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Feb 2 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
Hello. My latest book Control: the dark history and troubling present of #eugenics is out today. waterstones.com/book/control/a…
Some links: here's Bad Blood, the Radio 4 series, with everything from Plato to Trump, The Great Gatsby to Mendel, Francis Galton to designer babies.
bbc.in/3PF342Q
The reviews were generous - even the Daily Mail gave it 5* - but here's one by @questingvole in the Spectator.
bit.ly/3WRx5P6
It's a strange thing: persuading people that racism is bad and pseudoscience is no challenge, and delving into that history and science in my last book How To Argue With a Racist was pushing on an open door...
But #eugenics is an idea that is less well known, and poorly disseminated. Yet is one of the defining ideas of the 20th century, the lifeblood of the 3rd Reich, and a driver of US immigration and sterilisation policy for the majority of the 20th century in most US states.
A pseudoscience that juiced the existing political ideologies of white supremacy, racism, ablism, sexism, and continues in the thinking of many today, in obvious places such as the far right, but lingering also in the Longtermerism and Effective Altruism movements.
Much of my work is in the space between science and culture, the politicisation of genetics, and nowhere is this more present and destructive than in the eugenics state of mind. So this is a serious business, but as with all my writings comes with film and music easter eggs...
...not all of which have been found. Yet.
Anyhoo, you know how to find it, and please support independent bookshops.

However, it is currently 99p on Kindle, eeesh.
amzn.to/3RsLmAF

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More from @AdamRutherford

Dr Adam Rutherford Profile picture
Jan 24
⚡🧬 New paper klaxon! 🧬⚡

A bunch of us at @GenSocUK have been thinking about the public perception and understanding of genetics, and how it may have changed during the pandemic. So, we commissioned a large survey, and this paper is the results.
🧵
We figured that the pandemic response involved public exposure to genetics and molecular biology in an unprecedented way – all of a sudden there were daily discussions all over the media of PCR, exponential growth, R numbers, vaccines, mRNA, and spike proteins.
The results are cautiously promising. We asked people their views about genetic technologies, and assessed their knowledge of genetics in general. We asked them about their information sources.
Read 9 tweets
Dr Adam Rutherford Profile picture
Jan 22
Perfection! All the History Reclaimed wankfantasists are wetting their tiny bunched panties about this spectacular book. You just know if you're annoying ahistorical pub bores like these tiresome carotid throbbers, you're doing the right thing.
The thing is that it's meticulously researched, and terribly well written. You can see why Its critics in the right wing press hate it, cos they don't seem to be capable of either of these traits.
Instead, read a review by a proper well respected historian.
bit.ly/3ZSZ8jS
Read 4 tweets
Dr Adam Rutherford Profile picture
Jan 12
I am enjoying Harry Wales’ book a lot. I mean, it’s tragic and laced with deep sadness. It’s not brilliantly written or read, but it’s a moving insight into the life of a fairly normal boy, born into a pantomime of absurdities, cruelty, and madness.
Each character also a victim of the absurdity of the life they were born into, the casual cruelty of boarding schools (please read @BeardRichard on this), the nonsense of the monarchy, and the utter immorality of the press.
I am no Royalist, not even close. And it is hard not to conclude that if we do not want to pass misery on, the whole absurd, deranged monarchy should be dissembled. It makes people mad.
Read 6 tweets
Dr Adam Rutherford Profile picture
Jan 11
Not for the first time, I find myself disagreeing with A.N. Wilson's literary output. Here is my review of his 'biography' 'of' Darwin and his work - something I know a little bit about. Deranged: literally the worst book I have ever read about Da
Wilson is fine entertainment in his well carved out domain of comically bad biographies. Here is one in which he was hoaxed into believing a fake love letter that included an acrostic: "AN Wilson is a shit."

bit.ly/3GX0Yst
The master historian of the Nazi period @RichardEvans36 was incapable of identifying all the errors in Wilson's 'travesty of a biography' of Hitler owing to lack of space.
bit.ly/3ZuZ4Xd
Read 4 tweets
Dr Adam Rutherford Profile picture
Jan 2
One of the true joys of my job is that I get to read books before they are published. So instead of dunking on funky ballsweat like Sapiens, here are 5 books coming out this year that I have read/am reading, that are splendid. 1/x
First up, On Savage Shores: How Indigenous Americans Discovered Europe by @carolinepennock. Truly a spectacular important story of Indigenous Americans in Europe. That's 19th Jan, and Book of the Week on @BBCRadio4
Next, @peterfrankopan’s epic new masterpiece, The Earth Transformed: An Untold History Hardcover, that’s 2 March. The history of the planet, soup to nuts, history, science and his delicious grand prose.
Read 8 tweets
Dr Adam Rutherford Profile picture
Dec 14, 2022
I know sometimes you look to me for comment on such matters: human evolution, genetics, race. But I just can’t be arsed. This is bad science - it’s baffling that it was published. The Twitter thread is absolute balls. I’m sure colleagues can chip in. I’m watching the football.
Sorry for being so lazy. I’ve got 42 papers to grade, and can’t be dealing with nonsense like this. There’s an interesting strand of nationalism in human evolution that comes from China, but it is untethered to evidence, and should only be acknowledged as a political ideology.
There are about 1000 books that show the overwhelming wealth of evidence on Homo sapiens being a species which emerged in the African continent - I’ve written at least two of them - and about 4000 papers. Do yourself a favour and ignore this flapdoodle.
Read 4 tweets

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