The Eugen-olympics
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Once again, Slate Magazine is at the head of the pack in giving a knee-jerk, pseudo-scientific-sounding eugenicist answer to why it is that one race is going to be good at something and why another is not. On Jamaican sprinters of West African descent who, according to a Quebecois study, had "significantly higher amounts of 'fast-twitch' muscle fibers": "So far, there is no evidence that even extensive training can turn slow-twitch muscles into fast-twitch ones, though moving in the other direction is possible." Huh? Should I get my forceps out, Slate, to make sure you've calculated "fast-twitch" muscle density accurately? Or else, can you add a maybe a little more context to your bizarre-sounding claims so we don't think you're a bunch of nutjobs? Then again, according to William Saletan, perhaps we'd have to be Asian to appreciate the full dimensions of what would seem, to the naked (that is to say, Black or Caucasian) eye, to be totally slipshod reportage.
More reportage along the lines of "we're just reporting what appear to be the facts" can be found here and here. For Slate's bizarre, not entirely disinterested, eleven-part "study" of what happened to babies produced by the Repository for Germinal Choice, start here.
posted by Greg Purcell @ 11:34 AM,
