October 3, 2012

J.P. Rushton, RIP

Psychologist Phil Rushton has died at age 68. He was an insightful and brave scientist who proposed a number of paradigms that are now part of the toolkit of anybody who wants to think objectively about humanity. 

By Steve Sailer on 10/03/2012

38 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is a sad day. I know someone who met him and said he was a perfect gentleman, and very generous, besides being a brave thinker.

Of course, the Left sees him very differently.

10/3/12, 3:21 PM
Kiwiguy said...

That is a shock. I admired his courage in standing his ground against extremely hostile critics. No matter what people threw at him he would come back with more data and more analysis. My condolences to his loved ones. RIP.

10/3/12, 3:26 PM
jan said...

I met him some years ago in my hometown Ghent. He was a very kind person with a supperb sense of humor.

10/3/12, 3:35 PM
Truth said...

An excellent career move.

10/3/12, 3:50 PM
Anonymous said...

I hope someone takes his place!

10/3/12, 3:53 PM
Mencius Moldbug said...

How many had the same experience in discovering Dr. Rushton's work as me?

Of course the first time I heard the name, it was associated with pure Stalinist invective in the normal NYT / Stephen Jay Gould manner. It didn't help that he taught at the "University of Western Ontario," obviously some kind of diploma mill at a Hudson's Bay outpost which sold smallpox-infected sealskins to Eskimos. Presumably the Professor spent his mornings scribbling his racist screeds with a quill pen, his afternoons out in the tundra exterminating the Untermensch...

Not that anyone said that. It's just sort of what I assumed. It turns out I was assuming a lot of things. Racism, you see, was evil, because it was justified only by the notorious pseudoscientist Rushton. And others of his foul ilk. You could tell that Rushton was a pseudoscientist, obviously. Who but a pseudoscientist would be such a racist? He even associated with other racists - which goes past daring and all the way into crazy.

So here's to a great American racist - or at least, a great Canadian racist. You may be in the closet, I may be in the closet. But he wasn't.

Interestingly enough, the 20th-century communist neologism "racist" appears right around Professor Rushton's birthday:

http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=racism&year_start=1930&year_end=2012&corpus=5&smoothing=2

You can trace the progress of "political correctness," ie, American communism, effectively by following the path of this linguistic marker...

10/3/12, 4:01 PM
Anonymous said...

Sad to hear. What a brave man.

10/3/12, 4:06 PM
SFG said...

Sad, sad, and sad again.

Can't they treat that with exogenous cortisol now?

10/3/12, 4:08 PM
Gilbert Ratchet said...

I remember when the Toronto Star brought his theories to mainstream Canadian attention in 1989, and how I wished David Suzuki could have made an effective case against him using scientific evidence, rather than the point-and-sputter indignation of the professional Left (stronger in Canada as this is also a statement of national identity).

Of course, in the years since I have come to reevaluate his opinions.

10/3/12, 4:18 PM
Matra said...

Very sad. I remember his appearance on Geraldo Rivera's show and news programmes back in the late 80s or early 90s discussing his controversial theories. It was the first time I'd heard a respectable educated person (not a Hollywood casting skinhead) talk about racial differences. As an ignorant teenager I knew nothing of the subject. I don't recall any specific arguments either. I do however recall the reactions of his more, uh, tolerant and open-minded opponents. That was an eye-opener.

10/3/12, 4:23 PM
Anonymous said...

http://www.doublethinknot.com/2012/10/02/blacks-torture-and-kill-white-south-african-man-in-home-formerly-owned-by-hollywood-actress-charlize-therons-parents/

10/3/12, 4:43 PM
Anonymous said...

RIP. I had no idea he was ill. I just read a new commentary by him in The American Psychologist about race differences, probably his last paper. I've heard that he was very jovial and likable in person despite his reputation as possibly the most evil scientist alive. Philosopher Ian Hacking called Rushton an "ogre naturalist", an epithet that Rushton probably didn't mind.

Rushton's death also underlines how race realist thinking is in the doldrums in academia. Everybody pursuing such research is old and dying. It would be quite unthinkable for any younger researcher to publish the sort of ideas that Rushton is known for. Racial blank slatism has pervaded all research.

10/3/12, 4:46 PM
Anonymous said...

You can trace the progress of "political correctness," ie, American communism, effectively by following the path of this linguistic marker...

No. You can trace the origins of "political correctness" to the Frankfurt School:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjaBpVzOohs

10/3/12, 4:56 PM
Anonymous said...

I think Rushton's k-R theory of racial differences is absolutely true and is evident in things we see in everyday life.

