1 00:00:03,720 --> 00:00:13,890 OK. Welcome everybody to this week's graduate lecture series lecture, which is going to be given by Professor David Steinfeld's from department. 2 00:00:13,890 --> 00:00:23,280 And David is going to cover statistics ethical and unethical and do it by some historical vignettes. 3 00:00:23,280 --> 00:00:27,720 So David, please take it away. OK, thank you. 4 00:00:27,720 --> 00:00:34,110 So. So I'm anyone who's who's watching. 5 00:00:34,110 --> 00:00:43,230 I mean, if anyone is willing to turn on video, it's nice to get that sort of visual feedback while I'm talking, 6 00:00:43,230 --> 00:00:49,140 so I don't feel like I'm talking to myself up to you. 7 00:00:49,140 --> 00:00:59,280 OK, so I'm going to I'm going to talk about four mostly unconnected topics. 8 00:00:59,280 --> 00:01:11,180 I don't have a big point to make in this talk. These are some episodes from the history of statistics that I've found. 9 00:01:11,180 --> 00:01:17,510 People that I think about and thinking about ethical issues and statistics, some of them have. 10 00:01:17,510 --> 00:01:21,620 Obvious and some not so obvious ethical implications, 11 00:01:21,620 --> 00:01:30,680 I'm not going to be trying to draw out any big point your I'll point out some connexions that arise amongst these topics. 12 00:01:30,680 --> 00:01:38,330 So I'm going to start out talking about the census as kind of the the paradigm of statistical 13 00:01:38,330 --> 00:01:46,380 activity and statistical procedure and some issues that have arisen around around census. 14 00:01:46,380 --> 00:01:56,750 Not again, not trying to be comprehensive about it. Just some interesting events from from history that one might want to think about. 15 00:01:56,750 --> 00:02:07,370 Talk about then went to spend a while talking about eugenics and how it's connected to the origins of biased statistics, 16 00:02:07,370 --> 00:02:18,110 and then talk about the somewhat infamous episode of Ray Fisher and his A.A. tobacco agitation. 17 00:02:18,110 --> 00:02:27,130 And then I'm going to if if there's time, I'm going to talk about some of the ways that. 18 00:02:27,130 --> 00:02:44,250 Simple statistical concepts particularly relating to the Gaussian distribution pop up and are are sort of weaponized in discussions of public affairs. 19 00:02:44,250 --> 00:02:46,370 So you start by talking about the census. 20 00:02:46,370 --> 00:02:56,640 Census have always been controversial in in the Bible, there are several censuses mentioned and one that's gotten a lot of attention. 21 00:02:56,640 --> 00:03:04,150 So I'm not going to read through this whole quote that this is a story from the second book of Samuel. 22 00:03:04,150 --> 00:03:10,450 We're which starts by that, right, so right. 23 00:03:10,450 --> 00:03:20,380 The ward was, you know, the Lord's wrath was kindled against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying, Go count Israel and Judah. 24 00:03:20,380 --> 00:03:32,200 So, so the census is presented as an act of aggression of a ruler against against the people. 25 00:03:32,200 --> 00:03:45,160 And weirdly, the story goes on to say so his his his military commander who who he asked to carry out the census protested. 26 00:03:45,160 --> 00:03:54,400 This is again one of these extraordinary things one doesn't ordinarily think of military commanders refusing the orders of the king and said, 27 00:03:54,400 --> 00:04:00,220 Well, why would why would we do this? But he insisted, and they went out. 28 00:04:00,220 --> 00:04:10,920 And then immediately when it was done and they give the count of 800000 and 500000 sword wielding men. 29 00:04:10,920 --> 00:04:18,840 And then he was immediately regretted having done it, and but it was too late, and God punished the people by sending a plague. 30 00:04:18,840 --> 00:04:24,660 Well, actually, he got to choose what his punishment would be. And of the three possibilities. 31 00:04:24,660 --> 00:04:27,030 So interestingly, 32 00:04:27,030 --> 00:04:36,210 seven day seven years of famine or three months of fleeing from his enemies or three days of plague were seen as reasonably equivalent punishment. 33 00:04:36,210 --> 00:04:41,730 And he chose the plague and seventy seven thousand men died. 34 00:04:41,730 --> 00:04:51,270 So I mention this because this was people were very aware of this when there were in the in the 18th century, 35 00:04:51,270 --> 00:05:00,540 proposals first came up for actually conducting modern censuses in in England. 36 00:05:00,540 --> 00:05:08,400 The first formal proposal for a census was the bill for registering the number of the people. 37 00:05:08,400 --> 00:05:18,720 1753, which was received reasonable approbation to one one MP. 38 00:05:18,720 --> 00:05:28,710 William Thornton protested as to myself, I hold this project to be totally subversive of the last remains of English liberty, 39 00:05:28,710 --> 00:05:36,300 and therefore, though it should pass into a law, I should think myself under the highest of all obligations to oppose execution. 40 00:05:36,300 --> 00:05:42,720 By the way, I might have had sometimes extensive quotes from the figure. 41 00:05:42,720 --> 00:05:51,810 As I'm talking about, I find it helpful to get the the flavour of the way they were thinking through their language, 42 00:05:51,810 --> 00:05:55,890 and annual register of our people will acquaint our enemies abroad with our 43 00:05:55,890 --> 00:06:01,800 weakness and the return of the poor rate our enemies at home with our wealth. 44 00:06:01,800 --> 00:06:06,060 So OK, so two objections. One is that it? 45 00:06:06,060 --> 00:06:16,870 It will be militarily problematic if if the if our enemies knew the size of our population and. 46 00:06:16,870 --> 00:06:24,670 And so who are enemies at home? Well, he goes on to say, right, our enemies at home are policemen and tax masters. 47 00:06:24,670 --> 00:06:36,670 So basically, if you if you conduct the census and count people's wealth, then of course that would make it easier to tax them. 48 00:06:36,670 --> 00:06:48,680 So so this the bill ended up being voted down and there was no no census conducted the the first. 49 00:06:48,680 --> 00:06:54,680 Well, so the first modern census more or less, was conducted in in Sweden. 50 00:06:54,680 --> 00:07:07,490 But what was very influential was that it was written into the United States Constitution that there should be a census every at at minimum, 51 00:07:07,490 --> 00:07:15,450 every 10 years, and that these should be used for allocating representation and taxes. 52 00:07:15,450 --> 00:07:24,800 And oops, sorry because I wrote 1990. I mean, 1790 have been carried out every 10 years since 1790. 