I don't normally like to blog about anything even remotely serious. And I also don't normally like to blog about my alma mater, Yale University. But I am making an exception because of a story that gained a fair amount of traction on the internet a few weeks ago (I always come in late in my blogging), and which is way too stupid to be allowed to pass without comment.
The story in question appears in the Telegraph under the title "The Plot to Create Britain's Super Race". And in general it appears to have been accepted uncritically.
The Yale Herald's blog described the story as "very unsettling and creepy" and "disturbing stuff". (I used to write for the Yale Herald, but that was a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.)
The story consists of two facts:
1. During World War II, members of the Yale faculty invited 125 children of Oxford faculty members to live in New Haven.
2. Many member of the Yale faculty at the time were interested in eugenics.
Supposedly these facts mean that there was a secret plot in place in which the Oxford children would return to England after the war and form the basis for a new, intellectually superior population. There is, however, absolutely no evidence presented to link Fact 1 and Fact 2, only wild speculation. Nor is there any indication of how 125 individuals could make any difference in the hereditary characteristics of a nation of millions of people. This entire idea of a secret eugenics plot is completely unsupported, yet it was published in a major British newspaper, and believed in its entirety at Yale, where people are supposed to be smart.
Maybe if someone had succeeded in creating a super race, those superbeings would have been able to understand how ridiculous this story is.
People are desperate to ascribe meaning to things. It's one of the central tenets of human psychology. (I learned that in a class at Yale.)
ReplyDeleteThe problem is that sometimes two events happen that are utterly unrelated, and we try to ascribe meaning to them anyway. Thus spawning some bizarre conspiracy theory, like this one.