The “Correlation” Between Statistics and Eugenics
By Aubrey Clayton,
Los Angeles Review of Books
| 07. 18. 2024
Image "Sir Francis Galton" by Spudgun67 from Wikimedia Commons licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
IN 2013, A SERIES of ads about the dangers of teen pregnancy appeared on New York City subway trains. Sponsored by the city’s Human Resources Administration, the ads cautioned prospective teen parents that babies were likely—surprise!—to exact a heavy toll on their finances, relationships, and job prospects. The ads were formulated as plaintive messages from the babies themselves. One teary-eyed toddler lamented: “I’m twice as likely not to graduate high school because you had me as a teen.” As then-mayor Michael Bloomberg explained, “This campaign makes very clear to young people that there’s a lot at stake when it comes to deciding to raise a child.” The ad campaign was quite rightly ridiculed, in large part because it offered no support services for teens who were, or might become, pregnant.
From a statistical point of view, though, the most objectionable part of the whole campaign was a single word—“because.”
At the bottom of the poster, a footnote contained this statistic: “Kids of teen moms are...
Related Articles
By Peter Wehling, Tino Plümecke, and Isabelle Bartram
| 03.26.2025
This article was originally published as “Soziogenomik und polygene Scores” in issue 272 (February 2025) of the German-language journal Gen-ethischer Informationsdienst (GID); translated by the authors.
In mid-November 2024, the British organization Hope not Hate published its investigative research ‘Inside the Eugenics Revival’. In addition to documentating an active international “race research” network, the investigation also brought to light the existence of a US start-up that offers eugenic embryo selection. Heliospect Genomics aims to enable wealthy couples to...
By Dalton Conley, The New York Times | 03.13.2025
Since Francis Galton coined the phrase “nature versus nurture” 150 years ago, the debate about what makes us who we are has dominated the human sciences.
Do genes determine our destiny, as the hereditarians would say? Or do we enter...
By Staff, The Medicine Maker | 03.21.2025
"The Promise and Peril of CRISPR" cover by Johns Hopkins University Press
As a paediatrician taking care of children with sickle cell disease, Neal Baer, a Harvard Medical School graduate, was in awe of the power of CRISPR technologies. Later...
By Loren Johnston, Portland Press Herald | 03.15.2025