53 00:07:24,800 --> 00:07:29,770 And this created quite an impression on. 54 00:07:29,770 --> 00:07:41,050 People who were interested in kind of progressive causes and in particular, the director of the French Bureau of Statistics wrote in 1847, 55 00:07:41,050 --> 00:07:47,110 the United States present in its history a phenomenon without parallel that of the people who instituted 56 00:07:47,110 --> 00:07:52,690 the statistics of their country the very day they founded their society and who regulated in the same act, 57 00:07:52,690 --> 00:08:00,070 the census of their fellow citizens, their civil and political rights and future destiny of the country. 58 00:08:00,070 --> 00:08:06,250 So I want to now say a few things about issues that have come up with the US census. 59 00:08:06,250 --> 00:08:12,450 So one is the census of 1840. 60 00:08:12,450 --> 00:08:18,360 So the founder of the American Statistical Society, which is now the American Statistical Association, 61 00:08:18,360 --> 00:08:23,010 I don't know why it was changed from society to association, 62 00:08:23,010 --> 00:08:34,050 wrote an article in the Boston Medical and surgical journal The Predator, the predecessor of what is now the New England Journal of Medicine. 63 00:08:34,050 --> 00:08:39,810 An article titled Statistics of Insanity in the United States. 64 00:08:39,810 --> 00:08:49,420 And he noted that the 1840 census they had counted the number of insane and idiots in the respective states. 65 00:08:49,420 --> 00:09:03,700 Obviously the wording of the time and he totalled up and they had also counted, counted them by, by, by race. 66 00:09:03,700 --> 00:09:09,130 And he found that the rate of insanity was nearly 10 times higher. 67 00:09:09,130 --> 00:09:11,590 Sorry. So I left out an important point here. 68 00:09:11,590 --> 00:09:21,340 The rate of insanity amongst the black population was nearly 10 times higher in northern than in southern states. 69 00:09:21,340 --> 00:09:29,290 And he concluded. Slavery has a wonderful influence upon the development of moral faculties now, I should say. 70 00:09:29,290 --> 00:09:38,830 Wonderful. I think it's not being used entirely modern sense of being excellent or praiseworthy, but not I mean. 71 00:09:38,830 --> 00:09:46,770 Right? He's saying it's remarkable. But still, he's not criticising it and the intellectual powers and refusing man, 72 00:09:46,770 --> 00:09:53,310 many of the hopes and responsibilities which the free, selfish thinking and self acting enjoy and sustain. 73 00:09:53,310 --> 00:10:00,920 Of course, it saves him from some of the liabilities and dangers of the active self-direction. 74 00:10:00,920 --> 00:10:08,810 So he then he then looked at the numbers again and discovered there were some problems. 75 00:10:08,810 --> 00:10:15,690 In fact, quite a lot of problems with the census data. Amongst other things. 76 00:10:15,690 --> 00:10:27,110 Some towns in New England and indeed other elsewhere in the north had recorded more black, insane residents than total black residents. 77 00:10:27,110 --> 00:10:38,910 There. In addition, there is a question of how a slave or even a southern free black would be recognised as insane. 78 00:10:38,910 --> 00:10:43,000 There were there was no prospect of them. 79 00:10:43,000 --> 00:10:53,870 Being, you know, coming under, you know, getting medical attention or or being committed to to an asylum there. 80 00:10:53,870 --> 00:10:58,780 So there were there were huge problems with the enumeration. 81 00:10:58,780 --> 00:11:05,380 And he wrote in 1844 an article essentially saying that none of these numbers can be trusted. 82 00:11:05,380 --> 00:11:12,460 And in fact, the American Statistical Association, which he was the founder of Conducted Investigation, 83 00:11:12,460 --> 00:11:18,780 requested that the the census had to be corrected. 84 00:11:18,780 --> 00:11:24,240 But these sorts of discoveries have a life of their own. 85 00:11:24,240 --> 00:11:34,290 So the the infamous senator, John C. Calhoun, former vice president of the US senator from South Carolina, wrote here, sorry. 86 00:11:34,290 --> 00:11:40,320 He said he he said in a speech in the in the Senate here is proof of the necessity of slavery. 87 00:11:40,320 --> 00:11:46,020 The African is incapable of self care and sinks into lunacy under the burden of freedom. 88 00:11:46,020 --> 00:11:52,750 It is a mercy to him to give him the guardianship and protection from mental death and. 89 00:11:52,750 --> 00:11:59,420 An article that got quite a lot of attention reflections on the census of 1840, 90 00:11:59,420 --> 00:12:09,320 which presented itself as being a very pro black article in favour of the the welfare of black people, 91 00:12:09,320 --> 00:12:13,790 said we are not friendly to slavery whenever it can be shown to us of the South 92 00:12:13,790 --> 00:12:17,990 that the free blacks of any of the free states or as happy as the slaves, 93 00:12:17,990 --> 00:12:22,550 the subject of general emancipation will be entitled to more consideration. 94 00:12:22,550 --> 00:12:29,630 But so long as they furnish little else but materials for jails, penitentiaries and madhouse was warned by such examples. 95 00:12:29,630 --> 00:12:39,530 We cannot desire to be the destroyers of the dependent race. The as it happened Calhoun himself shortly after he became secretary of state, 96 00:12:39,530 --> 00:12:51,300 who would have been responsible for having the sentence revised and not unsurprisingly, nothing was ever undertaken in that direction. 97 00:12:51,300 --> 00:12:55,460 The figures were never corrected, and they continued to be cited. 98 00:12:55,460 --> 00:13:09,970 One of the leading arguments that people like Calhoun referred to in support of the institution of slavery. 99 00:13:09,970 --> 00:13:19,330 OK, so one other thing I want to talk about the issue of statistical confidentiality and how that is related to the census, 100 00:13:19,330 --> 00:13:25,540 the 1851 Census of Ireland, the form that was sent out to people requesting data, 101 00:13:25,540 --> 00:13:31,330 states the information thus obtained will will be published in general abstract only and 102 00:13:31,330 --> 00:13:37,690 strict caretaking returns are not used for the gratification of curiosity or other object, 103 00:13:37,690 --> 00:13:49,180 then perfecting the census. Interestingly, this issue of confidentiality was not mentioned in the forms that were sent out in the rest of the UK. 104 00:13:49,180 --> 00:13:54,520 But interestingly too, there was actually no basis for this promise of confidentiality. 105 00:13:54,520 --> 00:13:55,960 There was no legal basis. 106 00:13:55,960 --> 00:14:06,570 There was no law that in any way restricted the way the census data could be used once they were collected until nineteen hundred and. 107 00:14:06,570 --> 00:14:12,810 And B the Hundred Census Act barred unlawful disclosure, 108 00:14:12,810 --> 00:14:22,470 but was actually quite vague about what that would constitute, what and how what was and was not allowed. 