Every so often (ever since I read that book about Catholic scientists) I think about the guy who discovered the cause of Down’s Syndrome and get very sad.
Jérôme Lejeune did his research because he loved children with Down’s Syndrome! He wanted to help them! Discovering the genetic cause was a huge breakthrough, and helping to develop the prenatal test was intended to give parents a chance to prepare for caring for a child with Down’s Syndrome.
And then his test was used to kill children with Down’s Syndrome.
He got the highest honor in genetics because of it, and he used his acceptance speech to tell the world’s assembled scientists that their use of his test was evil. Which made everyone mad and destroyed his chances of winning a Nobel. But he stood for life. He stood for the disabled. He stood for the children. Even at the cost of his career. Because his work intended to save the children he loved was being used to destroy them and how do you deal with that? It just breaks my heart every time I think about it.
Anon, you mean well, you’re broadly correct: the following is meant to spread awareness, not to shame you for not knowing.
IQ is an inherently eugenicist and ableist concept and metric that does not help us understand anything valuable about the test-taker’s actual intelligence. I say this speaking as someone who scores uncomfortably high on IQ tests and was put into special honors classes as a child based on that metric.
The actual problem with antis that I know you are trying to describe with this language is that:
⚠️ Antis are incurious about the world
⚠️ Antis are easily swayed by authority
⚠️ Antis are undereducated about history
⚠️ Antis have an unwillingness to learn
⚠️ Antis are reactioanary
⚠️ Antis prefer a comfortable lie to a difficult truth
