Dysgenics

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Dysgenics? - Rated
This is a book that pulls no punches. It argues that both intelligence and conscientiousness are heritable traits (as shown by twin- and adoption-studies); and that people who are low in these traits have, over roughly the past century, had the most siblings and the most children of their own. Thus Richard Lynn maintains that 'the eugenicists were right' -- pace many modern experts in genetics whom Lynn chastises for falling by the wayside. Further, Lynn condemns the Roman Catholic Church for backing monogamy and priestly celibacy; and for opposing abortion and the more effective types of contraception. The book closes with Lynn promising a companion volume in which the modern policy implications of dysgenic trends will be considered.

What is impressive in all this is the sheer quantity of modern evidence that is available to illustrate the author's empirical claims. Time and again, Lynn is able to report highly significant dysgenic correlations of around -.20 between the traits that concern him and indices of achieved fertility. The evidence is principally from the West; but, by using educational and socio-economic data in relation to fertility, the same underlying trends can arguably be detected in other countries too. (The exception is in Black Africa, where contraception is so little used that typical upper-class families have around the same six children as do those of agricultural workers).

Despite the total lack of interest of today's criminologists in genetic factors and fertility, Lynn finds evidence suggesting that "the fertility [of British] criminals is 77 percent higher than that of the British population as a whole." Thus Lynn can even begin to address the West's problem of ceaselessly rising criminality. In recent years, liberal-left, 'anti-elitist' and 'anti-racist' students at today's universities have made sensible and open discussion of heredity and its policy implications difficult and even dangerous. This is why, in my own book, The g Factor (1996, Wiley DePublisher), I avoided dysgenics -- and indeed any unequivocal eugenic conclusions -- and concentrated merely on educational recommendations that would, if accepted, have begun to move Western thinking towards a sensible recognition of the need to cultivate valuable human qualities. Will Richard Lynn be able to turn the egalitarian tide by a head-on approach?

From 1960, the standard objection to dysgenic ideas was that previous surveys (finding dysgenic trends) had ignored those people in modern populations who remain unmarried and childless -- not uncommonly because of low mental ability, psychosis or a criminal record. Such people are necessarily ignored in the easiest and most common type of social survey that studies schoolchildren and asks them for their parents' occupations and the number of children in the family. The errors of such neglect were pointed out in the influential reports by Higgins et al. (1962) and Bajema (1968). However, these authors' own studies themselves involved small and unrepresentative samples that positively over-represented individuals having IQ <70. Such people may indeed in the past have had few children (not least because of locked single-sex wards in mental subnormality hospitals) but they are only 2.5% of the population and their own procreative restraint -- if it still continues -- will be easily overshadowed by the state-assisted fertility of the 13.5% of people who fall between IQ 70 and IQ 85. In fact, both in Britain and the USA, much larger and more representative modern studies find that people of above average IQ have fewer children than people of below-average IQ (Kiernan & Diamond, 1982 [following up 13,687 British infants born in 1946]; Van Court & Bean, 1985 [studying around 12,000 US adults, born 1890-1964]).

Richard Lynn has performed a valuable service in bringing together the evidence about present dysgenic trends and presenting it to effect and with his usual clarity. There is plainly reason to believe that the West has brought natural selection for intelligence and conscientiousness to a halt, and that we have for some time been breeding in irresponsible ways for which our grandchildren may curse us as they struggle to cope with the phenomenon of unemployability for people of around IQ 90 in advanced, information-based societies. It is to be hoped that psychologists will read Dysgenics with open minds and ask the American Psychological Association, the British Psychological Society, the Galton Institute and similar bodies in continental Europe to ensure that the requisite new research in this field is undertaken with despatch...

Thoroughly researched and simply written. Buy. - Rated
The book consists of a substantial and thorough collection of studies carried out by other scientists over the years in various countries broadly on the subject of fertility as compared with traits such propensity to crime, years in education, alcoholism, number of siblings, socio-economic status etc and importantly discusses and analyses the likelihood that these traits are inherited. It struck me the author offered an objective educated opinion on each study and his observations on each subject were thought provoking.
Also discussed is the concept of good genes and their synonymous traits. The quantification of and the attempt to define these was interesting in itself. What makes a good person good?
Needless to say, there may also have been umpteen studies showing natural eugenics occuring, but this book contains no shortage of studies showing the contrary.
Whatever your political persuation, I'd thoroughly recommend this book. I found it very interesting, informative, if a little concerning.