A quick note of thanks. #HowToArgueWithARacist is at number 2 in the Times paperback charts. I'm very proud to be alongside friends @CCriadoPerez@Philippa_Perry and Deborah Orr, whom we miss terribly.
[I've no idea what that book is at 1, but I do not like the title at all]
I'm proud of this book, and delighted that it has found an audience, not least with it being selected as @Waterstones book of the month. bit.ly/370vcsj
Here's a line which I think is important - though I borrowed it from Helen Lewis, who borrowed it from someone else.
And here's a line which makes me laugh - writing is often boring and hard, and often these moments make it tolerable. You just have to have a kindly, patient editor, such as @jennyjennylord
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I’ve been writing and teaching about eugenics for 20 years, and now it is time to get those ideas down into a book, my 3rd for @jennyjennylord, 4th for @wnbooks#FasterSmarterStronger on the dark history and science of eugenics, and it’s troubling comeback in the 21st century.
Its very hard to reconcile this tweet with the history of intelligence testing. The first attempt to standardise preIQ cognitive ability tests were by the British eugenicist Francis Galton.
The Binet-Simon test in 1905 was intended to identify mental retardation in school children, and they were indeed French. This was standardised in 1916 by American eugenicist Lewis Tiernan into the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale.
G was introduced by the British eugenicist Charles Spearman in 1904.
The Binet and Simon Test of Intellectual Capacity was published in 1908 by the American eugenicist Henry Goddard.
The term IQ was coined by the German psychologist William Stern.
This callow actor casually slagging off physics teachers on the BBC is shameful, embarrassing, and anti-educational. It serves none of the BBC’s values.
I don't wish a pile on. But these stereotypes are damaging. It's stuff similar to this that tells girls they can't do physics, or that science is for nerds not cool kids.
These anti-intellectual stereotypes are why we have such cultural ignorance about scientific practice, which fuel conspiracy theories about climate change or vaccines, or pandemics.
So here’s a question. The cosplay wieners who broke into the Capitol buildings and then, like wandered around. What did they *think* was going to happen? That Trump would be reinstated? That they would form a government and slavery would be ok again?
Cos now, lots of them are going to gaol for a while, and won’t be able to get jobs.
Cosplay General Hux with his assault rifle and Hitler Youth knife is now basically unemployable forever. What was his plan?
‘Hey, aren’t you that guy who said to a billion people that you’d shoot *all* boomers?’
Following the science my pert arse. They knew, we all knew that lockdown was needed in September, or October, or Last week. WHAT MYSTERIOUS BLACK MAGIC DID NEW ZEALAND HAVE THAT WE DON'T?
Lockdown skeptics. What a contemptible rash of cyphers, crushingly vapid grifters with not the brains nor the insight to even vaguely process the fartknocking poison that blarts from their stupid manmouths, like a weeping sore that would heal if they would only stop tonguing it.
Arrogant shitwits, who if they only knew that they know nothing, that would be something. But they don’t. And instead, bluster their way with fingers crossed against FUCKING EVOLUTION.
I see that there is a lot of chat about ancestry and indigeneity, two complex and profoundly misunderstood concepts. Here’s a thread 1/N - I have written about these ideas extensively, in two books; bit.ly/3r5iLDR
Ancestry rapidly becomes a matted web rather than a tree. Claims of ancestral purity are absurd. We are descended from multitudes, and don’t bear DNA from actual ancestors after very few generations. (fig. from @Graham_Coop
With both ancestry and indigeneity, the pertinent question is ‘when?’ If you claim ancestry from a certain group of people, then you are timestamping when you consider these ancestors to be important (to you). 3/N