Francis Galton: Statistics, Eugenics and Racism

Sir Francis Galton (1822-1911) is generally recognized as one of the founders of modern mathematical statistics.   For Galton, this was no abstract intellectual exercise.  He developed statistical techniques as a way to justify a program he called "eugenics."  This meant selective breeding of "superior" people and selective elimination of "inferior" ones. 

Galton believed, based not on data but on his social views, that practically every human trait (including intelligence, temperament and more) followed a normal distribution.    He was a key figure in what came to be known as "scientific racism." 

Eugenics actually motivated the development of the statistics we still study today.

Galton's protegee and biographer Karl Pearson (1857-1936) played a key role in institutionalizing both statistics and eugenics in the Anglo-American world.  He became Britain's first Professor of Eugenics, appointed to the Galton Chair of Eugenics in 1911 after Galton bequeathed funds for this purpose to the University of London.  He claimed that Britain could improve itself by increased breeding of "the better races" and "by way of war with inferior races."  He argued against Jewish immigration to London and spoke approvingly of Germany's Nazi eugenics movement.  

Among Pearson's contributions to statistical theory are common techniques that are taught in every Elementary Statistics class:  the chi-squared test, the standard deviation, and coefficients of correlation and regression.

Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher  (1890 – 1962) was another pioneer of modern statistical science.   He analyzed the F-distribution, you will study in your Statistics class, and it was named for him.  Fisher popularized the use of the p-values you will use in hypothesis-testing.   

Fisher, too, promoted eugenics and explicitly endorsed racism.  When the UNESCO published The Race Question in 1950, a repudiation of Nazi theories of racial superiority and inferiority, Fisher openly opposed it.  

In recent years, historians have studied and written about the entwined origins of eugenics and statistics and about how the two became disentangled.  But many questions remain. 

"The tools that we use on a day to day basis to interrogate data and understand the world, were developed by white supremacists for the express purpose of demonstrating that white men are better than other people," writes Daniel Cleather in "Is Statistics Racist?" Links to an external site. ",  He asks, "Why don’t scientists worry about statistics’ sordid roots?"

In Statistics for Social Justice, we use statistical tools to expose and analyze racism in many aspects of society.  Is this a contradiction?  

Post your thoughts in the Discussion: Statistics, Eugenics and Racism.

Here is a recent article about How Eugenics Shaped Statistics Links to an external site..