109 00:14:22,470 --> 00:14:31,950 Nonetheless, every ten years with the new census, the assurances of confidentiality became ever stronger. 110 00:14:31,950 --> 00:14:42,120 Even while there was no change in the law in the U.S., there was basically no law. 111 00:14:42,120 --> 00:14:52,470 So here is an interesting graphic produced by the United States Census Bureau showing the developments related to confidentiality over time. 112 00:14:52,470 --> 00:15:00,190 And it wasn't until 1940 that that confidentiality was written into law. 113 00:15:00,190 --> 00:15:09,940 For the U.S. Census, and it was immediately overturned by the second War Powers Act in 1942, 114 00:15:09,940 --> 00:15:17,170 which and then resumed after the war, when the act expired. 115 00:15:17,170 --> 00:15:24,550 The modern rules governing confidentiality of the in a lawsuit referred to as Title 13, 116 00:15:24,550 --> 00:15:34,950 which essentially says has actually quite strict constraints and says results can't be shared with anyone for statistical purposes. 117 00:15:34,950 --> 00:15:45,250 In 2020, requirements of differential privacy were instituted for the census, so. 118 00:15:45,250 --> 00:15:59,780 So in 1940, the let's say there the law, the the law required that results be kept confidential. 119 00:15:59,780 --> 00:16:10,430 When the Japanese Navy attacked the US at Pearl Harbour and President Roosevelt ordered the internment of Americans of Japanese descent, 120 00:16:10,430 --> 00:16:16,970 more than 110000 were sent to camps away from the coast, two thirds of them being U.S. citizens. 121 00:16:16,970 --> 00:16:24,800 There were no population registries in the US, and there has been a longstanding suspicion repeatedly and often vehemently denied 122 00:16:24,800 --> 00:16:34,310 by the Census Bureau that Census micro data were used to target the Japanese. 123 00:16:34,310 --> 00:16:43,340 The the evidence was somewhat indirect until 2007, when two historians uncovered memos from 1943, 124 00:16:43,340 --> 00:16:49,340 specifically requesting and receiving census micro data. 125 00:16:49,340 --> 00:16:54,560 In one example, the Treasury secretary. 126 00:16:54,560 --> 00:17:00,500 Requested from the Census Bureau, the names and locations of people of Japanese ancestry living in the Washington, 127 00:17:00,500 --> 00:17:07,700 D.C., area who had not been subject to internment because it was only for Japanese on the West Coast. 128 00:17:07,700 --> 00:17:13,010 Seven days later, the bureau provided a list of seventy nine Japanese-Americans in the area, including name, 129 00:17:13,010 --> 00:17:19,220 address, sex, age, marital status, citizenship status, status, employment and occupation and industry. 130 00:17:19,220 --> 00:17:29,570 And they comment that the rapid replies indicative of an already established administrative process. 131 00:17:29,570 --> 00:17:46,070 OK, so that's all I wanted to say about the census. I'll refer back to some of this later, but any questions or comments before I go on. 132 00:17:46,070 --> 00:17:51,470 OK, so now I want to talk about a less controversial topic, 133 00:17:51,470 --> 00:18:02,960 the eugenics and the origins of biostatistics in particular has related to three of what anyone must consider the founders of modern statistics, 134 00:18:02,960 --> 00:18:09,270 in particular biased statistics Francis Galton, Ari Fisher. 135 00:18:09,270 --> 00:18:19,710 And Karl Pierson, here's here's Karl Pierson together with his daughter, Helga, who is actually somewhat, 136 00:18:19,710 --> 00:18:29,230 you know, been somewhat been forgotten by history, although she was in her time, a noted palaeontologist and. 137 00:18:29,230 --> 00:18:36,400 Just so and while I'm showing one daughter, I'll show the rest of the the Pearson family. 138 00:18:36,400 --> 00:18:50,380 So those of you? So the one that you surely know is Aegon, who the one who worked with name in on the name Pearson, Lemma and then that's Sigrid. 139 00:18:50,380 --> 00:18:55,630 The older daughter Maria is white and an unidentified body. 140 00:18:55,630 --> 00:18:59,610 So. What is eugenics? 141 00:18:59,610 --> 00:19:05,820 It's a cancer free medical specialisation seeking to increase positive heredity, 142 00:19:05,820 --> 00:19:12,120 eliminate presumptively heritable diseases, increase fitness of the national race in Germany. 143 00:19:12,120 --> 00:19:16,830 This the tended to be called racial hygiene. 144 00:19:16,830 --> 00:19:25,430 But those four seem to have been seen as more or less synonymous terms. 145 00:19:25,430 --> 00:19:32,990 So there it tended to be divided into two variants positive eugenics, 146 00:19:32,990 --> 00:19:40,280 encouraging favourable marriages between genetically superior pairs and negative eugenics, 147 00:19:40,280 --> 00:19:51,650 which was so at the one end that was similar to what now today would be called genetic counselling counselling couples about heritable disease, 148 00:19:51,650 --> 00:19:56,510 but also forbidding what was then called miscegenation. 149 00:19:56,510 --> 00:20:07,460 Procreation of mixed race pairs, forced segregation, sterilisation or extreme euthanasia of feeble minded, disabled and alcoholics. 150 00:20:07,460 --> 00:20:14,480 All of these which people tended to assume were heritable. 151 00:20:14,480 --> 00:20:20,480 And of course, the question of whether they were were not heritable was one of the main objects of research. 152 00:20:20,480 --> 00:20:29,640 So this ties into the previous story of Jarvis and the census because the Genesis were obsessed with the feeble minded. 153 00:20:29,640 --> 00:20:37,880 Gordon started his statistical genetics career, analysing how intellectual accomplishments were clustered in notable families. 154 00:20:37,880 --> 00:20:45,200 Parenthetically, even though he was a first cousin of Charles Darwin, which he also was somewhat obsessed with, 155 00:20:45,200 --> 00:20:49,310 he was very concerned with the educated classes were not having enough children. 156 00:20:49,310 --> 00:20:54,980 The population would become less intelligent. 157 00:20:54,980 --> 00:21:04,910 He he was particularly concerned about the fact that at that time the the dorms in Oxford and Cambridge were forbidden to marry. 158 00:21:04,910 --> 00:21:12,440 He was not himself. I don't know it wasn't directly affected, but he did have no children himself. 159 00:21:12,440 --> 00:21:23,090 And eugenic thinking in the late 19th century was directly descended from attempts in the early 19th century to prove that insanity was hereditary. 160 00:21:23,090 --> 00:21:32,900 And there is. There's an excellent book on this topic. If anyone's interested by Theodore Porter called genetics in the madhouse about the, again, 161 00:21:32,900 --> 00:21:45,380 this overwhelming conviction that people had that that madness was was hereditary before there was any clear sense of by hereditary might mean. 162 00:21:45,380 --> 00:21:52,220 So let me quickly just remind you of who Francisco who was in his contributions to statistics. 