Sticky Wicket 197

An occasional column, in which Mole, Caveman and other troglodytes involved in cell science emerge to share their views on various aspects of life-science research. Messages for Caveman and other contributors can be left at [email protected]. Any correspondence may be published in forthcoming issues.

How we know II: bad In 1902, the esteemed zoologist Charles dreams Davenport, with the enthusiastic support In my last column, we were discussing of another luminary, Henry Fairfield houses built on sand and the scientific Osborn (director of the American method as a way of knowing. Most of us Museum of Natural History) approached take it as given that this is a good way of the newly formed Carnegie Institution to knowing things about the world at large, build a research station in Cold Spring and you and I were just about to agree Harbor, New York. And in January 1904,

Journal of Cell Science completely with each other when I they inaugurated it the Station for proposed that it is not, and that it can be Experimental Evolution of the Carnegie a matter of life and death to argue Institution. This wasn’t simply funded by otherwise. Well, like the Walrus and the Carnegie; it was an integral part of the Carpenter, let’s take a walk on the beach Carnegie Institution. The mission of the (need I mention that the sun is shining on station was to conduct research the sea?) and talk nonsense. Yes nonsense, supporting the extension of the emerging but nonsense that is fairly recent history concepts of genetics and evolution to the and of such deep importance to any of us improvement of human beings. The in biomedicine that it is astonishing that it mission was called eugenics, based on isn’t taught as essential reading in Biology ideas originally proposed by another giant 101. It isn’t, mainly because those who of biology, Sir Francis Galton. know about it are ashamed and don’t like to talk about it. From the 1860s until his death in 1911, Galton had sought to extend evolutionary Most of us do know that, in 1900, William theory to genetics and apply these ideas to Bateson brilliantly brought Mendelian humans. Initially, he proposed voluntary genetics to the attention of the scientific family planning efforts to ‘improve’ community and ushered in a new era in human stock but came to believe that this biology. Within a short time, through could not be left to individual whim and efforts of startling intellects like R. A. required government intervention. He Fisher (among others of course), a grand defined eugenics as “the study of all synthesis was underway, amalgamating agencies under social control which can genetics and evolutionary theory to give improve or impair the racial quality of us a view of the function of the biological future generations”. His efforts did not, at world, and we all work within this first, take root in England, but found paradigm in modern science. fertile soil in America. As we’ll see, this 198 Journal of Cell Science 119 ()

went far beyond a research station in Long it to our descendents to abandon the scientific method gives us a way to test Island. country to blacks, browns, and yellows our ideas, and we can be just as likely to and seek an asylum in New Zealand”. reach wrongheaded conclusions through These weren’t fringe elements of the Science had already ‘proven’ that some this approach as by just sitting in a chair scientific community, but were among the races are intellectually inferior, through and deciding what must be true. most important scientists of their day. application of biometrics, intelligence Joining the push for eugenics were R. A. tests and other ‘impartial’ measures that It’s easy to look back and see that the Fisher, Leonard Darwin (Charlie’s son), led to the conclusions that the researchers applications of scientific method I’ve and Alexander Graham Bell. But where to had already held to be correct. Such described above were faulty (indeed, there begin? Based on work by a German conclusions were promoted as ‘fact’ were scientists of the time who said so, psychologist, the eugenics movement hit throughout the twentieth century. In 1972, and loudly). But this devolved into on ‘mental defectives’, defined by the Nobel Laureate William Shockley intellectual (and therefore esoteric) epilepsy, ‘feeblemindedness’ and (whose expertise in genetics led him to argument, while the forced sterilizations, ‘shiftiness’. By 1907, with little fanfare, invent the transistor) travelled the learned deaths by neglect, and, ultimately, mass the State of Indiana passed legislation for institutions of USA and Europe, genocides continued. But could anything the forced sterilization of mentally promoting the idea of forced sterilization like this happen today? Which of our impaired prisoners, poorhouse residents for people of African decent, based on impartial, scientific positions that affect and prisoners. By 1909, laws for eugenic results of IQ tests. That he was given a policy decisions (and matters ranging sterilization were passed in Washington, platform at any of these institutions is to from quality of life to life-and-death) will Connecticut and California. Ultimately, their shame. (At Yale University, a be viewed from the future as 23 states would pass sterilization laws, but “debate restricted to the scientific claims” wrongheadedness, idiocy and wilful none of them could match California’s was disrupted by a huge group of bigotry? taste for the surgery: 4636 by 1925, and protesters who simply applauded when he 14,568 by 1940. Nationwide, the number was introduced and continued until he Francis Bacon, in formulating the was in excess of 35,000. (Efforts to pass quit the stage. The organizers of the scientific method (he invented it), asserted such legislation in Britain stalled and were protest were expelled. If I should meet that: “the testimony and information of ultimately interrupted by World War I.) any of them today, I’ll happily buy them sense is ever from the Analogy of Man, dinner – or maybe a car.) and not from the Analogy of the World; The US Eugenics Records Office even and it is an error of dangerous had a theme song: “We are Eu-ge-nists so I don’t have to mention where this went. consequence to assert that sense is the gay, and we have no time for play, serious Whereas the eugenics movement in the measure of things”. But we know that we we have to be, working for posterity…If USA faltered through public abhorrence, bring bias to our experiments, we hope to the future good you list, you must be a and that in the UK never really took off, that we’re right, and in interpreting our Eugenist.” (Green Day have wisely the Nazi government in Germany brought results (or designing experiments to give

Journal of Cell Science decided not to do a cover.) it to its ultimate conclusion. And, at every us those results we value and hope for), step, these actions were rationalized by we use these same senses. “How odd it In 1940, a case came to the US Supreme ‘scientific facts’. is”, said Darwin (Charles, not Leonard), Court, involving the forced sterilization of “that anyone should not see that all a young woman, Carrie Buck, whose My point is that we do our experiments observation must be for or against some ‘defect’ was that her biological mother to ask questions about the world. We like view if it is to be of any service”. was derelict. The majority decision to think that we do them without supported the sterilization law and was prejudice or preconception. We apply the Well, Carpenter (or are you the Walrus? I written by Oliver Wendell Holmes. scientific method to answer questions we forget. Which one is better looking?), think are important, and we learn from what views are we for or against? Do you America, to its credit, did not rise up to our results. But we don’t do this in a think you really don’t bring any embrace eugenics, but the practice vacuum. Scientists, whether we like it or preconceived notions to the bench? Do continued and took a further, ugly turn. not, are members of society, and we are you really think that these notions can’t Based on the precepts, doctors would prone to the ideas and beliefs of the times affect your results and conclusions? How allow babies they regarded as defective or in which we live. Eugenics began as an much of what we, as a scientific of inferior stock to die through neglect or intellectual pursuit, and although we can community, promote as dispassionate fact inaction, and ultimately these practices now see that it was steeped in bigotry and is wishful (and often unfortunate) were loudly defended (and upheld by the hatred, many of the scientists who did the thinking? What can we do about this? courts). work (and promoted the impact on And perhaps as importantly, is there a way society) probably regarded themselves as to know? And of course, all such actions were moral beings. heavily skewed racially. Davenport We should talk about it. I’ll be back, with himself set the tone, in a published But they also held another belief: that more oysters. ‘professional’ article. “Can we build a science and the application of the wall high enough around this country”, he scientific method help us know, that their Mole Journal of Cell Science 119, 197-198 wrote, “so as to keep out these cheaper conclusions were based on cold, hard Published by The Company of Biologists 2006 races, or will it be a feeble dam…leaving facts, not opinion. They were wrong. The doi:10.1242/jcs.02763