October 3, 2012

J.P. Rushton, 1943-2012

Here is a short biography (and other links) for the great theoretical innovator in the human sciences J.P. Rushton, who, I am told, died yesterday.
J. Philippe Rushton, B.Sc., Ph.D., D.Sc., F.B.Ps.S., the fourth and current president of the Pioneer Fund, was born in 1943 in Bournemouth, England. He received all his degrees from the University of London, including a Ph.D. in social psychology from the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is the author of 5 books and over 200 scholarly articles published in peer-reviewed journals. Rushton is a Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American, British, and Canadian Psychological Associations. He is also a member of the Behavioral Genetics Association and the Society for Neuroscience. Rushton has summarized his research for journals of opinion such as Liberty, the National Review, and the Washington Times’s Insight on the News, and discussed it on TV talk shows such as Donahue, Geraldo Live, and Connie Chung. His major published work is Race, Evolution, and Behavior, which was favorably reviewed in The New York Times Book Review of October 16, 1994, translated into Japanese, and is now in its 3rd unabridged edition, as well as in an abridged edition and an audio book.

Professor Rushton began his career by researching the basis of altruism. The question of why one individual aids another, thereby exposing himself to risk, has long posed a challenge to evolutionary theories of human development. Rushton’s early work focused on the social learning of generosity in 7- to 11-year-old children. After writing a book, Altruism, Socialization, and Society (1980), which examined the influence of the family, the educational system, and the mass media, he broadened his perspective to include sociobiological and behavioral genetic factors. He then analyzed the University of London Twin Register and found that individual differences in empathy and nurturance are about 50% heritable, as were individual differences in aggression and crime, some of which he found to be mediated by testosterone. 
Studying behavioral genetics and sociobiology led Rushton to explore the dilemma of why, throughout the natural world, “birds of a feather flock together.” He found that genes incline people to marry, befriend, associate with, and help others like themselves. Typically, individuals learn to identify and prefer their own ethnic group, rather than others, for largely genetic reasons. Rushton’s Genetic Similarity Theory expanded the kin-selection theory of altruism (a fundamental theorem of sociobiology) to explain why the pull of that factor is so powerful across human relationships and how it provides an explanation for ethnocentrism and ethnic competition. Altruism follows lines of genetic similarity in order to replicate genes more effectively; xenophobia emerges as the dark side of human altruism. 
It also led Rushton to examine race differences. In new studies and reviews of the world literature, he has documented that East Asians and their descendants consistently average a larger brain size, greater intelligence, more sexual restraint, a slower rate of maturation, and greater levels of law abidingness and social organization than do Europeans and their descendants. Europeans, in turn, average higher on these dimensions than do Africans and their descendants. To explain this pattern he proposed a gene-based evolutionary theory in his book, Race, Evolution, and Behavior (1995).

Here's Rushton's C.V. with links to most of his papers.

Here's an abridged version of Rushton's Race, Evolution, and Behavior online.

Here's a short 2003 VDARE article I wrote on Rushton's rule of three on East Asians -- whites -- blacks.

Here's a 107 minute debate in 1989 on Canadian TV between Rushton and geneticist David Suzuki.

Templer on Rushton 

a conversation with J Philippe Rushton 

Jensen on Rushton

Hur on Rushton's contribution to the study of altruism

Meanwhile, Communist historian Eric Hobsbawm has died at age 95, loaded with honors from people his Party would have sent to the Gulag. From Wikipedia's article on Hobsbawm, who didn't resign from the Communist Party until the late 1980s:
1973: Honorary Fellow, King's College, Cambridge
1978: Fellow of the British Academy
1995: Deutscher Memorial Prize; Lionel Gelber Prize
1996: Wolfson History Oeuvre Prize
1998: Companion of Honour, Order of the Companions of Honour
1999: Buchpreis zur Europäischen Verständigung Leipziger Buchpreis zur Europäischen Verständigung (Hauptpreis)
1999: Honorary degree from Universidad de la República Montevideo, Uruguay
2000: Ernst Bloch Prize
2003: Balzan Prize recipient
2006: Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature[60]
2008: Honorary citizenship from Vienna
2008: Honorary degree from University of Vienna
2008: Honorary degree from Charles University in Prague
2008: Bochum History Prize

An Englishmen in Bucharest points out:
Had Eric Hobsbawm adopted the theories of Gobineau and H.S. Chamberlain, rather than those of Marx and Engels, he would have been left to theorise in pubs ...