163 00:21:52,220 --> 00:22:00,910 So a few of the thing the notions that he introduced was regression, correlation and heritability. 164 00:22:00,910 --> 00:22:04,870 By the way, this this sketch here is from one of his papers, 165 00:22:04,870 --> 00:22:17,200 this is the way he originally presented the the the notion of regression to the mean regression to the mean was also a concept that he introduced. 166 00:22:17,200 --> 00:22:22,360 I called it regression to mediocrity. 167 00:22:22,360 --> 00:22:33,640 He was the founder of biochemistry and psych commentary and also made innovative contributions to branching processes, 168 00:22:33,640 --> 00:22:40,730 in particular what's now called the Golden Watson process. So. 169 00:22:40,730 --> 00:22:46,570 He is now. What are his contributions to eugenics and scientific racism? 170 00:22:46,570 --> 00:22:54,460 Now I'm going to for each of these people to talk about what what they did in eugenics, and I think it's very natural. 171 00:22:54,460 --> 00:23:03,400 People tend to say, well, this is how people were in those days and they probably didn't mean it all white, all like that. 172 00:23:03,400 --> 00:23:13,000 And it's probably not. Not really directly connected with their important scientific contributions, anyway, 173 00:23:13,000 --> 00:23:25,060 so I'm just going to give a few citations from each of them to show that each of these people was even even given the racist tenor of their times. 174 00:23:25,060 --> 00:23:31,540 They were deeply, deeply racist people. I mean, there are arguments for each of them. 175 00:23:31,540 --> 00:23:39,640 In particular, for Fisher, I'll get you about whether he was in some sense, personally racist or kind of on a population level, racist. 176 00:23:39,640 --> 00:23:41,830 I'm not going to get into that argument, 177 00:23:41,830 --> 00:23:52,590 but and that it was very intimately bound up with the motivations for their science and how they conducted their science. 178 00:23:52,590 --> 00:24:00,030 So here is a quote from from Gaul community are relatively early in his career. 179 00:24:00,030 --> 00:24:05,880 He says the history of the world tells a tale of the continental continental displacement of populations, 180 00:24:05,880 --> 00:24:09,720 each by a worthy successor and humanity gains thereby. 181 00:24:09,720 --> 00:24:17,460 But the countries into which the Anglo-Saxon race can be transfused are restricted to those where the climate is temperate. 182 00:24:17,460 --> 00:24:20,730 The tropics are not for us to inhabit permanently. 183 00:24:20,730 --> 00:24:27,930 The greater part of Africa now you might stop here and say, Well, I guess he I guess he thinks we should then leave Africa to the Africans. 184 00:24:27,930 --> 00:24:34,110 And but no, I wish to see a new competitor introduced, namely the chinaman. 185 00:24:34,110 --> 00:24:43,560 The gain would be immense to the whole civilised world if he were to out breed and finally displace the native Africans. 186 00:24:43,560 --> 00:24:52,680 So. He coined the term eugenics in 1883 in his book Enquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development. 187 00:24:52,680 --> 00:25:01,020 We greatly want a brief word to express the science of improving stock, which is by no means confined to questions of judicious meeting, 188 00:25:01,020 --> 00:25:07,070 but which, especially in the case of man, takes cognitive cognisance of all influences attending. 189 00:25:07,070 --> 00:25:12,480 However, emoted agree to give more suitable races or streams of blood a better chance of 190 00:25:12,480 --> 00:25:17,520 prevailing speedily over the less suitable than they otherwise would have had. 191 00:25:17,520 --> 00:25:26,500 The word eugenics would sufficiently express the idea. He wrote a popular article, Hereditary Improvement, 192 00:25:26,500 --> 00:25:31,780 where he sketches a utopia where the genetic elite would rule and the underclass would be forbidden 193 00:25:31,780 --> 00:25:40,230 to procreate on pain of becoming quote enemies to the state and have forfeited all dreams to kind. 194 00:25:40,230 --> 00:25:49,070 Well, he founded the Eugenics Record Office 19 04 with a register of noteworthy families, 195 00:25:49,070 --> 00:25:55,510 this still exists, but it has been renamed to the Golden Laboratory. 196 00:25:55,510 --> 00:26:04,240 He founded the Eugenics Education Society 1987, which was affiliated with the Berlin Society for Racial Hygiene, 197 00:26:04,240 --> 00:26:08,770 and he endowed the professorship in eugenics at UCL. 198 00:26:08,770 --> 00:26:14,710 And just because, you know, of course, it had to be there, right? 199 00:26:14,710 --> 00:26:20,260 He, he wrote, the Jews are specialised for a parasitical existence upon other nations. 200 00:26:20,260 --> 00:26:29,120 Just so OK. So. OK, so that's Carlton Pearson. 201 00:26:29,120 --> 00:26:33,560 Pearson was a real racist, I mean, not not like not like golf. 202 00:26:33,560 --> 00:26:40,820 I mean, he. OK, so Bristol here his contribution to statistics, I mean, modern statistics unimaginable without Pearson. 203 00:26:40,820 --> 00:26:49,020 These are some of his contributions. 204 00:26:49,020 --> 00:26:58,790 So what did Pearson contribute to eugenics and Typekit Grace while he was the first golden professor of eugenics at UCL? 205 00:26:58,790 --> 00:27:05,060 Here are some quotes from his 1991 speech National Life from the standpoint of science. 206 00:27:05,060 --> 00:27:07,850 If you bring the white man into contact with the black, 207 00:27:07,850 --> 00:27:13,640 you too often suspend the very process of natural selection on which the evolution of a higher type depends. 208 00:27:13,640 --> 00:27:22,480 You get superior and inferior races living on the same soil, and that coexistence is demoralising for both. 209 00:27:22,480 --> 00:27:26,410 You will see that my view and I think it may be called the scientific view of 210 00:27:26,410 --> 00:27:31,000 a nation is that of an organised whole kept up to a high pitch of internal 211 00:27:31,000 --> 00:27:35,170 efficiency by ensuring that its numbers are substantially recruited from the 212 00:27:35,170 --> 00:27:40,180 better stocks and kept up to a high pitch of external efficiency by contest, 213 00:27:40,180 --> 00:27:41,530 chiefly by way of war, 214 00:27:41,530 --> 00:27:51,710 with inferior races and with equal races by the struggle for trade routes and for the sources of raw material and a food supply. 215 00:27:51,710 --> 00:27:57,830 Let me just say at this moment what right, so these are these are kind of shocking statements, but why am I right? 216 00:27:57,830 --> 00:28:03,830 Why do they matter? Well, I think the reason why I think it matters to bring these up is in the title. 