliefs), or something about how he gathered support for the proposal.

Jruderman (talk) 12:36, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

Ok, makes sense. Please (carefully!) remove it for now. But if I find absolutely nothing else to contextualize his policies, we'll have to talk this through. Biohistorian15 (talk) 12:51, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

The "80%" mess would bother me less if it were stuffed into an {{explanatory footnote}} on the phrase "hereditarian beliefs". Like "Lee mentioned an estimate of 80%, at the high end of the ______ consensus estimates as of 2024".

Finally looking at the source, it's not entirely clear what Lee's beliefs were. The 80% quote is about "performance", but the article interprets this without explanation to be just "intelligence", without commenting as to whether it might also be conscientiousness or whatever. Also, it doesn't call Lee "hereditarian", but rather discusses "The fallacies of this and other hereditarian arguments". This makes me more inclined to leave the whole thing out.

The source is a review of Not in Our Genes by Lewontin, Rose, and Kamin. If the statements are drawn from the book, we could get a more precise understanding of what Lee said by looking at that book. If they're Gould's own statements to add context, it's trickier. Has Gould talked about Singapore in other writing where his statements and citations are more precise? In the absence of finding something more definitive than what's in the book review, I'm less inclined to even have it as a footnote.

Btw, for the end of the section, were any conclusions drawn from Singapore's experience? Did the economic policies affect differential birth rates as hoped, and did that in turn make the next generation better in some way (if that can even be calculated)? What specific objections to the policy spelled its doom? Does any of the policy continue to this day? And perhaps not for this section, but do other countries do the same thing but just frame it as "smoothing welfare cliffs" and "extending child benefits into the middle class so struggling families aren't forced to limit their size"?

I'll remove the sentence about Lee's beliefs for now. Ideally a new quote would answer some of the questions that readers might have, such as: was Lee narrowly focused on intelligence or broadly on multiple contributors to educational attainment; was Lee thinking more along the lines of countering what he believed to be a dysgenic trend, or was he aiming for something more ambitious; was Lee aiming to increase the overall population at the same time?

As for my slightly more vague concerns regarding "Darwin–Wedgwood and Huxley families", I'll wait to see if others want to weigh in. Jruderman (talk) 18:36, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

Just provided the missing citations for the family tree. Biohistorian15 (talk) 16:50, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

Just noticed that the article does mention Lee's dysgenics-ish concerns in the following paragraph. That seems more relevant than his specific beliefs about heritability of IQ, regardless of whether his estimate was off.

Do you think this should be moved over to Dysgenics? I'm leaning toward keeping it here. It would be weird if "whether something is eugenics" depends on whether it's slightly less or slightly more effective than intended. Jruderman (talk) 22:26, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

No, I think it isn't notable enough to be moved to dysgenics. Biohistorian15 (talk) 16:32, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

Broader issues with the Singapore section

This section is extremely poorly-sourced, in addition to multiple WP:TONE and WP:EDITORIALIZING problems. It appears that most sources were copied from another article without having been verified. This is not appropriate.

Starting with the first source, what is Blynkt? This article appears to be the only time this website is cited anywhere on Wikipedia, both here and at History of eugenics. This is a red flag. Rhetorically speaking, is this source reliable, and is it being proportionately summarized, in this article, or was this yet another example of writing WP:BACKWARDS?

The very next source is a book review by Stephen Jay Gould from 1984. This, again, appears to have been added backwards, as it doesn't directly support the attached statement: In his speeches, Lee urged highly educated women to have more children, claiming that unless their fertility rate increased, "social delinquents" would dominate. This appears to instead be from the Blynkt source.

The next source sure looks like it was copied from Population control in Singapore without having been checked. Nobody should be citing sources they have not personally verified. If you do not have at least partial access to that source, do not cite it. Further, do not assume that it says anything at all about eugenics unless you can confirm that in some way.

The Nature opinion is WP:PRIMARY.

The NatGeo source is quite long, lists an access date of 2009 indicating yet again that it was copy-pasted without verification, and it doesn't appear to mention 'eugenics' once, making its use here likely WP:SYNTH. Rhetorically, what is the source actually saying, and how does that relate to the larger topic of eugenics?

The Yet more controversial... paragraph is solely supported by a single primary source.

Etc.. This section should be deleted. It could be rewritten from scratch to match reliable sources which specifically contextualize it as a notable example of eugenics. Grayfell (talk) 20:17, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

Again, this appears to be WP:EDITORIALIZING language, unverified copy/pasted sources, and the WP:SYNTH use of sources which are not even about eugenics.

I want to really emphasize that Wikipedia is not a platform for publishing original research. Our goal for this article is to summarize reliable independent sources about eugenics. We are not asking editors to combine sources to imply anything about eugenics. That's WP:SYNTH and WP:EDITORIALIZING. The above discussion leads me to believe there is some serious confusion about this.

The book review is from 1984, for the book Not in Our Genes. The review spends a single paragraph discussing Singapore for context of the otherwise unrelated book review. It directly mentions eugenics only once. This source is reliable in some contexts, but for this section of this article, it is extremely flimsy.

The part which says In 1985, incentives were significantly reduced after public – first and foremost Western... Is cited to a primary source from 1984 which says nothing about incentives being reduced a year in the future, and it says nothing whatsoever about this being first and foremost Western. This is transparent editorializing and a misrepresentation of the source to imply a political point. This is not appropriate for a Wikipedia article.