In contrast to Hobsbawm, Rushton innovated a remarkably large number of the more interesting and/or useful ideas in the human sciences of the era, and had to undergo, for his accomplishments, a lengthy police investigation.

52 comments:

FredR said...

Yeah I watched that a little while ago. Suzuki doesn't come off well, although Rushton should have prepared a better comeback to Lewontin's fallacy.

M Steinberg said...

Some tributes to Rushton from earlier this year.

Templer on Rushton

a conversation with J Philippe Rushton

Jensen on Rushton

Hur on Rushton's contribution to the study of altruism

Anonymous said...

Turkey-Syria War!!!

Anonymous said...

He is modern Galileo. RIP.

Felix M said...

Presumably, had Hitler won, Hobsbawm would have adopted the theories of Gobineau and H.S. Chamberlain. And would have received the "honors" listed.

FredR said...

Has anyone here read Hobsbawm's histories of the 19th century? This seems like it might not be entirely fair.

Anonymous said...

Sigh. In comparison to Rushton, Hobsbawm happened to have that "HBD" edge... He looks like a cross between Noam Chomsky and Woody Allen.

ben tillman said...


Professor Rushton began his career by researching the basis of altruism.

Didn't we all?

Steve Sailer said...

"Didn't we all?"

Yes, when you have kids of your own, it finally strikes you how altruistic your parents were to you.

ben tillman said...

Yeah I watched that a little while ago. Suzuki doesn't come off well, although Rushton should have prepared a better comeback to Lewontin's fallacy.

The only appropriate comeback to Lewontin's 85/15% claim is, WTF does it even mean?

Anonymous said...

"Meanwhile, Communist historian Eric Hobsbawm has died at age 95, loaded with honors from people his Party would have sent to the Gulag."

True, but if we go purely on merit, he was a great historian. Not of everything to be sure. He was willfully blind to the history of fascism; he just refused to give it any thought, but this bias was shared by fellow Jew Tony Judt. But given what happened with Nazism, I can sort of understand.

Hobsbawm's AGE OF EXTREMES is more interesting than Johnson's MODERN TIMES. It's a very biased book but wonderful to read. And it doesn't have the sanctimonious tone of Johnson's tomes. MODERN TIMES is actually quite ridiculous. Johnson starts out by railing against 'moral relativism' and condemns the carpetbombing of Dresden. But nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki... well, that was okay. Why? the radiation made some bald guy grow hair again.

Of course, if we go purely on merit, David Irving deserves some honors too. He did some very important research into the history of Nazism, and as Hitchens said, Irving was a great historian of 'fascism'. But of course, given the standards of PC prevalent in the academia, a man like Irving cannot even get his books published.

When it comes to character, both Hobs and Irving are pretty scummy. Hobs apologized for Stalin all his life. Though he later admitted to the mass killings under Stalin, his language was typically dry and non-judgmental, something Judt to his credit took Hobs to task in his review of Hobs' book.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1995/may/25/downhill-all-the-way/

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2003/nov/20/the-last-romantic/?pagination=false


Irving could have been a great historian, but he went crazy some time in the 80s and became a demented apologist for Hitler. It's too bad.

That said, Irving, for his rottenness, has a certain courage, conviction, and powerful will. He could have sold out and groveled but he never did. Especially given the political climate of PC, I respect that. The man has an iron will, which is a lot more than can be said for the whoreishness of Johnson and Andrew Roberts whom I find utterly totally despicable.

Irving is at least honest about his hatreds and prejudices.
Johnson and Roberts have sold themselves to Zionist neocons, and their view of the world is essentially that of Newt Gingrich. Since they can't be 'racist' in the old way, they pose as friends of Jews and used that as cover to be fashionably and acceptably 'racist' against Muslims and etc.
So, Andrew Roberts says, "I love Jews, Jews, Jews" and then excuses General Dyer's massacre of Indians.

http://www.tnr.com/article/white-man-the-job-bushs-imperial-historian#

If Roberts wants to be really 'right-wing', he should do it honestly like Irving. But he hides his feelings behind worship of Holocaust. A**hole.

Anonymous said...

OT: that "Middle Eastern" lobby in the USA.

"At the centre of the controversy is a visit Mr Barak paid last month to the US - he has travelled there frequently to meet defence officials as the crisis with Iran intensified.