217 00:28:03,830 --> 00:28:12,860 This is Pearson who, you know, at this point, already a very influential figure and representative of statistics, 218 00:28:12,860 --> 00:28:19,200 saying This is the standpoint of science on national identity. 219 00:28:19,200 --> 00:28:33,590 He is. This is how the the authority of Statistical Science was being used and was being promoted to the public, right? 220 00:28:33,590 --> 00:28:44,990 This was supposed to be seen as the scientific view, not just Pearson's racist view, but this is what science has proved. 221 00:28:44,990 --> 00:28:50,030 The Grammar of Science, an incredibly influential book, as you know, as I said in the previous slide, 222 00:28:50,030 --> 00:29:01,100 you know, this was the first book that Albert Einstein selected for his reading group in Zurich in 1992. 223 00:29:01,100 --> 00:29:09,560 This was was seen as the quintessence of modern scientific thinking. 224 00:29:09,560 --> 00:29:17,840 The chapter on Biology Ends With It is a false view of human solidarity, a weak humanitarianism, not a true humanism, 225 00:29:17,840 --> 00:29:23,720 which regrets that a capable and stalwart race of white men should replace a dark skinned tribe, 226 00:29:23,720 --> 00:29:34,260 which can neither utilise its land for the full benefit of mankind nor contributed quota to the common stock of human knowledge. 227 00:29:34,260 --> 00:29:39,360 In his nineteen oh three lecture on the inheritance of mental and moral character, 228 00:29:39,360 --> 00:29:48,030 the man and its comparison with the inherent physical characters, he wrote, no training or education can create intelligence. 229 00:29:48,030 --> 00:29:57,590 You must read it now. The plot in the lower right hand corner. 230 00:29:57,590 --> 00:30:07,490 Is, I think, indicative of Pearson's method, which is shockingly sloppy in. 231 00:30:07,490 --> 00:30:12,440 I mean, so no one can suggest that Pearson did not know how to do proper science. 232 00:30:12,440 --> 00:30:18,840 So here he has. He he. 233 00:30:18,840 --> 00:30:26,610 This looks like he is presenting, and if I if I get to it at the end, we know that in modern presentations, 234 00:30:26,610 --> 00:30:37,020 the the there there's a there's a sense of somehow scientific rigour around the Gaussian distribution in all of this. 235 00:30:37,020 --> 00:30:43,980 The bell curve that people don't don't know anything about. Statistics know the bell curve. 236 00:30:43,980 --> 00:30:54,780 So, so he seems to be saying, and just as with height and some other characteristics, so intelligence. 237 00:30:54,780 --> 00:31:05,580 So this is right, the distribution of intelligence in 2014, girls looks like it is normally distributed. 238 00:31:05,580 --> 00:31:11,670 How interesting. Right. And this is the point he's trying to make. Except what is he actually plotting there, huh? 239 00:31:11,670 --> 00:31:14,340 Where did he get measures of intelligence? 240 00:31:14,340 --> 00:31:27,740 Well, actually what he had was he sent questionnaires to to schools asking them to simply rank their the their girls in seven categories. 241 00:31:27,740 --> 00:31:33,220 Right, and so these are the seven categories, and so they've just been placed on this thought. 242 00:31:33,220 --> 00:31:37,520 There are no numbers here. There simply are seven categories. 243 00:31:37,520 --> 00:31:55,240 And he's arranged them together with with a Gaussian distribution, which essentially has nothing to do with with his actual data. 244 00:31:55,240 --> 00:32:05,080 He founded the Annals of Eugenics, which the Journal still exists, but renamed itself the annals of human genetics. 245 00:32:05,080 --> 00:32:09,980 Its subtitle was for the scientific study of racial problems. 246 00:32:09,980 --> 00:32:18,120 And the first issue, interestingly, had an article by Pearson with the titled The Problem of Alien Immigration into Great Britain, 247 00:32:18,120 --> 00:32:22,490 illustrated by an examination of Russian and Jewish and Polish Jewish children, 248 00:32:22,490 --> 00:32:29,420 which purported to explain why Jewish migration to Britain would degrade the native population. 249 00:32:29,420 --> 00:32:40,310 OK, so that's that's Pearson now. Fisher, uh, so. 250 00:32:40,310 --> 00:32:48,470 Ari Fleischer, as contributions were perhaps even more extensive and fundamental than those of Pearson. 251 00:32:48,470 --> 00:32:56,840 Here are some of the things that Fischer introduced into Stat. 252 00:32:56,840 --> 00:33:02,390 What about his contributions to eugenics? Well, he was the second called professor of eugenics at UCLA. 253 00:33:02,390 --> 00:33:10,260 He was successful person. He early in his career. 254 00:33:10,260 --> 00:33:18,650 In fact, while he was still a student, he gave a speech to the Cambridge Eugenics Society. 255 00:33:18,650 --> 00:33:37,130 In which he talked about how important it was to for the British race, to improve itself by elucidating the inheritance of mental characters. 256 00:33:37,130 --> 00:33:44,960 And said that with its unquestioned economic and military dominance in the world, Great Britain should be the one to achieve such genetic superiority. 257 00:33:44,960 --> 00:33:51,350 And he said, I have almost entirely devoted myself to the two lines of modern research, 258 00:33:51,350 --> 00:33:56,360 which are of particular interest in eugenics, that is to biometrics and mendel it. 259 00:33:56,360 --> 00:34:08,930 So he was planning his career from the beginning with the purpose of promoting British genetic superiority. 260 00:34:08,930 --> 00:34:16,680 He became the second editor of the Annals of Eugenics, although he did change the subtitle too devoted to the genetic study of human populations. 261 00:34:16,680 --> 00:34:25,520 And I think generally you'd have to say Fischer was less openly racist than Ben Pearson. 262 00:34:25,520 --> 00:34:32,550 And again, there's this discussion of whether he was more of a population thinker than thinkers 263 00:34:32,550 --> 00:34:39,050 once he was a founding member of the Committee for Legalising Eugenic Sterilisation. 264 00:34:39,050 --> 00:34:52,040 He never supported forced sterilisation. He co-authored an article titled Sterilisation of the Unfit in the British Medical Journal, 265 00:34:52,040 --> 00:34:59,540 in which he wrote One of us had shown meaning himself that even on the most 266 00:34:59,540 --> 00:35:03,860 unfavourable genetic and social assumptions with regard to the effectiveness, 267 00:35:03,860 --> 00:35:08,330 the incidence of mental defect would be reduced by as much as 17 percent. 268 00:35:08,330 --> 00:35:12,110 In one generation of all, defectives were prevented from having children. 269 00:35:12,110 --> 00:35:17,450 So while he didn't support forced sterilisation, prevented. 270 00:35:17,450 --> 00:35:26,360 Certainly sound does not sound all that voluntary. So weird that calculation come from. 271 00:35:26,360 --> 00:35:34,040 So the question was right. An important question time was how rapidly could negative eugenics improve the population? 