Galton Research Articles

Commentary: A Darwin family concern

‘I’m not quite sure that it’s a good thing for cousins to marry’, remarks Dr Crofts in Trollope’s The Small House of Allington, published in 1863. ‘They do, you know, very often’, he is reminded, ‘and it suits some family arrangements’. 1 To be sure, the doctor had a personal interest in the matter. A young woman he hoped to marry had just become engaged to her cousin. However, Dr Crofts was talking as a responsible medical man. The British medical press was raising questions about the risks to offspring of cousin marriages, 2,3 and a bright young doctor would have been familiar with the professional debates. (And in the end he gets his girl.) Charles Darwin had picked up on these concerns very early. He was worried about heredity and also about the consequences of cousin marriage. Shortly before his own marriage to his first cousin, Emma Wedgwood, he had consulted a new book, Alexander Walker’s Intermarriage: Or the Mode in Which, and the Causes Why, Beauty, Health, and Intellect Result from Certain Unions, and Deformity, Disease and Insanity from Others (1838). It touched a sensitive nerve. His Darwin grandmother, the wife of Erasmus Darwin, was addicted to gin and suffered from bouts of madness. Charles Darwin’s own mother, unwell throughout his childhood, had died from an agonizing stomach ailment, probably peritonitis, at the age of 52 years. Charles was 8 years old when she died, and as an adult he was obsessively concerned with his own ill-health, particularly the recurrent stomach complaints that recalled his mother’s fatal illness. Both his mother and Emma were Wedgwoods, and the Wedgwoods were notorious for their ill-health. 4 Whenever one of his children fell ill, Charles was inclined to see the same symptoms in himself, and to worry that it exposed a family propensity. Or were the frequent illnesses of his children, and the health problems of the Wedgwoods, perhaps the consequence of cousin marriages? 5 This was a growing concern in scientific circles in Britain in the 1860s. ‘In many families, marriages between cousins are discouraged and checked’, Francis Galton noted in 1865. 6 Charles Darwin’s son George published an early paper recommending that cousin marriage should be avoided. 7

Fisher-Mendel controversy in genetics: scientific argument, intellectual integrity, a fair society, Western falls and bioethical evaluation.

This review article aims to discuss and analyze the background and findings regarding Fisher-Mendel Controversy in Genetics and to elucidate the scientific argument and intellectual integrity involved, as well as their importance in a fair society, and the lesson of Western falls as learned. At the onset of this review, the kernel of Mendel-Fisher Controversy is dissected and then identified. The fact of an organizational restructuring that had never gone towards a happy synchronization for the ensuing years since 1933 is demonstrated. It was at that time after Fisher succeeded Karl Pearson not only as the Francis Galton Professor of Eugenics but also as the chief of the Galton Laboratory at University College, London. The academic style of eugenics in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the UK is then introduced. Fisher's ideology at that time, with its effects on the human value system and policy-making at that juncture are portrayed. Bioethical assessment is provided. Lessons in history, the emergence of the Eastern phenomenon and the decline of the Western power are outlined.

The Founding Fathers of Sociology: Francis Galton, Adolphe Quetelet, and Charles Booth: Or What Do People You Probably Never Heard of Have to Do with the Foundations of Sociology?

The theme of the 2008 meeting of the Association for Applied and Clinical Sociology was “Engaging Sociology: Applied Sociology's Past, Present, and Promise.” The theme suggests that applied sociology has a past that is different from the parent discipline of sociology, and given how the history of sociology has come to be taught and remembered, that is an understandable suggestion. The argument of this paper, however, is that the discipline of sociology itself—as it is actually practiced today—originated mainly in applied work, in the work of nineteenth century social reformers whose contributions to the field have been largely forgotten, people such as Francis Galton, Adolphe Quetelet, and Charles Booth. These, I argue, are the Founding Fathers of the discipline as I have practiced it for the past thirty-five years.

Cousins: Charles Darwin, Sir Francis Galton and the Birth of Eugenics

Abstract Sir Francis Galton, scientist, African Explorer and statistician, was a key figure in statistical history. He was the man who devised the statistical concepts of regression and correlation. He was also Charles Darwin's cousin. And, inspired by his reading of Darwin, he was the founder of eugenics: the “science” of improving the human race through selective breeding. Nicholas Gillham tells of a darker side to statistics and heredity.