On that trip, Mr Barak made a rare detour to Chicago and met privately on Sept 20 with Mayor Rahm Emanuel, a former close aide to Mr Obama. News of the meeting was leaked to Israeli media."


http://www.todayonline.com/World/EDC121004-0000074/Netanyahu-Barak-spat-stokes-early-Israel-vote-talk

Anonymous said...

This was a man of the most enormous personal courage.

Anon.

Anonymous said...

ben tillman said:

The only appropriate comeback to Lewontin's 85/15% claim is, WTF does it even mean?

It means exactly what it says. An average Fst between different human populations is about 0.15. Given how crude Lewontin's methods were and how few markers were looked at, it is quite remarkable that the number held so well for so many decades.

That extra-scientific spin that Lewontin gave this fact is a different matter, of course.

Jez said...

Tragic news. One of the few remaining academics who engaged in real science, rather than the usual pseudo-science in the service of Marxist propaganda that emanates from the academy today. His "race, Evolution, and Behaviour" was the one 'wow'-book I've read in recent years - a must-read for all to aid in the understanding of modern humanity. R.I.P., great man.

The Legendary Linda said...

This is profoundly sad news. I can't think of anyone who had a greater intellectual influence on me than Rushton did. His application of r/K theory to group differences among humans was one of the most brilliant and parsimonious anthropological and sociological insights of all time. His book "Race, Evolution and Behavior" (the unabridged version) was a beautifully written, thoroughly researched well organized masterpiece.

His theory not only has enormous explanatory power, but also organized humanity in an aesthetically breathtaking simple way: Three main races consistently ordered on dozens of different traits, elegantly paralleled by each race's genetic antiquity.

I agree with Richard Lynn who felt that if there was any justice, Rushton would have won a Nobel prize. He was quite simply the Darwin of the 20th century.

Simon in London said...

"Communist historian Eric Hobsbawm has died at age 95, loaded with honors from people his Party would have sent to the Gulag."

Worth noting that many of the organisations that laud him are full of fellow travellers, though. Crypto-Communists are everywhere in Britain; the Labour party is run by people who have discarded Communist economics but very much kept the social/cultural analysis. They're forever deconstructing us in pursuit of their utopia. Eg the Evening Standard had a piece by Andrew Neather praising Hobsbawn; the same Andrew Neather who accidentally revealed that Labour's immigration policy was one of deliberate population replacement. Which caused some mild mutterings from the Right at the time.

Anonymous said...

Eg the Evening Standard had a piece by Andrew Neather praising Hobsbawn; the same Andrew Neather who accidentally revealed that Labour's immigration policy was one of deliberate population replacement. Which caused some mild mutterings from the Right at the time.

Margaret Tatcher economic victory will be the end of Britain, leftist now have to manifest themselves in other ways.

Anonymous said...

Judging from this interview with Bill Moyers, I think David Suzuki's opinion on nature vs nurture is more based on his childhood experience than his geneticist background:

"MOYERS: You were a kid in Canada when World War II broke out. I didn't know until I read about you that Japanese-Canadians were interred like American-Japanese. What did that experience teach you?
SUZUKI: Well, it was the definitive event of my life. It shaped my persona and my drive, my priorities. I, to this day, when I look in the mirror, I cannot… I don't like to look in the
mirror at myself. I hate…
MOYERS: Why?
SUZUKI: …watching programs with me in it. Because when I look at myself, I see the slit eyes. And I see the face that was, for four years during World War II, depicted as the enemy. And it was my enemy too. That face was my enemy because I was a Canadian. And we wanted to go out and kill Japs. Except that my country had put us into a prison, in my case. (...) And my mother and father were born and raised in Canada. Never been to Japan. But we were called enemy aliens… considered enemy aliens.(...) in the camp there were all these children whose parents had come from Japan who spoke Japanese. And I couldn't speak Japanese and they beat me up. And the white kids, of course, had nothing to do with us. So I grew up with a tremendous sense of self-hate."


http://ebookbrowse.com/102m-2003-now-with-bill-moyers-transcript-bill-moyers-interviews-david-suzuki-2003-pdf-d371191411

Eduard said...

Hmm still no 'official news' about this yet. Most of the Twitter mentions go back to this post, or the one from yesterday. Also Rushon's wiki still not updated. The latest 'news' mention of Rushton is this French article from Oct 2 which dwells on, surprise surprise, the silly penis-length study from like a thousand years ago (http://next.liberation.fr/sexe/2012/10/02/du-danger-de-comparer-la-taille).
And even his own university hasn't posted any news about it: http://www.uwo.ca/
I've also heard that Richard Lynn (82) has recently taken ill. And Jensen will be 90 next year...

