Dysgenics: Genetic Deterioration in Modern Populations (Human Evolution, Behavior, and Intelligence) [Hardcover]

Richard Lynn (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0275949176 | ISBN-13: 978-0275949174 | Publication Date: December 1996

In the mid-19th century a number of biological and social scientists came to believe that the genetic quality of the populations of the Western world was deteriorating due to the relaxation of natural selection, the process by which nature eliminates the unfit in each generation by reducing their fertility and by early death. Francis Galton, Darwin's young cousin, argued for consciously designed selection through which human societies would control and improve their own genetic quality. For this consciously designed selection, Galton in 1883 proposed the term eugenics. Almost a century later, William Schockley proposed the term dysgenics for the genetic deterioration that eugenics was designed to correct. Although the view that the populations of Western nations were deteriorating genetically and that steps needed to be taken to correct this came to be widely accepted in the first half of the 20th century, by the time Schockley wrote, a reaction had set in and eugenics was almost universally dismissed. In this book, Richard Lynn reviews the history of the eugenics movement and argues that, in repudiating eugenics, an important truth has been lost. By showing weaknesses in the arguments against the theory, he seeks to rehabilitate the argument that genetic deterioration is occurring in western populations and in most of the developing world. A controversial book, it should stimulate debate not only among biologists, psychologists, educators and those involved in setting social policy, but among all readers concerned with contemporary social issues.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

RICHARD LYNN is Director of the Ulster Institute for Social Research, Coleraine, Northern Ireland.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Praeger Publishers (December 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0275949176
• ISBN-13: 978-0275949174
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,965,642 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

75 of 78 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Dysgenics?, April 23, 2001

By 

Chris Brand "crispian" (Edinburgh, Midlothian United Kingdom) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dysgenics: Genetic Deterioration in Modern Populations (Human Evolution, Behavior, and Intelligence) (Hardcover)

This is a book that pulls no punches. It argues that both intelligence and conscientiousness are heritable traits (as shown by twin- and adoption-studies); and that people who are low in these traits have, over roughly the past century, had the most siblings and the most children of their own. Thus Richard Lynn maintains that 'the eugenicists were right' -- pace many modern experts in genetics whom Lynn chastises for falling by the wayside. Further, Lynn condemns the Roman Catholic Church for backing monogamy and priestly celibacy; and for opposing abortion and the more effective types of contraception. The book closes with Lynn promising a companion volume in which the modern policy implications of dysgenic trends will be considered.

What is impressive in all this is the sheer quantity of modern evidence that is available to illustrate the author's empirical claims. Time and again, Lynn is able to report highly significant dysgenic correlations of around -.20 between the traits that concern him and indices of achieved fertility. The evidence is principally from the West; but, by using educational and socio-economic data in relation to fertility, the same underlying trends can arguably be detected in other countries too. (The exception is in Black Africa, where contraception is so little used that typical upper-class families have around the same six children as do those of agricultural workers).

Despite the total lack of interest of today's criminologists in genetic factors and fertility, Lynn finds evidence suggesting that "the fertility [of British] criminals is 77 percent higher than that of the British population as a whole." Thus Lynn can even begin to address the West's problem of ceaselessly rising criminality. In recent years, liberal-left, 'anti-elitist' and 'anti-racist' students at today's universities have made sensible and open discussion of heredity and its policy implications difficult and even dangerous. This is why, in my own book, The g Factor (1996, Wiley DePublisher), I avoided dysgenics -- and indeed any unequivocal eugenic conclusions -- and concentrated merely on educational recommendations that would, if accepted, have begun to move Western thinking towards a sensible recognition of the need to cultivate valuable human qualities. Will Richard Lynn be able to turn the egalitarian tide by a head-on approach?

From 1960, the standard objection to dysgenic ideas was that previous surveys (finding dysgenic trends) had ignored those people in modern populations who remain unmarried and childless -- not uncommonly because of low mental ability, psychosis or a criminal record. Such people are necessarily ignored in the easiest and most common type of social survey that studies schoolchildren and asks them for their parents' occupations and the number of children in the family. The errors of such neglect were pointed out in the influential reports by Higgins et al. (1962) and Bajema (1968). However, these authors' own studies themselves involved small and unrepresentative samples that positively over-represented individuals having IQ <70. Such people may indeed in the past have had few children (not least because of locked single-sex wards in mental subnormality hospitals) but they are only 2.5% of the population and their own procreative restraint -- if it still continues -- will be easily overshadowed by the state-assisted fertility of the 13.5% of people who fall between IQ 70 and IQ 85. In fact, both in Britain and the USA, much larger and more representative modern studies find that people of above average IQ have fewer children than people of below-average IQ (Kiernan & Diamond, 1982 [following up 13,687 British infants born in 1946]; Van Court & Bean, 1985 [studying around 12,000 US adults, born 1890-1964]).

Richard Lynn has performed a valuable service in bringing together the evidence about present dysgenic trends and presenting it to effect and with his usual clarity. There is plainly reason to believe that the West has brought natural selection for intelligence and conscientiousness to a halt, and that we have for some time been breeding in irresponsible ways for which our grandchildren may curse us as they struggle to cope with the phenomenon of unemployability for people of around IQ 90 in advanced, information-based societies. It is to be hoped that psychologists will read Dysgenics with open minds and ask the American Psychological Association, the British Psychological Society, the Galton Institute and similar bodies in continental Europe to ensure that the requisite new research in this field is undertaken with despatch...

2 of 59 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars The author must go to Greenpeace or Al-qaida, June 14, 2008

By 

Dalton C. Rocha (Fortaleza, CE, Brazil.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dysgenics: Genetic Deterioration in Modern Populations (Human Evolution, Behavior, and Intelligence) (Hardcover)

I found many parts of this trash-book on an internet site.And even not reading all this trash-book, I must tell you that this author is a charlatan and a plagiarist.
To example, the author claims, that roman catholicism was bad to societies, because of "dysgenic" celibacy.Well, the clerical celibacy began in Spain, in V Century.Only about 1,000 years ago, it became a rule.Among the 30 most developed countries in the world, roman catholicism has more coutries, than all the rest of religions together.The author also is against the pope's views about anti-conceptionals.At the same time, Europe is fading, because catholic(and protestant) women aren't following pope's advices.Islam is growing very fast, because of big levels of fertility.
Since 1940 decade, eugenics exchanged its name:neo-malthusianism and ecology are the names for eugenics.The crook that wrote this book, must go to Greenpeace or Al-qaida, because he is a liar and a plagiarist.The same fakes of this book were showed in books writen by Charles B. Davenport, more than 100 years ago.