Letters/Editorial

Letters/Editorial

Toward a Science of Exceptional Achievement

Exceptional performance is frequently attributed to genetic differences in talent. Since Sir Francis Galton's book, Hereditary Genius, many scientists have cited heritable factors that set limits of performance and only allow some individuals to attain exceptional levels. However, thus far these accounts have not explicated the causal processes involved in the activation and expression of unique genes in DNA that lead to the emergence of distinctive physiological attributes and cognitive capacities (innate talent). This article argues on the basis of our current knowledge that it is possible to account for the development of elite performance among healthy children without recourse to innate talent (genetic endowment)--excepting the innate determinants of body size. Our account is based on the expert-performance approach and proposes that the distinctive characteristics of exceptional performers are the result of adaptations to extended and intense practice activities that selectively activate dormant genes that are contained within all healthy individuals' DNA. Furthermore, the theoretical framework of expert performance explains the apparent emergence of early talent by identifying factors that influence starting ages for training and the accumulated engagement in sustained extended deliberate practice, such as motivation, parental support, and access to the best training environments and teachers. In sum, our empirical investigations and extensive reviews show that the development of expert performance will be primarily constrained by individuals' engagement in deliberate practice and the quality of the available training resources.

Editorial

Globalization is reshaping our modes of thinking and ways of behaving and foster-ing cultural change in societies. While some scholars (cf. Harrison, 2006; Harrison and Huntington, 2000) may argue over a ‘clash of cultures’, it seems just as relevant to focus on the ways in which cultures may learn from each other, even inspire each other where the beauty of cultural differences and cultur-al collisions is applauded (Fang, in press; Soderberg and Holden, 2002). At the same time, some scholars argue that a world cul-ture (Lechner and Boli, 2005) or global cul-ture (Arnett, 2002; Bird and Stevens, 2003) is emerging and that it threatens the existence of national cultures.This special section on ‘Cross Cultural Management in the Age of Globalization’ aims at providing a forum to examine what globalization means for cross cultural man-agement with a special focus on the evolution of our understanding of national culture and cultural change. We attempt to avoid a sim-plistic and sweeping ‘either-or’ debate over convergence vs. divergence. Instead, we give importance to understanding the paradoxi-cal and evolving conceptualizations of cul-tures and their implications for cross cultural management theory and practice.To put the discussion into perspective, it is useful to consider the changing trends in the cultural research pantheon. In the 19th cen-tury, Sir Francis Galton first introduced the problem of cultural group independence in his work on correlation. He noted that cultural groups could not be considered truly independ-ent from one another because the processes of cultural transfusion created relationships that cannot be easily disentangled (Lindridge, 2005). Consequently, research came to focus on cultures

Nascere diseguali: considerazioni su eugenetica ed ereditarismo in Italia

At the end of the nineteenth century, Francis Galton founded the new science of «eugenics», with the aim of improving the «racial qualities of future generations». His intent was to create a new discipline integrating the themes of biological heredity, natural selection, and social stratification. This survey discusses recent literature on the spread of eugenics in early twentieth-century Italy, showing the peculiarities of Italian practitioners.Keywords: Eugenics; Racism; Italy; Social Stratification; Francis Galton: Corrado GiniParole chiave: eugenetica; razzismo; Italia; stratificazione sociale; Francis Galton; Corrado Gini

