I recently had the opportunity to comment on a talk presented by Dr. John West, associate director of the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute, Intelligent Design's 'think tank'. I agreed to make a brief public comment with the sole stipulation that Dr. West provide me the text of the talk a week or two in advance. 

Though I repeatedly e-mailed the coordinator of the event and he assured me that he was working hard to get a response from West, the material did not arrive until three days before the talk. Had this been the result of working down to the wire I would've understood. Instead, the file I received was a two-year old pdf entitled "Darwin's Public Policy: Eugenics, Democracy, and the Dangers of Scientific Utopianism" that had been previously posted on the Discovery Institute website. Why, I wondered, if he had the talk available the whole time would he have withheld it until almost the last minute? I leave it to you the reader to figure that one out. 

When I received a copy of Dr West's talk on Tuesday afternoon I immediately gave it a critical reading, just as I would if I were reviewing a talk for presentation at a professional meeting or a manuscript for publication. First, I looked for glaring mistakes, incorrect dates, obvious misquotes and the like. Here there was essentially no problem. As A. E. Houseman was fond of saying, "for the historian accuracy is a duty, not a virtue." Second, I examined the structure of the argument. Here the paper became much more problematic. 

Dr. West essentially presents a tripartite structure for his presentation: First, he aims to "provide a clearer understanding of the ideology that inspired the American eugenics crusade." At this, in my analysis, he fails. Second, he hopes to 'supply an overview of the heart-rending practical impact eugenics had on American welfare policy." Here he achieves partial success in that the account is heart-rending, but beyond that, his analysis again comes up short. Third, and finally, he "explores the lessons we learn from eugenics for democratic governance." Given that the lessons learned are based on preceding flawed accounts, their value is dubious at best.  

Part 1 - Toward a clearer understanding of the ideology that inspired American eugenics
By clearer understanding Dr. West means blaming biologists in general and Darwinian theory in particular for the coerced sterilization laws that passed many state legislatures in the first half of the 20th century. This will not do. Historians of science know that the passage of the first sterilization laws at the beginning of the 20th century occurred during the "eclipse of Darwinism". It was during this period, generally agreed to be between 1875 and 1925, that Darwin's mechanism of natural selection reached a low-ebb in the estimation of contemporary life scientists. At that time there was a proliferation of alternatives to Darwinian theory. 

In the general public the idea of compulsory sterilization reached it highest level of popularity in the 1930s. In 1937, for example, Fortune magazine asked about sterilization in its annual readers' survey: "Some people advocate compulsory sterilization of habitual criminals and mental defectives so that they will not have children to inherit their weaknesses. Would you approve of this? 66% of the respondents believed that mental defectives should be sterilized, and 63% favored sterilizing criminals. Less than one in six respondents directly opposed sterilization. 

Popular support for forced sterilization was not mirrored by similar support for evolutionary biology. In fact, in the same year that the sterilization laws were passed here in Minnesota the legislature was also considering an anti-evolution bill. It strikes me as odd that Prof. West argues that the support of evolutionary biologists was instrumental to the success of sterilization laws in the teens and twenties, but at the same time anti-evolution legislation was passed in many states. If the scientists were so influential, why were they ineffective in keeping anti-evolution laws off the books? 

Clearly, broader forces were at work. While the forced sterilization laws of the early 20th century were indeed part of the eugenics movement, they were also a part of on-going and broader attempts to address the problems of crime, vagrancy and "anti-social" behavior in the growing American cities. This perspective was totally lacking in Dr. West's talk. 

Dr. West claims that " the eugenic movement, which led to the sterilization of tens of thousands of Americans against their will, many of whom would not be considered mentally handicapped today, was promoted by evolutionary biologists in the name of Darwinian natural selection." While this may not be factually incorrect, it obscures and omits some rather important details. For example, while many biologists did support eugenic policies, many important biologists did not. Indeed, among the founding fathers of population genetics, R. A. Fisher supported eugenics, while Sewall Wright and J.B.S. Haldane did not.  Further, the scientific leader of the developing field of classical genetics, Nobel laureate T. H. Morgan, resigned from the committee on Animal Breeding of the American Breeders Association in 1915 because of what he called the unsubstantiated and reckless use of genetics to support social and political conclusions. 

Note also that it was not just biologists who were involved in this debate - social scientists, legal scholars, politicians and citizens were all participants in the development and implementation of eugenic policies. This effort was also abetted, to a great degree, by the increasingly influential medical community, a professional group that was and is only marginally friendly to evolutionary theory. 

            In short, the eugenics movement was as much a social and political movement as it was a scientific one. Laying it all at the feet of evolutionary biology is scapegoating. 

