> Agenda driven science is bad science.
The people promoting eugenics dressed up with trendier terms also have an agenda.
The people promoting eugenics dressed up with trendier terms also have an agenda.
Even if it is an agenda, it still represents a wealth of evidence of an entire other side to the question of human behavior.
This kind of immediate dismissal, slandering by accusations of "eugenics" or other euphamisms for racism, is exactly how the status quo is maintained without any overt conspiracy or cabal as referenced by other commenters.
This isn't a question of scientifically justified racial supremacy. Some of us are actually interested in truth, which cannot be obtained if one perspective is irrationally forbidden as taboo. Opening up the discourse doesn't automatically push us into some twisted genetic caste dystopia - the nature of population distributions is such that individuals can still be judged by their own merits and we all still deserve the same rights as human beings.
A thousand times this. If the taboo'd claims are false, then the other side should welcome discussion and scientific experimentation, as that will further prove the taboo'd claims false. Suppose a group of people claim the sky is actually brown, not blue. Suppose academics and governments respond harshly, silencing all such people and banning all attempts to determine the color of the sky. This would have the exact opposite of the intended effect, it would make people wonder what's up with the blue-skyers' irrational behavior, and it would make people wonder what the blue skyers are trying to hide. Instead, let the brown-skyers talk and let them perform their experiments, and it will become manifestly clear that they are mistaken!
Two things to say here.
First, truth is in the eye of the beholder, even in science. There is still plenty of research into discredited theories because the proponents don't care, and they can recruit new believers by being selective in their presentation of the evidence, and screaming that the opposition is irrational.
Second, what is irrational about not pursuing lines of research that one considers will inevitably lead to eugenics? Is ethics in scientific research irrational? Science is not some perfectly neutral abstract playing field, it has real impacts on the world.
You are rationalizing what amounts to a strong institutional bias. That's bad science and will be bad for anything built on that incomplete picture, including official and unnoficial social policy.
On your second point, what's wrong with eugenics? Even if it is wrong, who decides what knowledge falls into that category of inevitably leading to bad things? Do we need to ask the pope?
Shunning these technologies will be seen, in time, as akin to the shunning of inoculations in the Victorian era.
When you find yourself cheering on, however indirectly, Mendelian disease consider perhaps that you are one of the baddies.
As for your predictions - they've been said over and over again ever since I started embarking on the genomics hype 7 years ago. The reality is much more boring and selecting for complex traits that heavily interact with the environment is bound to have disappointing returns.