ABOUT THIS EPISODE
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.
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
