According to Grant’s biographer Jonathan Spiro, those scientists conducted biased research that supposedly confirmed eugenics. However, organizations like the Galton Society established scientific credibility for inaccurate eugenics concepts that emphasized differences between races by recruiting influential scientists and professionals who agreed with their views. Therefore, scientists like Pääbo, Foster, and Sharp stress that it is erroneous to make assumptions about a person’s biology based on what race they are. On the other hand, Foster and Sharp explain that if a scientist were to compare the genomes of two people of different races, only about three percent of the observable genetic differences would actually be due to race. Foster and Sharp explain that ninety-three to ninety-five percent of genetic differences that occur between humans can be detected within individuals of the same race. In fact, according to Morris Foster and Richard Sharp, who research anthropology and medicine in the twenty-first century, modern genome sequencing technology, or technology that allows researchers to read an organism's DNA sequence, has shown that there is a higher percentage of genetic variation between individuals within a race than there is between individuals of separate races. To illustrate, Pääbo explains there is no single variation of any gene that all Africans carry or that all Europeans carry, for example, that distinguishes them from each other or any other group. While humans are incredibly diverse, Svante Pääbo, who studies genetics in Germany in the twenty-first century, explains that there are no distinct genetic boundaries between races at all. However, up until the mid-twentieth century, eugenicists argued that certain lineages of people are supposedly more genetically pure than others, often emphasizing the separation of people of different races. According to Megan Gannon, a science writer for the magazine Scientific American, most biologists and anthropologists in 2021 agree that race is a social construct and not an effective way of categorizing or understanding genetic diversity between humans. The Galton Society drew on the scientific credibility and influence of its members to advocate for eugenics programs, such as immigration restriction laws, in the US.Įugenics is a scientifically invalid movement based on the incorrect idea that fundamental genetic differences exist in humans that make people superior or inferior to each other. Some of the society members were scientists from a wide range of disciplines who supported the now disproven notion that fundamental biological differences exist between races that may justify the control of human reproduction. Galton and other eugenics proponents claimed that the human species could improve through selective breeding that restricted who could have children. The Galton Society was named in honor of Francis Galton who first coined the term eugenics in 1883. The Galton Society was a scientific society that promoted the study of humans in terms of race in service to the US eugenics movement. The Galton Society for the Study of the Origin and Evolution of Man (1918–1935)Ĭharles Benedict Davenport, Madison Grant, and Henry Fairfield Osborn founded the Galton Society for the Study of the Origin and Evolution of Man, or the Galton Society, in New York City, New York, in 1918.
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