Not sure which events specifically that you're referring to, but usually when somebody refers abstractly to "events in the last century", they mean the nazis. It's worth noting that the nazis themselves rejected IQ testing and theories as justifying "Jewish supremacy".
Actually I rewrote that comment to not refer to any specific events because I figured whichever one I chose someone would find a way to use it to invalidate the entire concern.
Anyway! The world isn't neatly divided into "pure Truth, delivered to us by Science" and "other things, which can be used to do harm."
This doesn't make potentially dangerous research subjects verboten or banned! But the people doing that research should have a solid understanding of who has an interest in their work, why, and what it may be used for. Having that understanding isn't "advancing a political agenda" I don't think.
> Having that understanding isn't "advancing a political agenda" I don't think.
You're reading a bit too much between the lines here. I didn't mean any specific side, I assume both sides engage in this so it's meant in a general sense.
Do you actually thing that the anti-IQ crowd is mad that the nazis (notoriously anti-IQ) lost WWII and that is the reason they are so touchy about this ?
As a Jew, I will tell you that the Nazis didn’t care about our IQ. Many Jews proudly used their brains to help Germany in WWI (Fritz Haber comes to mind) and yet arguably Germany lost because of the brain drain which led directly to our atomic bomb, among other things, that might have helped them.
They didn’t care about whether we could run a mile or win at athletics. It was ancient ethnic hatred only many centuries earlier based on religion.
Saying that different populations have different IQs could surely be a post how justification for that kind of hatred, but it could also be justification for amelioration of the non-genetic effects through social programs.
Right, and this is exactly my concern. Not that this sort of research will uncover new information that will make people form new prejudices. But that they will use this research to justify acting on the prejudices they already have.
I didn't mention nazis and they are just one example. If you pare away the context then sure, this could go either way, it could be used to reduce these divisions. But the history of scientific racism clearly shows another pattern.