272 00:35:34,040 --> 00:35:43,970 Punnet had argued that if you had a Mendelian recessive trait, it would take 22 generations, 273 00:35:43,970 --> 00:35:54,690 even if you had a complete bar on reproduction of people showing that trait to reduce the incidence from one and 100 to one in 1000. 274 00:35:54,690 --> 00:36:04,640 Fischer. Criticised that he, first of all, restate so, of course, that the decline is exponential, 275 00:36:04,640 --> 00:36:09,980 so he emphasised that in the first generation you would get a 17 percent reduction. 276 00:36:09,980 --> 00:36:13,940 That's the number he quoted in that that other article. 277 00:36:13,940 --> 00:36:22,700 But then he makes some assumptions about a sort of a meeting and with the comment meeting is very largely controlled by social class, 278 00:36:22,700 --> 00:36:34,770 and the feeble minded undoubtedly gravitate to the lowest social stratum and raise the estimate to 36 percent, which. 279 00:36:34,770 --> 00:36:40,500 And then he said this is perhaps about what might be expected from an effective policy of segregation. 280 00:36:40,500 --> 00:36:46,500 And it is of a magnitude which no one with a care for his country's future can afford to ignore. 281 00:36:46,500 --> 00:36:58,630 He added that 36 percent number obviously was very popular amongst eugenics activists, and now I'm going to put in. 282 00:36:58,630 --> 00:37:07,770 So these are these are two graphics that I found actually a photograph them at a display. 283 00:37:07,770 --> 00:37:16,380 It be actually at always Alzheimer's former clinic outside Vienna. 284 00:37:16,380 --> 00:37:24,260 So the first is an interesting infographic showing how different kinds of. 285 00:37:24,260 --> 00:37:28,880 Families or tend to have different numbers of children. 286 00:37:28,880 --> 00:37:38,390 So at the lower right hand, with only one point nine to one point nine children are an academic couple. 287 00:37:38,390 --> 00:37:53,100 So it's an educated couple who would say in the upper left is a male criminal, having fought with even without even a woman involved 4.9 children. 288 00:37:53,100 --> 00:37:59,970 And then you have on the right, on the upper right, a criminal marriage, I have no idea what that means. 289 00:37:59,970 --> 00:38:04,230 I think it means that marriage to criminals are two anyway. 290 00:38:04,230 --> 00:38:11,250 So there's that and then I won't go into. But on the right is an excerpt from a German school maths textbook, 291 00:38:11,250 --> 00:38:23,330 giving exactly the kind of arguments that people like Fisher were were putting, putting forward or Pearson with questions like. 292 00:38:23,330 --> 00:38:35,270 You know, the construction of a mental asylum cost six million rice marks how many houses for workers at 50000 each could have been built instead. 293 00:38:35,270 --> 00:38:40,790 OK, so that why am I bringing a here, oh, why compare people to Nazis? 294 00:38:40,790 --> 00:38:50,520 Everyone hated the Nazis? Well. After the Second World War, most, most of the people involved in eugenics. 295 00:38:50,520 --> 00:38:55,310 Rejected turned away from eugenics. 296 00:38:55,310 --> 00:39:08,090 Fisher did not, and not only did he not, but he wrote, for instance, wrote a support letter for the de-Nazification of Otmar five Fasher. 297 00:39:08,090 --> 00:39:16,040 Now, who was this fellow? Well, he was a renowned international defender of National Socialist Biology. 298 00:39:16,040 --> 00:39:24,830 He was head of the Division of Human Heredity at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics. 299 00:39:24,830 --> 00:39:31,820 He was active in Nazi racial racial politics, and you couldn't make this up. 300 00:39:31,820 --> 00:39:39,540 He was the doctoral adviser and continuing collaborator, abusive of Mengele. 301 00:39:39,540 --> 00:39:46,710 Josef Mengele. In case people don't know, the famous Auschwitz doctor famous for his twin studies, 302 00:39:46,710 --> 00:39:55,410 which he performed in collaboration with Fisher and Fisher, wrote in 1947, it was, I think, 303 00:39:55,410 --> 00:40:01,350 his misfortune rather than his fault that racial theory was a part of the Nazi ideology and that it was therefore 304 00:40:01,350 --> 00:40:08,250 of some propaganda importance to the Nazi movement to show that the party supported work of unquestioned value, 305 00:40:08,250 --> 00:40:11,940 such as at which one faction was doing in spite of their prejudices. 306 00:40:11,940 --> 00:40:17,100 I have no doubt also that the party sincerely wished to benefit the German racial stock, 307 00:40:17,100 --> 00:40:24,690 especially by the elimination of Manifest is such as those deficient mentally and do not doubt that I shall give, 308 00:40:24,690 --> 00:40:34,320 as I should have done his support to such a move and so on. 309 00:40:34,320 --> 00:40:37,950 Other researchers tried to. 310 00:40:37,950 --> 00:40:46,050 So there was an international UNESCO's conference trying to develop an international 311 00:40:46,050 --> 00:41:00,810 view on race in the light of what had been learnt from the Nazi experience. 312 00:41:00,810 --> 00:41:12,460 He. So the UNESCO's statement, 1952, said it had never been possible to separate members of two racial groups on the basis of mental capacity, 313 00:41:12,460 --> 00:41:17,080 as they can often be separated on the basis of religion, skin colour, hair, family language. 314 00:41:17,080 --> 00:41:24,790 It is possible to not prove that some types of innate capacity for intellectual and emotional response are common or in one group than another. 315 00:41:24,790 --> 00:41:32,830 But it is certain that within a single group, innate capacity vary as much as, if not more than they do between different groups. 316 00:41:32,830 --> 00:41:38,890 Fisher objected and proposed instead, so this is included in the UNESCO's report. 317 00:41:38,890 --> 00:41:43,210 Available scientific knowledge provides a firm basis for believing that the groups of 318 00:41:43,210 --> 00:41:49,210 mankind differ in their innate capacity for intellectual and emotional development. 319 00:41:49,210 --> 00:41:54,250 And just around it off, he wrote in a letter in 1954. 320 00:41:54,250 --> 00:42:04,540 I am sorry. There should be propaganda in favour of miscegenation in North America, as I'm sure it can do nothing but horror. 321 00:42:04,540 --> 00:42:13,150 It's on the basis of this sort of thing that gone from King's College at Cambridge. 322 00:42:13,150 --> 00:42:29,080 Removed from its its dining hall, a stained glass window in in honour of Ray Fisher that had been installed about 20 years previously. 323 00:42:29,080 --> 00:42:38,490 OK, so that's that's all I'm on eugenics and any questions about that. 324 00:42:38,490 --> 00:42:46,410 OK, so, so because it's taking longer than expected, I'm going to skip over the section on Fisher and Tobacco. 