The Nature of the Beast: Scientific Theories of Race and Sexuality in McTeague

The Nature of the BeastScientific Theories of Race and Sexuality in McTeague Rebecca Nisetich (bio) In "The Experimental Novel," Emile Zola defines the "naturalistic novelist" as "both observer and experimenter": The observer in him presents data as he has observed them, determines the point of departure, establishes the solid ground on which his characters will stand and his phenomena take place. Then the experimenter appears and institutes the experiment, that is, sets the characters of a particular story in motion, in order to show that the series of events therein will be those demanded by the determinism of the phenomena under study. (166) In McTeague (1899), Frank Norris adopts Zola's method, creating a literary "experiment" that posits sexual desire as the driving force that sets his characters in motion. A thorough study of manifestations of desire in the novel exposes an underlying threat: the plural and uncontainable nature of sexual desire itself. Desire permeates every aspect of the characters' lives, not simply their perverse sexual behaviors but also their uncontrollable emotions and outbursts of physical violence. Ultimately, it destroys them. As Siobhan Somerville contends, emerging notions of sexuality in the turn-of-the-century U.S. were profoundly influenced by the scientific discourse on race ("Scientific Racism" 4). Norris was firmly committed to the period's "scientific" conceptions of both sexuality and race,1 and in McTeague he configures sexual perversity as both an inherited racial trait and an infectious disease. Like other naturalists, he thus confronts his predominantly white audience with what June Howard terms "the ultimate terror": "the loss of stable personal identity, the collapse of self into Other" (95). In the novel's conclusion in Death Valley, however, he dramatizes a kind of fatal assimilation of the Other into whiteness, allowing readers [End Page 1] to take part in a voyeuristic exploration of deviant, racialized sexualities without the threat of contagion. At the time Norris was composing McTeague, the term race could refer to groups of people defined not only in terms of color but also in terms of genealogy, nationality, class, and religion. The scientific discourse on race effectively placed human beings in a hierarchy of categories that posited the Anglo-Saxon, or "Nordic," race as the highest achievement of human evolution, higher even than other races, or ethnicities, that today would be considered equally white.2 In this milieu, "white" meant "native" (itself an ambiguous and contradictory designation), Anglo-Saxon, and usually middle to upper class. It is easy to see how, in these circumstances, racial categorization became increasingly attractive to so-called "native" Anglo-Americans who needed new ways to distinguish themselves from an increasing influx of immigrants whose skin color might resemble their own but whom they could consider biologically, developmentally, and morally inferior by "racial othering" (Jacobson 7). Out of this milieu grew the field of eugenics. Defined by Francis Galton in his 1883 Inquiries into the Human Faculty and Its Development as "the science of improving [racial] stock" (qtd. in Somerville, "Scientific Racism" 30), eugenics essentially applied Darwin's deterministic theory of natural selection to the artificial selection of human beings. With its explicit mission to strengthen the Anglo-Saxon race through selective sexual reproduction, the eugenics movement in the U.S. merged discussions of race and sexuality.3 Under the logic of biological determinism, those who were less "fit" to survive, such as sexual perverts, should theoretically die out. But the eradication of perverts could not be left entirely to natural selection, for sexual "perversities" were not only racial traits that could be spread through reproduction but also social diseases that threatened to infect the masses. One such perversity treated in McTeague is homoeroticism. In "Reconsidering McTeague's 'Mac' and 'Mark,'" Denise Cruz notes the similarities between McTeague's interactions with Marcus and those with Trina, concluding that "McTeague and Marcus are much more than just 'pals.'" "In the 1890s," she writes, "the word pal referred not just to a friend but also to a 'partner or accomplice in an activity (originally always a criminal one)'" (497). McTeague, of course, will eventually become a hunted criminal after he murders Trina, and Marcus, too, is an accomplice to crime...

Sir Francis Galton : le fondateur de l’eugénisme

Not only was Sir Francis Galton a famous geographer and statistician, he also invented "eugenics" in 1883. Eugenics, defined as the science of improving racial stock, was developed from a new heredity theory, conceived by Galton himself, and from the evolution theory of Charles Darwin, transposed to human society by Herbert Spencer. Galton's eugenics was a program to artificially produce a better human race through regulating marriage and thus procreation. Galton put particular emphasis on "positive eugenics", aimed at encouraging the physically and mentally superior members of the population to choose partners with similar traits. In 1904, he presented his ideas in front of a vast audience of physicians and scientists in London. His widely-publicized lecture served as the starting point for the development of eugenics groups in Europe and the United States during the first half of the 20th century.

Sociologická technoimaginace

The article introduces the concept of “sociological technoimagination” and delineates the field of visualizations used in the social sciences: the various forms of graphs, schemes, and diagrams. It surveys the uses and functions of visualizations in sciences generally and places their development in the wider context of the modernization of vision of the 19th century; examining the pioneering uses of visualization methods by Etienne-Jules Marey, Francis Galton, or Otto Neurath. Gabriel Tarde’s account of statistics (from his Laws of Imitation, 1890) is reinterpreted in regard to both the nature and social roles of the sociological technoimagination.