Dahlia said...

This is sad news.

Rest in peace.

Big Bill said...

I must thank the Three Jews for introducing me to Rushton. Alan Dershowitz, Stephen Gould and Richard Nozick team-taught a Harvard/Harvard Law course called "Thinking about Thinking".

The bound notes for the course had two long survey articles by Rushton on r/K selection theory and the Asian/White/Black order.

The other notes were academic piffle with no particular relevance to human life, but Rushton was earthshaking.

Can you imagine my schadenfreude when I later moved to New York City and introduced Jewish and other liberal True Believers to Rushton, with the imprimatur of Harvard, Dersh, Gould and Nozick inscribed right there on the cover of the class notes!

It made for some delicious moments. What could they say? I was a Nazi?

How could I be a Nazi when I was merely sharing the Harvard gnosis with them. Gnosis that was gathered, collated, inscribed and passed on to me by the Three Jews. Gnosis they would never be privy to (except through me) since Harvard and Harvard Law School had rejected them as students?

So thank you, Al, Steve, and Rich. You not only opened my eyes to Rushton, but by your imprimatur you also prised open the eyes of many otherwise blind, knee-jerk NYC arch-liberals.

ben tillman said...

It means exactly what it says. An average Fst between different human populations is about 0.15.

But that's not what Lewontin said, and that's not even what people think he said. Why didn't you address the 85% part?

Here's what he said:

The results are quite remarkable.

The mean proportion of the total species diversity that is
contained within populations is 85.4%.... Less than 15%
of all human genetic diversity is accounted for by differences
between human groups! Moreover, the difference between populations within a race accounts for an additional 8.3%, so that only 6.3% is accounted for by racial
classification.

Hacienda said...

Rushton is a reductionist in the manner of Newton, not a good idea for applying to world races. Suzuki makes a good point for that era- "can't control for the environmental effects of racism".

40 years later, we've had plenty to see that blacks (statistically) are still plenty criminal in a largely non-racist world, America multi-racialism under P.C. polity has acceded to a hyper violent (in thought and deed)/hyper monitored militarized state. If debates are about text, Rushton wins. If debates are about attitude, Suzuki wins.





Anonymous said...

An obit of sorts is now up on the site of the Toronto Sun:
http://www.torontosun.com/2012/10/04/controversial-race-research-prof-dies
Still no mention on his university's site (http://www.uwo.ca/), although they have posted other news in the past day or two, so it's not like they're closed for business.

Anonymous said...

A very good piece of news. Un bon raciste est un raciste mort.

a very knowing American said...

Philippe Rushton had a higher ratio of balls to brains than the great majority of academics.

RIP

sunbeam said...

I read the abridged version of the book in the link last night.

Reading it I was struck by how deterministic everything is if you accept everything in this book as your world view.

Nothing within your control really matters does it? Let's say you are black and highly virtuous, in fact you are Saint Ophrah of Winfrey. You are always polite and kind, never break a law, and work diligently all the days of your life. You even somehow raise your children to be just like you.

But that doesn't really matter. No matter how you lived, even if you somehow got your children to live their lives the same way, your descendents are always going to revert to the mean.

Well unless they find another mean to belong to, which is a long post in itself, with many things to discuss and analyze.

But for most people both the good and evil you do will be forgotten in a very brief period of time, as rocks see it. All that will be left of you is a bit of dna winding it's way through the human population.

If you take that book at face value to be the whole and total truth, biology is destiny.

The only thing in the world that matter is intelligence. That's it, the sum total of all that matters or ever will matter. According to this book the smarter you are, the more you tend to live in a virtous manner. From working hard, to saving for a rainy day, to taking care of your kids, to being productive, it all comes from that one trait, intelligence on the average. I'm not able to gather from that book whether K-Strategies are a product of higher intelligence, or just go with it like ham and eggs. And, just as cursory thought on the matter, about half of what I would consider to be moral is in some way linked to this K-Strategy concept.

To repeat, intelligence is destiny. Because after all, the book tells us that no matter what, if you take a person without the genes for high intelligence, and raise them in a K-environment, they still will never be as good as someone with genes for higher intelligence raised in an r-environment.