Part 2 - The heart-rending practical impact of eugenics 

With respect to the practical impacts, West gives us only two brief paragraphs on marriage laws and immigration policy, and then collapses all of eugenics into forced sterilization. Interestingly, and unacknowledged by Dr. West, some of the most aggressive supporters of eugenics did not support forced sterilization. For example, Charles Davenport, who featured prominently in West's account, opposed compulsory sterilization. He thought the sterilization laws were based on inaccurate or incomplete scientific information about heredity, and that the definitions of the classes of people targeted by the laws were too vague. He was also worried about an increase of licentious behavior post-op.

Dr West is quite successful in rending our hearts. The stories of Carrie Buck and Fred Aslin stir our moral outrage and show us victims who deserve our sympathy. But West carefully manipulates those sentiments rather than exploring the multiple factors that played a role in the tragic events. Furthermore, Dr. West blithely skips over the long history of genocidal treatment of Native Americans by pre-Darwinian Americans, making no effort to acknowledge that the institutionalization of the feeble-minded and other "abnormal" types was standard practice.   

Coerced sterilizations in the US happened because physicians wanted them done and legislators saw them as a cheap way to solve complex problems. Some biologists provided a concrete scientific explanation, in terms of Mendelism and artificial selection, that could be used in place of anecdotal evidence to claim that poor-quality families often reared poor-quality children. Such ideas of heredity and proper breeding clearly predate Darwin.

Part 3 - Lessons to be learned. 

West concludes that eugenics was supported by scientists - indeed this is true, but does not represent the whole story. 

Dr. West stretches his first observation into the claim that "scientists attempted to dictate social policy." His paper does not make the case that scientists had such power.
West tells us that "Eugenics was not fringe" - again true, but this claim does not warrant the conclusion that Dr. West draws.  There was no professional consensus among biologists regarding eugenics. Many biologists wholly rejected eugenical programs, and even strong supporters of eugenics were in some cases opposed to forced sterilizations. 

West presents the rise of eugenics and the passage of legislation on compulsory sterilization as the elevation of technocracy over democracy.  This is a false dichotomy. Scientists are members of our democratic society. West asks "why shouldn't voters and politicians simply defer to the authority of scientific experts?" They shouldn't. They should, however, seek their counsel on the scientific and technological issues of the day.

Finally, West asserts that "Of course experts can be wrong." Of course. But they are perhaps less likely to be wrong than the non-experts.   

The lesson here with respect to eugenics, according to West, is that scientists should not have a free hand to dictate public policy. They don't and they never have. The majority of environmental scientists are convinced on the question of global warming and would support more aggressive environmental policy, but have no power to "dictate" such policy. Most developmental biologists in this country support research on embryonic stem cells, but the current policy restricts federal funding for the development of new cell lines. Where is the supposed power to dictate social policy?  

Dr. West concludes his paper writing "As equal citizens before the law, scientists have every right to inform policy makers of the scientific implications of their actions. But they have no special right to demand that policymakers listen to them alone." I couldn't agree more. But again, this conclusion does not follow from his evidence or argument. At no point does Dr West demonstrate that scientists demanded or were granted any such 'special' rights.

Q & A

After the presentations one of the audience members challenged my use of the term "scapegoating" in describing West's attempt to lay the responsibility of the forced sterilization laws at the feet of the biologists. Referring to a quotation from Darwin, the questioner asked: how is it scapegoating to use the scientists own words to indict them? He went on to claim that whenever scientists are criticized from the outside they (or their defenders) always shout "scapegoating"! 

I responded by pointing out that scapegoating is identifying a single group as bearers of the blame for something that is the result of multiple causes. The blame for eugenics, materialism, and all the ills of modern society (including of course the rise of the Nazis in Germany) lies ultimately with Darwin, according to West. This claim rests on a single quotation from Darwin's Descent of Man which, according to West, is a veritable cornucopia of eugenic sentiment. 

I offer below the paragraph from Darwin that West included in his talk, as well as the following paragraph, which West did not quote. I suggest the latter undermines Dr. West's attempt to link forced sterilization to Darwin. In the end, I stand by the statement that we can all benefit from reading more Darwin.  

Passages in bold were omitted from Dr. West's text: 

With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick; we institute poor laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of everyone to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus, the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed. 

The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as the part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, if so urged by hard reason, without the deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with a certain and great present evil. Hence, we must bear without complaining the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind; but there appears to be at least one check in steady action, namely the weaker and inferior members of society not marrying so freely as the sound; and this check might be indefinitely increased, though this is more to be hoped for than expected, by the weak in body or mind refraining from marriage.

C. Darwin, Descent of Man, 1871 p168 - 9

(See the companion editorial byJim Curtsinger: Should Dr. West be Sterilized?)