The subjects of criminal identification

This article analyses two late 19th-century technologies that sought to identify criminals with scientific accuracy: Alphonse Bertillon's techniques for measuring bodies and Francis Galton's composite portraits of criminal types. It analyzes the regulatory environment in England in which their ideas achieved considerable prominence, emphasizing crucial differences in the visions of `science' embraced by the two men. By highlighting their different claims to science, this article outlines their respective legacies in criminal identification arenas, and isolates unique dangers associated with each. Those dangers variously alert us to the importance of questioning a persistent, if often implicit, sentiment within much criminal justice thinking; namely, by identifying individual criminals, or criminal types, justice systems effectively address the problem of crime. Against this approach, and resonant with a critical criminology in search of less exclusionary ways to govern, the following analysis considers criminal identification not as a discovery but a creation. In so doing, it seeks to re-politicize current practices of criminalization, challenge claims to the purported scientific impartiality of criminal identification and embrace the possibility of justice beyond a dominant reflex to create criminals.

Literature in Mind : H. G. Wells and the Evolution of the Mad Scientist

In 1893, H. G. Wells's article Man of Year Million dramatically predicted distant evolutionary future of mankind:1The descendents of man will nourish themselves by immersion in nutritive fluid. They will have enormous brains, liquid, soulful eyes, and large hands, on which they will hop. No craggy nose will they have, no vestigial ears; their mouths will be a small, perfectly round aperture, unanimal, like evening star. Their whole muscular system will be shriveled to nothing, a dangling pendant to their minds.2The editors at Punch evidently found this prediction hilarious, publishing a poem and accompanying sketch ridiculing Wells's lopsided future humans (Figure 1, p. 318). But not everyone was laughing.As ridiculous as Wells's bodiless, large-headed human tadpoles may seem, they were based on most rigorous evolutionary science of their day. Wells, a lower-middle-class academic prodigy, received a prestigious government scholarship to attend Normal School of Science in South Kensington (later absorbed into University of London). Though Wells left South Kensington in 1887 without earning his degree, he was greatly inspired by his biology teacher, famed physiologist Thomas Huxley. Wells absorbed Huxley's pessimistic take on late-Victorian evolutionary theory, particularly his emphasis on inherent brutality of natural selection.Huxley's pessimism surfaces in Wells's dystopian scientific romances, which imaginatively probe consequences of evolutionary theory run amok.3 Beginning with eponymous mad-scientist villain of The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896) and continuing with alien invasion narratives like The War of Worlds (1897-98) and The First Men in Moon (1901), Wells depicts brains becoming steadily larger and more powerful as bodies grow smaller and more useless, emotions increasingly muted, and conscience all but silenced. Wells's nightmarish vision of massively overevolved brain unites these three works, as ruthlessly intellectual biologist Moreau morphs into amoral, top-heavy Martians and lunar inhabitants.Wells's malevolent mad scientists and extraterrestrials owe an intellectual debt not only to Huxley, but also to discussions of genius and insanity in late-Victorian issues of Mind (1876-present).4 The now-familiar trope of mad scientist in fact traces its roots to clinical association between genius and insanity that developed in mid-nineteenth century. Authors like Scottish journalist and materialist philosopher John Ferguson Nisbet, English eugenicist Francis Galton, and Austrian Jewish physician Max Nordau - all of whose works were reviewed in Mind - argued that mankind had evolved larger brains at expense of muscular strength, reproductive capacity, and moral sensibility.5 Wells drew upon these arguments in his fiction and even contributed his own article to Mind, a philosophical reflection on science entitled Scepticism of Instrument (1904).In its unique role as the first English journal devoted to Psychology and Philosophy. Mind was an ideal venue for an inherently interdisciplinary subject like clinical study of genius.6 The journal's first editor, George Croom Robertson, was particularly concerned that articles in Mind rise above narrowing influences of modern specialism.7 This disciplinary breadth attracted contributors from all fields, including fiction writers and literary critics like George Henry Lewes, Grant Allen, Andrew Lang, and, of course, H.G. Wells. During same period, literary works probed ideas discussed in Mind, such as nature of soul, possibility of free will, and ramifications of biological determinism. In four decades following its auspicious start, Mind provided a venue where scientists, philosophers and literary authors could find intellectual common ground.In this essay, early fiction of H.G. Wells will serve as a case study of cross-fertilization between literature and scientific ideas discussed in Mind. …

