Rufo described Jonatan Pallesen as “a Danish data scientist who has raised new questions about Claudine Gay’s use – and potential misuse – of data in her PhD thesis” in an interview published in his newsletter and on the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal website last Friday.
He did not tell readers that a paper featuring Pallesen’s own statistical work in collaboration with the eugenicist researchers has been subject to scathing expert criticism for its faulty methods, and characterized as white nationalism by another academic critic.
The revelations once again raise questions about the willingness of Rufo – a major ally of Ron DeSantis and powerful culture warrior in Republican politics – to cultivate extremists in the course of his political crusades.
The Guardian emailed Rufo to ask about his repeated platforming of extremists, and asked both Rufo and the Manhattan Institute’s communications office whether they had vetted Pallesen before publishing the interview. Neither responded.
A fair point, I’m autistic and have definitely had questions about kids, I’m not having them for different reasons but I guess I didn’t realize that IS eugenics in the moment. Nobody’s been feeling my skull though
Voluntarily eliminating heritable genetic diseases is also eugenics, unfortunately many people inappropriately associate the term exclusively with the atrocity of forced eugenics/genocide.
Well no, eugenics is the bad stuff, when you decide whether or not to have kids based on the likelihood for them to inherit traits for you you’d rather not pass along, that’s just family planning
You are technically correct, but the practical thing to do is abandon the term when it’s not forced/tragic. No reason to rehabilitate the term.
And a fun but important fact is that genetic and heritable diseases are not necessarily the same. I went too long as a clinician conflating the two: https://www.veritasint.com/blog/en/difference-between-genetic-and-hereditary-diseases/ (corporate link but correct and well written)
Not understanding simple genetics is embarrassing. Don’t know what your training and degree are but that is unacceptable.