This book also makes me wonder where you draw the line? I gather most here have no problems with Asians, hence "NAMS." (I wonder whether anyone has ever asked Asians if they have a problem with Roundeyes?) But once again, let's face it, it's just a matter of degree after all. Wouldn't the best thing for human destiny be for white and black people to just disappear, and let Asians exist in a high intelligence, low crime state?

Of course Jews might be able to say the same thing about Asians...

sunbeam said...

I have a little more to say about Rushton's book, it was just too mindnumbing to put all the text in one mega post.

One thing that is striking to me with this book, and others like it is no discussion of evolution, at lest evolution in the short term.

By that I mean, are modern people exactly the same as they were even a few thousand years ago? Or even a couple of hundred?

We have some skulls from centuries ago around now. And no shortage of modern skulls. Whatever method they used to estimate brain volume from that study, it's be interesting to know if it was sensitive enough to detect an increase of oh say 1 cubic inch in a few hundred years.

If we have a big enough sample of old skulls sitting around.

What I'm trying to say is how long does it take for a population to "evolve" into being more intelligent anyway?

From what I gather it happened relatively quickly for European Jews, in under a 1000 years. How fast is fast anyway? Is Jewish average intelligence higher than it was 300 years ago?

Rushton is also unsatisfying with the whole climate thing. It gets darn cold in Russia. A lot colder than in a lot of China. Is average Russian IQ higher than Chinese? Are Mongols and various Inuit the smartest people on Earth? You really ought to see a few iq points of difference between Finns and Brits as well.

I've read a few things that suggest that China, for example, has been been a society organized around agriculture much longer than those in Europe. This makes more sense to me, because I gather Mongols aren't as intelligent as Chinese. But it is unsatisfying in some ways, because shouldn't you see the same effect with Egyptians and the Fertile Crescent area? Not to mention parts of India?

Although I think it might explain some differences between Europe and Africa.

J said...

Leave "Parallel lives" to Plutarch. These two are not to be compared.

stari_momak said...

Hobsbawm's "nationalism since 1780: programme, myth, and reality" is pretty good. Wrong, but in a fruitful way.

stari_momak said...

"The only appropriate comeback to Lewontin's 85/15% claim is, WTF does it even mean?"

I'm not sure I fully grok the Fixation Index thing -- but I've always wondered by saying their is more variation within a population group than between population groups is not a simple ecological fallacy. Variation with a group will be computed with the unit of analysis being the individual. whereas variation between groups has the the group as unit of analysis.

The Legendary Linda said...

The only thing in the world that matter is intelligence. That's it, the sum total of all that matters or ever will matter. According to this book the smarter you are, the more you tend to live in a virtous manner. From working hard, to saving for a rainy day, to taking care of your kids, to being productive, it all comes from that one trait, intelligence on the average. I'm not able to gather from that book whether K-Strategies are a product of higher intelligence, or just go with it like ham and eggs.

It's the latter.   Intelligence is just one of many traits that are higher (on average) in K selected races, but even if you controlled for IQ, the races would probably still differ enormously in personality, social organization, rate of maturation, criminality, sexuality etc.

Kai Carver said...

Hard to imagine this NYT review of Rushton and others being published today: What Is Intelligence, and Who Has It?

The most insistent plea of the four authors is for freedom of debate and an end to the shroud of censorship imposed upon scientists and scholars by pressure groups and an acquiescing society. Mr. Murray and Mr. Herrnstein write that "for the last 30 years, the concept of intelligence has been a pariah in the world of ideas," and that the time has come to rehabilitate rational discourse on the subject. It is hard to imagine a democratic society doing otherwise.

Anonymous said...

@ben tillman:

There is nothing to address. Lewontin's statement is factually correct. One can argue whether what the 15% contains is important enough (and we all know that the entire human history demonstrates that it is) but this won't change the fact that 85% is all over the place.

Anonymous said...

Wouldn't the best thing for human destiny be for white and black people to just disappear, and let Asians exist in a high intelligence, low crime state?

Maybe, but your musings on this matter are only available to the rest of us via the medium of the internet - produced by those dreadful brutish whites.

Anonymous said...

What do we do when Sailer dies? Maybe Sailer should clone himself so we can go on posting stuff on his blog.

Anonymous said...

What if Sailer is cloned and grows up to be a liberal and has a liberal blog. That would be interesting.

Anonymous said...

"Un bon raciste est un raciste mort."

Typical leftist.