Karl Pearson and the Establishment of Mathematical Statistics

Summary At the end of the nineteenth century, the content and practice of statistics underwent a series of transitions that led to its emergence as a highly specialised mathematical discipline. These intellectual and later institutional changes were, in part, brought about by a mathematical‐statistical translation of Charles Darwin's redefinition of the biological species as something that could be viewed in terms of populations. Karl Pearson and W.F.R. Weldon's mathematical reconceptualisation of Darwinian biological variation and “statistical” population of species in the 1890s provided the framework within which a major paradigmatic shift occurred in statistical techniques and theory. Weldon's work on the shore crab in Naples and Plymouth from 1892 to 1895 not only brought them into the forefront of ideas of speciation and provided the impetus to Pearson's earliest statistical innovations, but it also led to Pearson shifting his professional interests from having had an established career as a mathematical physicist to developing one as a biometrician. The innovative statistical work Pearson undertook with Weldon in 1892 and later with Francis Galton in 1894 enabled him to lay the foundations of modern mathematical statistics. While Pearson's diverse publications, his establishment of four laboratories and the creation of new academic departments underscore the plurality of his work, the main focus of his life‐long career was in the establishment and promulgation of his statistical methodology.

Discrepant findings in a monoamniotic twin pregnancy affected by infantile myofibromatosis

In 1876, Sir Francis Galton argued that twins are of value in studying heredity1. Monozygotic (MZ) twins are not always concordant despite deriving from one zygote. In the most comprehensive study2 12/315 monochorionic (MC) twin pregnancies were monoamniotic (MA), including four sets of conjoined twins and four sets with discrepant malformations, suggesting a rate of 50% concordance in MA non-conjoined twins. We report the case of a twin pregnancy diagnosed as being MCMA at 13 weeks' gestation. An echodense tumor was seen on the side of the head of one twin by two- and three-dimensional ultrasound examination. Amniocentesis revealed a normal karyotype (46,XX) and normal values of alpha-fetoprotein and acetylcholinesterase. Transabdominal ultrasound examination at 18 weeks, using a 3.5-MHz transducer and power Doppler imaging (Voluson 730 Expert, GE Medical Systems, Zipf, Austria), suggested vascularization of the tumor (Figure 1). Magnetic resonance imaging excluded connections to the ventricles or brain. At 30 weeks intestinal dilatation was diagnosed in the same twin. After Cesarean section at 32 weeks, the presence of a superficial head tumor was confirmed and laparotomy revealed that the intestine was compressed by a tumor mass, which was classified histologically as infantile myofibromatosis. The tumors were inoperable and the infant died from sepsis 12 days after birth. Cross-sections of the intestine and head tumor obtained at postmortem examination are shown in Figure 2. The co-twin developed uneventfully. Power Doppler ultrasound image at 18 weeks showing a head tumor with vascularization in only one of the monoamniotic twins. Congenital generalized fibromatosis was described in 19543, and later subclassified into a form limited to the skin, soft tissue or bone and a rare form with visceral involvement. Our case shows that both forms may occur sequentially. The term infantile myofibromatosis was recommended as the cells have features of fibroblasts and smooth muscle cells4. No case with infantile myofibromatosis has been diagnosed prenatally. Ten years ago, we observed one MC diamniotic twin with a mediastinal tumor leading to hydrops and postnatal death. Histology revealed infantile myofibromatosis with infiltrative growth into the lungs. The earliest that fatal infantile myofibromatosis has been diagnosed was in a 3-day-old neonate5 in whom, as in our case, histology showed proliferation of fibromatous spindle cells in the intestinal wall (Figure 2). Chemotherapy has been successfully performed postnatally in cases of infantile myofibromatosis6, and prenatal sampling or even chemotherapy might be an option in the future. Histological findings in the twin affected by infantile myofibromatosis. Cross-sections of the intestine: (a) the lumen is filled with tumor and infiltrative growth is seen within the tunica muscularis; the arrow indicates the remaining intestinal lumen with ulcerated surface; (b) detail of infiltrative growth within the tunica muscularis (arrowhead); and (c) immunohistochemical stain with antibodies against smooth muscle actin, the arrowhead indicating the tunica muscularis. In the skin biopsy of the head tumor (d), the same tumor-type as shown in the intestine is seen (lower half of image); (e) detail of the tumor found in the skin biopsy. Three families with a history of infantile myofibromatosis have been described, suggesting an autosomal dominant inheritance7 and an interstitial deletion of 6q has been detected in an infantile tumor8. Prenatal discordant malformations, and more specifically tumorigenesis, in MZ twins raises questions regarding the possible etiology, such as defects in the splitting process (with the ultimate example being conjoined twins), vascular compromise due to a shared placenta9 and de-novo mutations in one twin after splitting. Different activation of maternal and paternal genes and copy number variants have been highlighted as related to changes in gene expression, and any variation in the human genome that alters gene expression is now a candidate for being involved in a disease process10. B. Arabin [email protected]*, K. Hack*, L. Nooij*, P. Nikkels , * Department of Perinatology, Isala Clinics Zwolle, The Netherlands, Department for Pathology, University Medical Center Utrecht, The Netherlands