10/3/12, 4:59 PM
B322 said...

I sent an email to Mr. Rushton, and received one in reply. I asked him how he could be so sure that Blacks have higher self-esteem than Whites. He referred me to Google Scholar.

It must have been a lonely fight. I often wondered if he got the Jared Taylor treatment when/if he spoke at his own uni.

Thanks for your work, Professor.

10/3/12, 5:00 PM
Anonymous said...

The Babe Ruth of HBD. I sent away for his condensed book - a couple of bucks. I shared it with all my friends. He will be sorely missed, especially for his bravery.

10/3/12, 5:00 PM
Anonymous said...

"An excellent career move."

Not funny, Truth. There's a time and a place, you know?

10/3/12, 5:22 PM
unix said...

Rushton will be among the heros in the quest for truth concerning the human organism. In the past 50 years, the current powers that be have done such injustice to innocent people in the name of what tptb insist is "equality."

10/3/12, 5:30 PM
nooffensebut said...

RIP

Here is my favorite debate in which he took part.

10/3/12, 5:31 PM
Anonymous said...

Olave d'Estienne said...
I often wondered if he got the Jared Taylor treatment when/if he spoke at his own uni.

Rushton published an account of the controversy that erupted after he spoke at an AAAS meeting on racial differences in Liberty magazine titled "The New Enemies of Evolutionary Science". A snippet:

Some radical and Black students mobilized and held rallies, even bringing in a member of the African National Congress to denounce me. In one demonstration, a mob of 40 people stormed through the psychology department, banging on walls and doors, bellowing slogans through bull horns, drawing swastikas on the walls, and writing on my door "Racist Pig Live Here."

The administration responded by barring me from the classroom and ordering me to lecture by videotape on the pretext that they could not protect me from the lawlessness of students. Again I launched formal grievances. After a term of enforced teaching by videotape, I won the right to resume teaching in person, though then I was required to run a gauntlet of demonstrators shouting protests and threats. Only after several forced cancellations of my classes did the administration warn the demonstrators that further action would lead to suspension and legal action.

You can read the whole thing here:

http://prometheism.net/version-zero/texts/enemies.htm

B.B.

10/3/12, 5:32 PM
IHTG said...

Truth, you ass.

10/3/12, 5:41 PM
Gilbert Ratchet said...

How do you know this, by the way? It doesn't seem to have broken anywhere else on the web yet.

10/3/12, 5:43 PM
anony-mouse said...

22 years longer than JFK.

10/3/12, 5:44 PM
Peter Frost said...

I first heard about Phil Rushton back in the 1980s. My initial reaction to his ideas was largely indifference. Then, as now, I felt he was trying to force-fit his data into a unified theory of everything.

My perception of him really changed in 1989 when the premier of Ontario, David Peterson, called on Western University to fire Rushton. When the university refused, the Attorney General of Ontario instructed the Ontario Provincial Police to investigate Rushton.

I couldn't believe this sort of thing was happening in my country and in "the free world." After several months, the investigation was dropped ... because he had done nothing wrong. But there never was any apology. And the "chill effect" on Canadian academia was profound.

I'm sorry to hear about his death. He'll be remembered as a voice in the wilderness. There are too few Phil Rushtons, and too many David Petersons.

10/3/12, 5:55 PM
FredR said...

When he was a graduate student, Rushton saw Hans Eysenck get physically assaulted by anti-racists while trying to give a speech.

It's impressive that he went into this controversial field even so.

10/3/12, 6:25 PM
Anonymous said...

RIP Rushton. Your memory and legacy live on.

10/3/12, 9:17 PM
Anonymous said...

I'm very sorry to hear about the passing of Phil Rushton.

I remember a Physical Anthro course 20+ yrs ago in which our Prof could tell the race of a subject from a bone, yet forced us all to write an essay proving we understood that race was a social construct, that Rushton was a racist & that racism was wrong. We were told that David Suzuki had shown these to be so, having conclusively beaten Rushton in a big debate.

Only this year did I finally see this debate:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9FGHtfnYWY

Rushton did nothing but tell the truth, while Suzuki did nothing but lie, demagogue, shame, guilt, threaten, misdirect & obfuscate.

Today, Suzuki is a Canadian hero. And Rushton has left us. I'm sad for that.

I salute Phil Rushton for courageously taking the road less travelled, & trust that History will be kinder to him than we all were.

10/3/12, 9:25 PM
Truth said...

"Not funny, Truth. There's a time and a place, you know?"

There's always a time and place for political correctness.

10/3/12, 9:36 PM
Mencius Moldbug said...