325 00:42:46,410 --> 00:42:54,210 I'll just mention that. So, Fisher. 326 00:42:54,210 --> 00:43:07,270 So in 1950, Dole and Phil published their famous investigation, a case control study into the link between tobacco and lung cancer and. 327 00:43:07,270 --> 00:43:17,350 Interestingly, based on Fisher's exact test. And Fisher. 328 00:43:17,350 --> 00:43:27,770 Fisher objected, so nineteen fifty eight and nine, he wrote several articles in which he offered a. 329 00:43:27,770 --> 00:43:32,400 And unbelievably bonkers series of alternative explanations for the data. 330 00:43:32,400 --> 00:43:42,580 So one explanation was that if lung cancer associated with smoking, it may be that that lung cancer causes smoking and not vice versa. 331 00:43:42,580 --> 00:43:48,020 And he had you had a long explanation for how this this might happen. 332 00:43:48,020 --> 00:43:54,380 There may be a genetic predisposition to smoke that also raises the risk of lung cancer. 333 00:43:54,380 --> 00:44:07,350 Time trends and epidemiological data seem to point in the opposite direction, but he actually had no idea how to analyse the those data and. 334 00:44:07,350 --> 00:44:18,470 He pointed out some minor possible evidence that smokers who inhale are less likely to develop lung cancer than smokers who don't. 335 00:44:18,470 --> 00:44:26,030 So the end basically use this to troll the the researchers and say they should 336 00:44:26,030 --> 00:44:31,040 really be advising people that they can prevent lung cancer by inhaling. 337 00:44:31,040 --> 00:44:47,080 So I'm not I'm not going to go into the details on on those, although I'll be happy to answer questions about about them because I wanted to. 338 00:44:47,080 --> 00:44:56,200 Get to my my last topic, which are is miscellaneous miss applications, the Gaussian distribution. 339 00:44:56,200 --> 00:44:59,770 And I think this is important because it I mean, 340 00:44:59,770 --> 00:45:10,670 this is the Gaussian distribution is used both to impose statistical authority and to create a sense of orderliness and determinism. 341 00:45:10,670 --> 00:45:25,180 Now. If people don't know about it, it was a very interesting upwelling of interest in statistics in the early to mid-19th century. 342 00:45:25,180 --> 00:45:30,010 So in 1827, the French government started publishing statistics of criminal activity, 343 00:45:30,010 --> 00:45:37,780 and people were shocked after getting looking at these for a couple of years and how regular they were from year to year. 344 00:45:37,780 --> 00:45:48,190 People were used to thinking of, well, there are statistical regularities in in nature, but not in something as disorderly as criminal activity. 345 00:45:48,190 --> 00:46:00,550 And the so the statistician adult, Keckley, who was extremely influential in promoting statistical ideas in social science at the time, 346 00:46:00,550 --> 00:46:04,510 referred to the frightening regularity with which the same crimes are reproduced. 347 00:46:04,510 --> 00:46:12,160 Crime is like a budget that is paid with frightening regularity, particular kinds of crimes, 348 00:46:12,160 --> 00:46:18,800 insanity and suicide crime crimes, insanity and suicides all repeated year on year. 349 00:46:18,800 --> 00:46:25,090 Even the numbers of dead letters in the Paris Post Office and people find it genuinely baffling. 350 00:46:25,090 --> 00:46:32,650 These issues were particularly popularised in England by Henry Thomas Tuchel, 351 00:46:32,650 --> 00:46:39,820 who wrote The individual Phelan only carries into effect what is necessary the necessary consequence preceding circumstances. 352 00:46:39,820 --> 00:46:44,590 In a given state of society, a certain number of persons must put an end to their own life. 353 00:46:44,590 --> 00:46:47,860 This is the general law and the special question as to who shall commit. 354 00:46:47,860 --> 00:46:49,180 The crime depends. 355 00:46:49,180 --> 00:46:57,550 Of course, upon special laws, the offences of men are the result, not so much on the basis of the individual offenders of the state of society. 356 00:46:57,550 --> 00:47:07,780 And this was parodied. This was so well known that actually was parodied by Charles Dickens in in hard times. 357 00:47:07,780 --> 00:47:11,230 So there is the character Thomas grabbed Grind, 358 00:47:11,230 --> 00:47:20,710 who famously starts out the book by saying Facts are all that are needed, and it ends with his son having sorry. 359 00:47:20,710 --> 00:47:29,770 If this is a spoiler for anyone but a son having Rob be the bank that he was working at and 360 00:47:29,770 --> 00:47:35,590 explains how how he did it and and then the father said about Thunderbolt had fallen on me, 361 00:47:35,590 --> 00:47:43,270 said the father would have shocked me less than this, and the son says, I don't see why so many people are employed in situations of trust. 362 00:47:43,270 --> 00:47:48,130 So many people out of many will be dishonest. I have heard you talk 100 times of it being a law. 363 00:47:48,130 --> 00:47:58,870 How can I help? What's so? So this is a kind of application of statistics. 364 00:47:58,870 --> 00:48:05,860 That was quite quite popular to present notion of essentially an inevitability that the 365 00:48:05,860 --> 00:48:11,500 great society can't be changed there just being these laws that are that are carried out. 366 00:48:11,500 --> 00:48:21,570 You can't you can't improve things because the budget will have to be will have to be paid. 367 00:48:21,570 --> 00:48:33,750 In more modern times, you have and so this 1994 book by psychologist and political scientist that created quite a sensation that really harks back in 368 00:48:33,750 --> 00:48:47,370 many ways to to to Pearson that makes claims that general cognitive ability is a single quantity generally measurable by IQ tests, 369 00:48:47,370 --> 00:48:55,890 that IQ scores are stable and highly heritable. That this ability largely determines social and economic success in industrialised societies, 370 00:48:55,890 --> 00:49:03,960 and that IQ in the US population is declining because of what they refer to as differential fertility. 371 00:49:03,960 --> 00:49:14,400 So again, this is these are all claims and concerns that were very familiar from from the 372 00:49:14,400 --> 00:49:21,570 previous century of eugenics and subject to a lot of the same problems and issues. 373 00:49:21,570 --> 00:49:27,660 But I think it's particularly interesting why why is this bell curve displayed so prominently? 374 00:49:27,660 --> 00:49:40,590 Has nothing directly to do with with the argument, but the claim that there is a right IQ tests or normalised to fit a Gaussian distribution. 375 00:49:40,590 --> 00:49:49,030 So this isn't a fact of nature that. That these things are normally distributed. 