“National Grid” and “Mercator’s Projection”

En hommage amical a Rene Gallet. National grid ‘To my astonishment, I found that the great majority of the men of science to whom I first applied, protested that mental imagery was unknown to them, and they looked on me as fanciful and fantastic in supposing that the words “mental imagery” really expressed what I believed everybody supposed them to mean’.Sir Francis Galton, “Statistics of Mental Imagery”, Mind 5, 1880. There are batteries whose positive and negative contacts are so closethat ...

Predicting human height by Victorian and genomic methods

In the Victorian era, Sir Francis Galton showed that 'when dealing with the transmission of stature from parents to children, the average height of the two parents, ... is all we need care to know about them' (1886). One hundred and twenty-two years after Galton's work was published, 54 loci showing strong statistical evidence for association to human height were described, providing us with potential genomic means of human height prediction. In a population-based study of 5748 people, we find that a 54-loci genomic profile explained 4-6% of the sex- and age-adjusted height variance, and had limited ability to discriminate tall/short people, as characterized by the area under the receiver-operating characteristic curve (AUC). In a family-based study of 550 people, with both parents having height measurements, we find that the Galtonian mid-parental prediction method explained 40% of the sex- and age-adjusted height variance, and showed high discriminative accuracy. We have also explored how much variance a genomic profile should explain to reach certain AUC values. For highly heritable traits such as height, we conclude that in applications in which parental phenotypic information is available (eg, medicine), the Victorian Galton's method will long stay unsurpassed, in terms of both discriminative accuracy and costs. For less heritable traits, and in situations in which parental information is not available (eg, forensics), genomic methods may provide an alternative, given that the variants determining an essential proportion of the trait's variation can be identified.

Scientific cousins: The relationship between Charles Darwin and Francis Galton.

This article traces the personal as well as the intellectual and scientific relationship between Charles Darwin and his younger half-cousin Francis Galton. Although they had been on friendly terms as young men, and Darwin had in some ways been a role model for Galton, the two did not share major scientific interests until after the publication of Darwin's On the Origin of Species in 1859. That work precipitated a religious and philosophical crisis in Galton, which he gradually resolved after conceiving and developing the basic ideas of "hereditary genius" and eugenics. More mathematically inclined than Darwin, he subsequently contributed to the Darwinian evolutionary discussion, and to the future science of psychology, by proposing the basic concept of the nature-nurture dichotomy, the conceptual and statistical foundations for behavior genetics, and the idea for intelligence testing.

Repeat sampling of extreme observations: regression to the mean revisited

The phenomenon of classical regression to the mean was described by Sir Francis Galton in a series of prestigious works in the 19th century. This phenomenon refers to the fact that, in the presence of measurement error, experimental units which give rise to extreme values upon first sampling typically produce less extreme values upon a second independent (or repeat) sampling. This shift from the tails toward the population mean occurs even though there has been no intervention or change in the underlying population or error distributions. The mathematical ideas used to explain this shift typically appeal to correlation arguments and the classical Gaussian model. In this paper we study repeat sampling effects in the tails of arbitrary distributions. Perhaps surprisingly, we are able to show that there are actually three distinct asymptotic repeat sampling effects, of which only one corresponds to Galton’s classical result. These three effects depend on the heaviness of the population tails. In particular, for population distributions with relatively heavy tails the maximum shift occurs in the interior of the distribution. In this case the classical regression effect of Galton actually disappears out in the tails.

U.S. scientists' role in the eugenics movement (1907-1939): a contemporary biologist's perspective.

nthisspecialissuedevotedtothestudyofpigmentation,it is only fitting that we reflect on how this trait has beenutilized to promote specific political and social agendas inboth the United States and Europe. It was Francis Galton, acousin of Darwin, who coined the term ‘‘eugenics’’ in 1883whileadvocatingthatsocietyshouldpromotethemarriageofwhat he felt were the fittest individuals by providing mone-tary incentives.