Always full of bloodlust, striving for a secular, egalitarian utopia.

First Marat tried killing thousands of "aristocrats". That didn't create utopia.

Then Lenin tried killing millions of "capitalists". That didn't work either.

Now the New Left wants to eliminate all "racists", aka all people of European descent. We are the "cancer of human history" (Sontag) and we must be "abolished" (Ignatiev). There are too many of us for the guillotine or the gulag, but the New Left has methods that amount to a soft, slow genocide: anarcho-tyrrany, mass immigration, and sexual revolution.

This won't create utopia, and it won't make the world any more egalitarian, but it will gratify the blood-lust of the Sontags and Ignatievs of the world.

Mike Steinberg said...

Interesting to see the media response. There is a pretty fair minded obituary by John Milner here.

Then an ill informed effort to by Ian Gillespie that Rushton's ideas died with him

You can post comments.

ben tillman said...

But that doesn't really matter. No matter how you lived, even if you somehow got your children to live their lives the same way, your descendents are always going to revert to the mean.

Which is another way of saying that the mean never changes. Which is another way of saying that humans were created exactly as we are now. Are you sure that's what you want to claim

ben tillman said...

There is nothing to address. Lewontin's statement is factually correct.

What statement? What he said has no meaning. Someone needs to translate it from jargon into comprehensible English.

Anonymous said...

The Canadian online newspaper articles about the death of Prof Rushton state that he died of cancer

"Services have been set for Psychology professor John Philippe Rushton, who died Tuesday, Oct. 2 at LHSC Victoria Hospital Palliative Care Ward after a battle with cancer."

ben tillman said...

There is nothing to address. Lewontin's statement is factually correct. One can argue whether what the 15% contains is important enough (and we all know that the entire human history demonstrates that it is) but this won't change the fact that 85% is all over the place.

85% of what?

Anonymous said...

85% of what?

Of total genetic variation.

RAH said...

I must thank the Three Jews for introducing me to Rushton. Alan Dershowitz, Stephen Gould and Richard Nozick team-taught a Harvard/Harvard Law course called "Thinking about Thinking".

We know what Gould thought, but what were the attitudes of Dershowitz and Nozick towards Rushton's work?

Sam said...

I read Rushton's book about five years ago.

I got the feeling that when he was growing up:

He was the victim of horrific black violence

and/or

He was extremely envious of black male sexuality


There are differences between the races of course, but he interpreted the differences to "prove" blacks are somewhat sub-human, under the guise of objective scientific enquiry.

Anonymous said...

Re Lengendary Linda and the assertion that "g" and R/K theory
go together like ham and eggs--well, one brilliant thought criminal, Chris Brand, had some salt to put on all this in his
review of Rushton's book in
PERSONALITY AND INVIDIUAL DIFFRENCES 19. 3. 411-413, 1995
This is the Notorious Chris Brand
who has fearlesly resurrected his "depublished" book (THE "g" FACTOR )--Yes , same lead title as the Jensen book--His book is free online --see Brand "IQ & PC"

Anonymous said...

Rushton noted that the differences, on various statistical criteria, prove (not "prove") that Blacks are a completely different sort of human (not "subhuman", a term that is only used in strawmen) from Whites and Asians. Rushton is not the only one to note that Blacks are quite likely to direct violence against White children, and that Blacks are quite promiscuous.

Human-Stupidity.com said...

Too sad. Just found out about Rushton's death by reading here.

I read a lot but have not found this anywhere else.

Rushton is simply amazing, his research profound. Dazzling how he could perform all this research against all odds and resistance.

A professor of mine once REFUSED to give Rushton access to a big data collection he had and gave out liberally to researchers.

Human-Stupidity.com has written about Rushton extensively J. Philippe Rushton RIP. Controversial Researcher on Racial Differences in Personality and IQ

ben tillman said...


Of total genetic variation.

Thanks for nothing. That statement doesn't mean anything, you flipping moron.

"Total genetic variation" is AN UNDEFINED TERM. You were specifically told to define the term, and you didn't, because you can't, because it has no intrinsic meaning and (apparently) no arbitrarily assigned meaning.

Psychomelosopher said...

@Eduard: Where have you heard that piece of news (about Lynn's illness)? Brand mentioned it in IQ & PC a while ago; do you have another source, or is that the one you're thinking of?

In any case: this is really terrible news. Rushton introduced me to HBD. I had immense respect for him.