Statistics and Eugenics

Why Statistics Matter

Eugenics is an economic and social idea which stemmed from Darwin’s “survival of the fittest”; however, in eugenics, the “survival” is not quite equivalent to the natural survival described by Darwin. When he hypothesized that the fit would out survive the unfit, he did not have in mind that the fit would be scientifically defined to out survive the other “fit” ones.

When trying to convince a population about a new idea or movement, it helps to have facts to back up what is being asserted. The eugenics movement was about taking Darwin’s idea of evolution and actively applying it to the human race: seeking out the “fit” ones. In the beginning of the eugenics movement, the people we will discuss wanted to turn eugenics into a scientifically backed idea which could be implemented in policy. In the attempts to define the humanly “fit” and “unfit”, extensive research took place in search of evidence. At this time, statistics was a very new and unreliable science. Much of the work done by the creators of eugenics however turned out to mathematical work which would later turn into the foundation of modern day statistics. It was this statistical research and support that eugenics needed to legitimize their cause and to give the human population evidence of their claims. Unfortunately, what the statistical research revealed were flaws in the support of eugenics. Inadvertently however, the failure of statistics to let eugenics succeed led to the advancement of statistics, a science which our world relies on heavily today.

Notable Mathematicians and the Eugenics Movement

Adolphe Quetelet

Before the eugenics movement, there was already statistical application to the natural sciences. It had not been widely applied to the social sciences. Quetelet was regarded as the first social statistician. He was an astronomer and meteorologist. He had an interest however in why people are how they are. He is famous for his creation of the body mass index. [1]

He looked at social situations in a very scientific manner. In physics, there are formulas that will tell you how far something will go if it has an initial velocity of “x”, and angle of “y” and other factors. He applied this to the social sciences. He believed by putting the certain factors into the right equation he could calculate things.

In his research, he created something called the “average man”. This average man was a set of characteristics of a human. He first got the average height and weight of people. He then compared those to sex, age, job and location. This is how he created his average man.

Quetelet was important to the Eugenic movement for two reasons. He was the first one to think that certain factors could determine actions of the average human. It is important to note that these factors were physical. The second reason is a particular quote of his.

“If the average man were ascertained for one nation, he could represent the type of that nation. If he could be ascertained according to the mass of men, he would represent the type of human species altogether.” [2]

The application and belief of this quote is what is troubling and useful for the eugenics movement. The belief that a group of people could be represented as an “average man” is the standard protocol for the eugenics movement.

Karl Pearson

Pearson was one of the very first creators of modern statistics. His work directly followed that of Francis Galton. Pearson began his early work on studying whether characteristics were directly passed down from parent to child. He ran experiments that tried to discover if mental aptitude was passed down from parent to child. Because it would take too many years to test a parent against a child, he decided to test siblings and find if there were notable differences between them. Through this test he came to the conclusion that mental aptitude as well as all characteristic traits were passed down from parent to child.

This “discovery” by Pearson led him to believe that it was possible to breed a superior race of humans. Pearson believed that their was a war to wage on inferior races and that England was in a state of deterioration. He was a large proponent of the idea that the upper class needed to reproduce more as the nation was becoming more unfit from the vast reproduction of the lower class. He attempted to prove this idea by creating his own new science he called biometry. This was essentially a science that proved things about biology through statistics. Pearson did come to many conclusions with this new science many of his conclusions are now disregarded as there was immense bias towards the eugenics side.

Although Pearson’s use of statistics were clearly involved in proving his theory of superior races he did come up with many topics that are still used today. His contributions include linear regression, correlation, the correlation coefficient, and the chi square goodness of fit test. All of these contributions are still used today and taught in universities and colleges around the world.

R.A. Fisher

R.A. Fisher is another notable statistician who believed in eugenics. Fisher was also a notable geneticist as well. He once wrote a paper entitled “The Correlation Between Relatives on the Supposition of Mendelian Inheritance.” This paper tackled a eugenics issue that involved both genetics and statistics. Fisher believed that the genes of the parents would be passed on to their children. In this paper he introduced new statistics that included the idea of analysis of variance (ANOVA). ANOVA has become a well known and commonly used statistical test to measure correlation between multiple objects. Fisher believed that the intelligence of a person was directly passed down from their parents. Fisher also believed that one could predict how many children a woman would be able to have by the amount of children her parents had.