You can trace the origins of "political correctness" to the Frankfurt School

The term:

http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=politically+correct&year_start=1920&year_end=1990&corpus=0&smoothing=3

The original meaning is "compliant with the Party line." It is used in this in-group sense exclusively until the 1980s, when conservatives half-discover that their country has somehow become a communist one.

The "Frankfurt School" are a set of Continentals who become fashionable in Anglo-America. If Britain and America did not exist, they would never have been of any importance. You won't find anything significant in their work that isn't in, say, Bloomsbury:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloomsbury_Group

It's more fun to blame the likes of Marcuse, because he is a durned furriner (in a way, say, Lytton Strachey isn't). Like anti-Semitism, this distracts us from the actual source of the contagion. Which is, well, us.

10/3/12, 11:49 PM
Anonymous said...

A great man. Who will step up now?

10/4/12, 2:48 AM
Anonymous said...

Who will step up now?

Rushton's Differential K theory is actively investigated by a number of researchers. Are we brave enough to be as unapologetic about doing so as Rushton. I for one am not. Sometimes you simply have to concede that someone is a better man and admire what they have and you don't.

10/4/12, 5:05 AM
TGGP said...

Rushton should have been allowed to make his arguments in peace, but that doesn't excuse some spectacularly bad science on his part.

Keynes is probably the most famous member of Bloomsbury. He thought Marx had no merit as an economist, and had little regard for the Soviet Union (part of which he attributes to "some beastliness in the Russian nature — or in the Russian and Jewish natures when, as now, they are allied"). He was a eugenicist, and nowadays would be indicted for racist & anti-semitic attitudes. His most famous book had a special foreword in its German edition, noting that its policies would be easier to adopt in a totalitarian state (and Germany's recovery under Hitler is sometimes cited by Keynesians as evidence for the theory's merits). Equating Bloomsbury with Frankfurt is bullshit.

10/4/12, 4:14 PM
Anonymous said...

The term:

By "political correctness" I meant Cultural Marxism. The origins of this form of political correctness is the Frankfurt School.

It's more fun to blame the likes of Marcuse

It's not fun, it's the truth. This truth might not be very convenient for some, but it's still the truth. Your revisionism is unpersuasive.

10/4/12, 4:19 PM
Anonymous said...

Troof should heed that proverb about glass houses:

World region : Sub-Saharan Africa

Adult HIV prevalence (ages 15–49) : 5.0%

Total HIV cases : 22.5 million


AIDS deaths in 2005 : 1.3 million

(source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV/AIDS_in_Africa)

10/4/12, 4:37 PM
Anonymous said...

"Equating Bloomsbury with Frankfurt is bullshit." - TGGP

I will assert that Moldbug's Grand Unifying Weakness is his undying desire to dig anyone and anything German out of being blamed for anything. You can add up Prussian education, Marxism, Hatesongs Against England, Freudianism, Hitlerism, Marcuse, the Frankfurt School, and Atari Teenage Riot and tie them up into a neat bundle, but Robert Owen, Keynes, FDR*, and the guy who wrote Looking Backward always take the cake where evil is concerned.

Why? I don't know. It may be because of subtle (and impeccably Anglo-Saxon) sense that you shouldn't blame the country that lost all the World Wars. "When you've got your fellow on the mat...."

Having had my mind trodden upon by a dwarf for thirteen years in government schoolrooms, I'm inclined to blame Prussian education for almost everything. But that is my bias and I am aware of it. I don't believe Moldbug is aware of his bias. There is a sort of ideological justification for it: Moldbug has a soft spot for anarchism (though he notes it "doesn't scale, militarily"), and anarchism is much more heavily featured among continental than Anglo-American revolutionisms.

* I personally hate FDR's guts, dead though they may be.

10/4/12, 4:52 PM
Wenna said...

This is a terrible day. Rushton was a brave man in a time when brave men are reviled. But we are all indebted to him for his contribution to science.

10/4/12, 11:37 PM
TGGP said...

The guy who wrote "Looking Backwards" was Bellamy. And the book MM recommends on him, "Authoritarian Socialism in America" notes that Bellamy got his inspiration from travels in Germany! Also, Bellamy's ideas resemble MM's in some ways.

10/5/12, 3:29 PM
Anonymous said...

IHTG, how can you say that? All Truth did was raise a stink about the guy who trod roughly where Truth's skin is the thinnest and hardest to defend. That is nothing at all like being an ass!

Oh, wait, I take that back, it is exactly like being an ass.
Carry on.

10/5/12, 7:43 PM

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