Grayfell (talk) 22:16, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

I have made an attempt to clean up this mess, but it's still not great. Again, verify sources and make sure citations are attached to the correct statements. Do not add editorializing. Grayfell (talk) 23:46, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

Hopes for a new "Ethics" section

I would like to organize arguments in an encyclopedic way that helps readers form opinions consistent with their own beliefs and principles. To that end, I'm looking to:

• Focus a little more on each side's core affirmative arguments and a little less on who can accuse the other side of logical fallacies with the funniest names.
• Group together arguments that are about the same thing: for example, pros and cons of enforced eugenics, then pros and cons of liberal eugenics.
• Keep each subsection short and tight, by paraphrasing longer quotes, and by relying on links to other wiki articles to provide background. My hope here is that readers will be able to hold two opposing arguments in their mind at once.

I am optimistic that such an approach can be acceptable to editors in multiple camps: proponents, opponents, and cautious optimists who hope readers will conclude that good things are good and bad things are bad.

If I maintain interest in this subject long enough, and don't get burned out trying to mediate paragraph-by-paragraph disputes, I may try to do this myself. If I do, I will take Grayfell's advice and engage with some overview-type, reliable, secondary-to-tertiary sources before getting too committed to a list of distinctions or even an outline.

Jruderman (talk) 17:53, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

It is a serious mistake to treat these camps (proponents, opponents, and cautious optimists) as being equivalent. Attempting to avoid conflict and find a compromise is false balance, because Wikipedia is not a platform for promoting fringe views. Even if a fringe view seems reasonable to some in good faith, it is still a fringe view. The article has already become bloated with 'background', florid filler language, and fringe sources which falsely imply a level of legitimacy which is directly contradicted by reliable sources. I hope it is obvious why this is a problem. Grayfell (talk) 18:57, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

Grayfell, simply removing, say, dozens of scholarly sources you personally disagree with won't do. If you want to balance it more, how about you extend the "Nazi eugenics" entry that is currently basically a single paragraph and or transclude an improved lede from somewhere like that?

Careful and historically accurate perspectives like that would find no backlash by the likes of me at all. But, again, massive removals on flimsy grounds are a very different story. Biohistorian15 (talk) 19:21, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

Your comment misrepresents the many, many problems your edits have caused. Using boldface to call them "flimsy" doesn't make them flimsy. Your edits have introduced far too many WP:EDITORIALIZING terms and WP:SYNTH claims.

As one example from my recent attempt to clean up this mess: "It should be noted, however, that not all proponents of human enhancement necessarily find such a net reduction in the diversity of human geno- and or phenotypes desirable at all." uses editorializing language to say nothing of substance. Who are "proponents of human enhancement"? This introduced a vague opinion in euphemistic language, presents it as significant enough that "it should be noted" (which is specifically cited as an example of WP:EDITORIALIZING), but this completely fails to provide any context, much less attribution. This is an extremely poor way of explaining this, and only adds even more bloat to an already bloated article. That is setting aside for the moment the serious issues with the source itself. There are many other examples that could be provided. Grayfell (talk) 19:38, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

Ok, thanks. Now that you are being concrete I can try to fix that issue. Biohistorian15 (talk) 09:50, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

You have not fixed any of those issues, nor indicated that you even understood them, since you have been repeating the same mistakes in recent edits. I have again attempted to restore more neutral language to the article. Much more work is still needed. Grayfell (talk) 21:47, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

Grayfell is right that avoiding false balance is a major concern. My aim is not to dictate which information is included, but to improve the organization of information that is included based on policy and consensus. I don't expect all editor camps to be equally happy, but I do hope that clear scoping can lower the temperature a bit as a side effect. Jruderman (talk) 20:25, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

• maybe removing "Status quo bias" would be justified
• Regrouping loose objections like "subjective hence not science" might make sense

Biohistorian15 (talk) 19:25, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

Liberal humanism and deontology

Regarding this edit. I tried to save it, but it's not worth it. I started to go over it line-by-line trying to fix problems, but there would be nothing left when I was done, so I skipped to the end and deleted it.

The entire section was written like an argumentative essay, not like an encyclopedia article. Even if I deleted the many, many instances of WP:EDITORIALIZING language, WP:WEASELs, WP:EUPHEMISMs and pointless filler words, the section would still be a cobbled-together mishmash of WP:SYNTH to promote a specific, non-neutral point of view.

As one example the context-free mention of Jürgen Habermas having a cleft palette was copied verbatim from Jürgen Habermas, but nowhere does that article make a connection between this factoid and Habermas' views on eugenics, making this yet again synth. That article doesn't use the word eugenics at all.

That was just one example, but the entire section was nothing but problems like this.

Many of these other sources do not mention eugenics either, and many of the points are disproportionately summarized to promote a very specific view that is contrary to the mainstream.

There is so, so, so much of this junk in the article now, and I expect that more work like this will need to be done to bring the article back to something resembling WP:NPOV and to comply with WP:MOS. The article now cites Richard Lynn for basic facts and recommends his work in the further reading section. I suppose WP:FRINGEN might have some insight, but the pro-fringe issues are just one part of a deeper and more fundamental problem here. Grayfell (talk) 20:04, 18 July 2024 (UTC)