In Fisher’s case he took this belief a step further. He actually attempted to create a family based on his eugenics beliefs. He ended up marrying his wife based off of the fact that she was one of 10 children and that her father was a very well known man of faith as well as the fact that his family, the Guinness family was known around the world for not only the religion side, but also that of the brewing side and a family of well known bankers. For Fisher this could not have been a better eugenic marriage. He had a wife that would be able to have many children but also was from a well off family known for its intelligence in multiple different ventures. Fisher was known to believe that the upper class needed to have large families in order for them to cancel out the lower classes continued growth of “lesser people.” Although he was able to create a large family, he and his wife had 9 children, their marriage would not last as his wife was unable to cope with his drastic beliefs.

Even through this all he never stopped believing in eugenics. In 1933 he became a professor of Eugenics at University College London. He eventually received the honor of Knight Bachelor from Queen Elizabeth II in 1952 for his work in genetics and statistics, which were quite profound as he did create ANOVA and what became to be known as biometrical genetics, but obviously his eugenics background was overlooked. To leave a lasting impression of what Fisher truly believed about people of the world here is a quote about how races differed: “in their innate capacity for intellectual and emotional development.” [3]

William Farr

William Farr was another member of the British scientific movement into eugenics. Farr’s expertise were in the medicinal statistics. He was one of the first people to view each human as a single “unit.” That is each person could be regarded as a single organism in a larger social organism, the entire population. This is similar to Adolphe Quetelet’s average man idea.

This idea was important to the eugenic movement as he believed that you could target classes of inferior people, such as the criminal class in England, and essentially fix them or remove them from the greater population. The following quote of his sums up his argument:

“If by any judicious means the increase of the incurably criminal, idle, insane, idiotic, or unhappily organized parts of the population can be without cruelty repressed, under a system of religious discipline, to a greater extent than it is at present by the selection that pervades, more or less, the whole system of English marriages,—the character and qualities of the race will be immeasurably improved.”

Modern Application of Statistics

Social statistics are not a thing of the past. They are used in economics to figure out how different populations are being either hurt or helped by certain factors. Unlike in the Eugenics days, the findings of statistics are interpreted. The cause of the results are not “they are Irish”. Today, the cause could be they are not educated enough, that is why they aren’t scoring well. This is in contrast to the "they are not scoring well because they are dumb as a result of biology" eugenic idea.

Human Development Index

“Human development is the enlarging of people’s choices”. The HDI is used by people around the world to measure similarities and differences between people. The HDI has different categories to measure the people of different nations. For example, there is a section with “adult literacy rate” and there is a section called “public expenditure on education”.

In Portugal, the adult literacy rate in 2005 was 93.8%. In Nepal, it was 48.6% in 2005. In the Eugenics days these statistics would lead the them to say the people of Nepal are not as smart as the ones in Portugal. However, these numbers are looked at in a different way. With HDI, the one reviewing the statistics would look at other factors that could be the cause of this. In Portugal, 5.7% of the GDP was spent on education. In Nepal, 3.4% of the GDP was spent on education. The difference spending priority could be one reason for the difference in literacy rates.

The focus of the HDI is to give a variety of statistics about the people of the nations. They are to be used to try to understand how to improve the lives of the residents of those countries. Unlike eugenics, these statistics aren’t saying that the residents of the counties only have the ability to be “x” literate. They are saying that there are “x” many people literate and there are other factors that make up the citizens of the country.

Sources

Waller, John. "Ideas of heredity, reproduction and eugenics in Britain, 1800–1875." Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences. Volume 32, Issue 3, September 2001, Pages 457-489.

Moore, James. "R.A. Fisher: a Faith Fit for Eugenics." Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences. Volume 38, Issue 1, March 2007, Pages 110-135.

Kevles, Daniel J. In the Name of Eugenics. Pages 3-40.