376 00:49:49,030 --> 00:49:56,860 Now it's it it's a reasonable thing to. Way of describing things, but it's not. 377 00:49:56,860 --> 00:50:04,330 But it creates a sense that there's something statistically inevitable about which they're trying to push. 378 00:50:04,330 --> 00:50:12,160 And then one last example I want to bring up another big controversy. 379 00:50:12,160 --> 00:50:14,350 I've gotten exactly what year this this was. 380 00:50:14,350 --> 00:50:21,460 It was about about 20 years ago, Larry Summers, famous economist and at that time, president of Harvard University, 381 00:50:21,460 --> 00:50:26,410 but not for much longer after that, precisely because of the controversy around these comments. 382 00:50:26,410 --> 00:50:36,190 He. He was he was asked to speak about women in science, I think he was asked to maybe he just chose to. 383 00:50:36,190 --> 00:50:46,270 And he he said that statistics would reveal that Kowboits are substantially underrepresented in investment banking, 384 00:50:46,270 --> 00:50:50,770 and white men are substantially underrepresented in the National Basketball Association 385 00:50:50,770 --> 00:50:56,140 and that Jews are very substantially underrepresented in farming and in agriculture. 386 00:50:56,140 --> 00:51:04,660 So, in other words, no surprise that some groups are underrepresented in some areas of endeavour. 387 00:51:04,660 --> 00:51:17,010 I should mention is. Bothered when people say statistics would reveal, because the honestly are no available statistics, 388 00:51:17,010 --> 00:51:21,090 for instance, about the number of Jews in farming and agriculture, 389 00:51:21,090 --> 00:51:31,050 and there is actually a very active Jewish farmers network that had over 300 attendees at its most recent gathering. 390 00:51:31,050 --> 00:51:34,650 And honestly, you know, the number of Jews in the US is small. 391 00:51:34,650 --> 00:51:39,990 The number of farmers is small, so I don't know how many if they actually are underrepresented. 392 00:51:39,990 --> 00:51:48,360 But in any case, he he went on to make an argument, which he says it does appear that on many, 393 00:51:48,360 --> 00:51:55,230 many different human attributes height, weight, propensity for criminality, overall IQ mathematical ability, scientific ability. 394 00:51:55,230 --> 00:51:58,740 There is relatively clear evidence that whatever the difference means, 395 00:51:58,740 --> 00:52:04,200 there is a difference in the standard deviation and variability of a male and a female population, 396 00:52:04,200 --> 00:52:10,170 and that is true with respect to attributes that are and are not plausibly culturally determined, 397 00:52:10,170 --> 00:52:18,840 and then goes on to say, Well, you know, in it science departments at Harvard, where you're going to have people who are way, 398 00:52:18,840 --> 00:52:25,530 way out in the tails of the distribution to a bigger standard deviation just means it's going to be more out there, 399 00:52:25,530 --> 00:52:31,560 even if the groups are an average equal. Now what is he trying to say here? 400 00:52:31,560 --> 00:52:39,720 Well, he's trying to say, don't call me a sexist because I'm not saying men are on average better because we all know that sexism and racism, 401 00:52:39,720 --> 00:52:48,070 all those things are about claiming that groups are different on average. I'm just saying men are kind of wonky. 402 00:52:48,070 --> 00:52:53,790 There's, you know, there's there's they're just more spread out. 403 00:52:53,790 --> 00:53:00,510 Now, two things that one can say about this, but I'd be interested to hear if people have other comments to make. 404 00:53:00,510 --> 00:53:08,990 One thing is. There is no difference between the claim that he's disclaiming and the claim that he's making, 405 00:53:08,990 --> 00:53:19,800 because if you say that there are men who are super geniuses more than women and there are also men who are super idiots more than women, 406 00:53:19,800 --> 00:53:23,790 those likely had simply had two very different explanations. 407 00:53:23,790 --> 00:53:33,150 And so the fact that there are the super idiots may balance out your calculation, but honestly, it just doesn't matter. 408 00:53:33,150 --> 00:53:42,000 It's just not changing your explanation. So he's treating it using this word standard deviation to say, here I've got a technical thing to say here. 409 00:53:42,000 --> 00:53:47,400 It's just standard deviation. It's not anything we can do something about, just standard deviation. 410 00:53:47,400 --> 00:53:56,530 And then one other thing this is my last slide. This argument is very old and has very dark roots. 411 00:53:56,530 --> 00:54:07,230 So here is a an excerpt from one of the first texts on statistics on the theory of statistics from Gustaf and Wimbledon. 412 00:54:07,230 --> 00:54:13,440 Sorry testing on statistics in German in 1863. 413 00:54:13,440 --> 00:54:20,700 In which he wrote in the natural realm, each entity is typical in the human world individual. 414 00:54:20,700 --> 00:54:26,760 Just as reality has no leaps or abrupt boundaries, so this transition, in fact, is smooth. 415 00:54:26,760 --> 00:54:32,280 No grain of sand, no blade of grass and so on is precisely identical. 416 00:54:32,280 --> 00:54:40,470 And yet, even within each such example, there are so many conspicuous gradations, the higher we climb in the progressive series of organisation, 417 00:54:40,470 --> 00:54:44,790 the more numerous are the combinations that offer scope for individual deviations. 418 00:54:44,790 --> 00:54:51,960 Even within the human world, we see the same series of gradations. The Barbarian is more like its type in the civilised man the black. 419 00:54:51,960 --> 00:55:00,270 After getting the Mongol less than the Caucasian, the eight ancient people more than the mediaeval and still more than the modern, 420 00:55:00,270 --> 00:55:10,560 a man is more individual man, a woman the grown up more than the child, the educated more than the uneducated, the aristocrat more than the commoner. 421 00:55:10,560 --> 00:55:14,790 This claim of being more variable, I mean, 422 00:55:14,790 --> 00:55:24,870 that is a fundamentally privileged claim to claim it's a it is a claim that has repeatedly been made by sexist by racists, 423 00:55:24,870 --> 00:55:33,830 saying that those who are superior just have so many ways of being different, whereas the the underclass, they're all the same. 424 00:55:33,830 --> 00:55:44,210 And and again, they write it gets dressed up in, you know, with Gaussian distributions and all that, but it's still the same. 425 00:55:44,210 --> 00:55:47,660 OK, so that's it. Thanks for listening. 426 00:55:47,660 --> 00:55:58,180 And yeah, so sorry, I've used a little more time than I plan to, but that's happy to take questions or have discussion. 427 00:55:58,180 --> 00:56:10,720 Great, thank you so much, David.