by Robert Weissberg, American Thinker:
The most career-destroying, toxic heresy in today’s hypersensitive world is attributing highly valued traits such as intelligence to a person’s genes and then saying that these and other biologically hard-wired traits were unevenly distributed across population groups.
To say, for example, that the Chinese disproportionately succeed academically due to their genes, not unearned privilege, luck, or any other environmental factor, violates this taboo.
TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/
The opposite is the blank slate theory of human nature. Here everything is environmentally determined and according to Steven Pinker, the blank slate view of human nature dominates today’s intellectual life.
Those rejecting this blank slate ideology will be punished regardless of evidence or expertise. James Watson, the Nobel Prize winning co-discover of DNA was fired from his position and widely excoriated for speculating sub-Saharan African economic dysfunction might reflect their lower and genetically determined IQs.
Meanwhile, countless scientists anxious to remain employed will twist themselves into knots to avoid even hinting of biological differences across population groups to explain unequal outcomes in educational attainment, crime, health and elsewhere.
In principle, this taboo is entirely amenable to scientific inquiry. We are not in the 15th century where contrarian views on impossible-to-prove religious dogma such as free will vs. determinism, might get you burned at the stake. In fact, thousands of scientists do study the role genes play and publish their findings, though nearly all of this research focuses on plants and animals, not humans.
Why the fear of documenting the impact of genetics on human behavior?
Ironically, biological explanations have historically dominated. Victorians frequently explained the criminality of the poor by their defective genes while innumeracy among women resulted from their smaller brains.
Plausibly, banishing genetic explanations reduces unfair discrimination, so, for example, if women were thought be genetically inclined to being innumerate, they would be excluded from jobs requiring math.
Read More @ AmericanThinker.com
