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First published online January 12, 2006
doi: 10.1242/10.1242/jcs.02763
Sticky Wicket |
In my last column, we were discussing houses built on sand and the scientific method as a way of knowing. Most of us take it as given that this is a good way of knowing things about the world at large, and you and I were just about to agree completely with each other when I proposed that it is not, and that it can be a matter of life and death to argue otherwise. Well, like the Walrus and the Carpenter, let's take a walk on the beach (need I mention that the sun is shining on the sea?) and talk nonsense. Yes nonsense, but nonsense that is fairly recent history and of such deep importance to any of us in biomedicine that it is astonishing that it isn't taught as essential reading in Biology 101. It isn't, mainly because those who know about it are ashamed and don't like to talk about it.
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Most of us do know that, in 1900, William Bateson brilliantly brought Mendelian genetics to the attention of the scientific community and ushered in a new era in biology. Within a short time, through efforts of startling intellects like R. A. Fisher (among others of course), a grand synthesis was underway, amalgamating genetics and evolutionary theory to give us a view of the function of the biological world, and we all work within this paradigm in modern science.
In 1902, the esteemed zoologist Charles Davenport, with the enthusiastic support of another luminary, Henry Fairfield Osborn (director of the American Museum of Natural History) approached the newly formed Carnegie Institution to build a research station in Cold Spring Harbor, New York. And in January 1904, they inaugurated it the Station for Experimental Evolution of the Carnegie Institution. This wasn't simply funded by Carnegie; it was an integral part of the Carnegie Institution. The mission of the station was to conduct research supporting the extension of the emerging concepts of genetics and evolution to the improvement of human beings. The mission was called eugenics, based on ideas originally proposed by another giant of biology, Sir Francis Galton.
From the 1860s until his death in 1911, Galton had sought to extend evolutionary theory to genetics and apply these ideas to humans. Initially, he proposed voluntary family planning efforts to `improve' human stock but came to believe that this could not be left to individual whim and required government intervention. He defined eugenics as "the study of all agencies under social control which can improve or impair the racial quality of future generations". His efforts did not, at first, take root in England, but found fertile soil in America. As we'll see, this went far beyond a research station in Long Island.
These weren't fringe elements of the scientific community, but were among the most important scientists of their day. Joining the push for eugenics were R. A. Fisher, Leonard Darwin (Charlie's son), and Alexander Graham Bell. But where to begin? Based on work by a German psychologist, the eugenics movement hit on `mental defectives', defined by epilepsy, `feeblemindedness' and `shiftiness'. By 1907, with little fanfare, the State of Indiana passed legislation for the forced sterilization of mentally impaired prisoners, poorhouse residents and prisoners. By 1909, laws for eugenic sterilization were passed in Washington, Connecticut and California. Ultimately, 23 states would pass sterilization laws, but none of them could match California's taste for the surgery: 4636 by 1925, and 14,568 by 1940. Nationwide, the number was in excess of 35,000. (Efforts to pass such legislation in Britain stalled and were ultimately interrupted by World War I.)
The US Eugenics Records Office even had a theme song: "We are Eu-ge-nists so gay, and we have no time for play, serious we have to be, working for posterity...If to the future good you list, you must be a Eugenist." (Green Day have wisely decided not to do a cover.)
In 1940, a case came to the US Supreme Court, involving the forced sterilization of a young woman, Carrie Buck, whose `defect' was that her biological mother was derelict. The majority decision supported the sterilization law and was written by Oliver Wendell Holmes.
America, to its credit, did not rise up to embrace eugenics, but the practice continued and took a further, ugly turn. Based on the precepts, doctors would allow babies they regarded as defective or of inferior stock to die through neglect or inaction, and ultimately these practices were loudly defended (and upheld by the courts).
And of course, all such actions were heavily skewed racially. Davenport himself set the tone, in a published `professional' article. "Can we build a wall high enough around this country", he wrote, "so as to keep out these cheaper races, or will it be a feeble dam...leaving it to our descendents to abandon the country to blacks, browns, and yellows and seek an asylum in New Zealand". Science had already `proven' that some races are intellectually inferior, through application of biometrics, intelligence tests and other `impartial' measures that led to the conclusions that the researchers had already held to be correct. Such conclusions were promoted as `fact' throughout the twentieth century. In 1972, the Nobel Laureate William Shockley (whose expertise in genetics led him to invent the transistor) travelled the learned institutions of USA and Europe, promoting the idea of forced sterilization for people of African decent, based on results of IQ tests. That he was given a platform at any of these institutions is to their shame. (At Yale University, a "debate restricted to the scientific claims" was disrupted by a huge group of protesters who simply applauded when he was introduced and continued until he quit the stage. The organizers of the protest were expelled. If I should meet any of them today, I'll happily buy them dinner – or maybe a car.)
I don't have to mention where this went. Whereas the eugenics movement in the USA faltered through public abhorrence, and that in the UK never really took off, the Nazi government in Germany brought it to its ultimate conclusion. And, at every step, these actions were rationalized by `scientific facts'.
My point is that we do our experiments to ask questions about the world. We like to think that we do them without prejudice or preconception. We apply the scientific method to answer questions we think are important, and we learn from our results. But we don't do this in a vacuum. Scientists, whether we like it or not, are members of society, and we are prone to the ideas and beliefs of the times in which we live. Eugenics began as an intellectual pursuit, and although we can now see that it was steeped in bigotry and hatred, many of the scientists who did the work (and promoted the impact on society) probably regarded themselves as moral beings.
But they also held another belief: that science and the application of the scientific method help us know, that their conclusions were based on cold, hard facts, not opinion. They were wrong. The scientific method gives us a way to test our ideas, and we can be just as likely to reach wrongheaded conclusions through this approach as by just sitting in a chair and deciding what must be true.
It's easy to look back and see that the applications of scientific method I've described above were faulty (indeed, there were scientists of the time who said so, and loudly). But this devolved into intellectual (and therefore esoteric) argument, while the forced sterilizations, deaths by neglect, and, ultimately, mass genocides continued. But could anything like this happen today? Which of our impartial, scientific positions that affect policy decisions (and matters ranging from quality of life to life-and-death) will be viewed from the future as wrongheadedness, idiocy and wilful bigotry?
Francis Bacon, in formulating the scientific method (he invented it), asserted that: "the testimony and information of sense is ever from the Analogy of Man, and not from the Analogy of the World; and it is an error of dangerous consequence to assert that sense is the measure of things". But we know that we bring bias to our experiments, we hope that we're right, and in interpreting our results (or designing experiments to give us those results we value and hope for), we use these same senses. "How odd it is", said Darwin (Charles, not Leonard), "that anyone should not see that all observation must be for or against some view if it is to be of any service".
Well, Carpenter (or are you the Walrus? I forget. Which one is better looking?), what views are we for or against? Do you think you really don't bring any preconceived notions to the bench? Do you really think that these notions can't affect your results and conclusions? How much of what we, as a scientific community, promote as dispassionate fact is wishful (and often unfortunate) thinking? What can we do about this? And perhaps as importantly, is there a way to know?
We should talk about it. I'll be back, with more oysters.
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