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Petition: Rename Darwinian Ronald Fisher lecture due to his support for eugenics

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Sort of thing that had to happen eventually:

In 1950, Fisher opposed UNESCO’s The Race Question, believing that evidence and everyday experience showed that human groups differ profoundly “in their innate capacity for intellectual and emotional development” and concluded that the “practical international problem is that of learning to share the resources of this planet amicably with persons of materially different nature”, and that “this problem is being obscured by entirely well-intentioned efforts to minimize the real differences that exist”. The revised statement titled “The Race Concept: Results of an Inquiry” (1951) was accompanied by Fisher’s dissenting commentary.

By honoring Fisher we dishonor the entire field of Statistics.

Miles Ott, “Rename The Fisher Lecture After David Blackwell” at Change.org

Petitioners want the lecture renamed, after American statistician David Blackwell (1919–2010), “the first African American member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences” (1965).

A bit of background on how seriously Fisher took heredity: “The extreme nature of Fisher’s and Pearson’s hereditarian stance is in evidence in the above anecdotes. They refused to accept that environment could be a cause of lung cancer (in the form of smoking) or tuberculosis (in the form of bacteria), and exhibited an almost pathological antipathy towards causal explanations.”

Old and bust: “According to geneticist and author Richard Dawkins, Fisher [1890-1962] was the greatest biologist since Charles Darwin.”

and

Stack Exchange: Richard Dawkins has described Ronald Fisher as “the father of modern statistics and experimental design”, a line which is quoted in Fisher’s Wikipedia biography.

Eventually, this stuff would start to matter, right?: See Darwin reader: Darwin’s racism

Someone should write a book about all the ways Darwinians have avoided these problems in the recent past.

Comments
Honestly, I don't think the Dutch Research Council has that much power.Bob O'H
June 6, 2020
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The NWO-ers are pushing hard and tightening the grip. The non-NWO-ers are losing (or as of late they are hardly even fighting back anymore?).Eugene
June 5, 2020
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