I should point out that some of the quotes I’m putting up are my own thoughts, based on something I read. So anything unattributed is probably mine. With that in mind, here are a few more.
Numbers suggest, constrain, and refute; they do not, by themselves, specify the content of scientific theories.
H.H. Goddard and Robert Yerkes and Lewis Teman managed to supply the U.S. Government with a supposedly scientific basis for passing the strict immigration laws of 1924 that effectively kept millions of Europeans from coming here where Hitler was coming to power. They had nowhere to flee, since American I.Q. tests indicated they were of inferior racial stock and could not be allowed into America to “dilute” our native intelligence.
“We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the state for these lesser sacrifices. Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” Oliver Wendell Homes, jr., Buck vs. Bell Supreme Court 1927
Alfred Binet destroyed Broca’s process of division by craniometric study, determined his own predilection toward subjective bias, and formulated the first crude I.Q. tests (1905). “The scale, properly speaking, does not permit the measure of intelligence, because intellectual qualities are not superposable, and therefore cannot be measured as linear surfaces are measured.” Nevertheless, his work, misunderstood and coopted, was used to create the Standford-Binet I.Q. test, which held sway over the educational destinies of American children for decades, even though misapplied.
“A society defines what is normal and what is crazy—and then says anyone who challenges the definition is crazy.” Elizabeth Butler from “The Falling Woman” by Pat Murphy
