Half the Answer #21: Racist Pseudoscience in Academia and Beyond

Caitlin and Trent talk to anthropologist Rebecca Sear about the troubling trend in academia of allowing scientific racism, or the pseudoscientific belief that humans can be divided into genetically distinct racial groups with discrete measurements for things like IQ, personality traits, and behavior, to persist and present itself as a legitimate academic pursuit. They discuss how political activists have helped fund projects that propel scientific racism into the academic literature, popular media, and public policy.

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Resources:

Musk on birth rates https://www.youtube.com/shorts/EPrNsxf-AUY

JD Vance: “I want more babies in the United States” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23XJ2SqI8FA

RFK, Jr. on “healthy kids” and COVID https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/27/well/rfk-jr-cdc-children-covid-vaccines-data.html

Origin of Eugenics https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/origins-eugenics

History of Eugenics https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/educational-resources/timelines/eugenics

Galton on “selection” 1883 https://archive.org/details/cu31924028925332/page/n325/mode/2up

Eugenics in the 1920s https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20speople-improving-the-nations-stock-for-great-and-greater-britain-eugenics-in-the-1920s/

Eugenics Record Office https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/368657

‘National IQ’ datasets: https://osf.io/26vfb_v1

Dark Money https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/215462/dark-money-by-jane-mayer/

Merchants of Doubt https://www.merchantsofdoubt.org/

Collins Family profile https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hnd1Taw4CEE&t=174s

Polygenic embryo selection https://theinfinitesimal.substack.com/p/science-fictions-are-outpacing-science

Bo Winegard defending race science https://www.aporiamagazine.com/p/sasha-gusev-is-wrong?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

Winegard accused of eugenics https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/03/12/assistant-professor-says-hes-been-fired-because-he-dared-talk-about-human-population

William Shockley on Firing Line https://youtu.be/7JOIqkh2ms8?si=rxH8Ym7_4SU0PYPR

Richard Haier on Lex Fridman https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9RxrsvcS-k

Peter Singer on disabled newborns https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2017/04/now-peter-singer-argues-that-it-might-be-okay-to-rape-disabled-people