ArticleScience and engineering ethics2013
Karl Pearson and eugenics: personal opinions and scientific rigor.
Article in Science and engineering ethics, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- Confronting the Legacy of Eugenics and Ableism: Towards Anti-Ableist Bioscience Education.CBE life sciences education · 2024Article
- Reexamining the use of race in medical algorithms: the maternal health calculator debate.Frontiers in public health · 2024Article
- Ten simple rules for socially responsible science.PLoS computational biology · 2023Article
- On zombies, struldbrugs, and other horrors of the scientific literature.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
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Abstract
The influence of personal opinions and biases on scientific conclusions is a threat to the advancement of knowledge. Expertise and experience does not render one immune to this temptation. In this work, one of the founding fathers of statistics, Karl Pearson, is used as an illustration of how even the most talented among us can produce misleading results when inferences are made without caution or reference to potential bias and other analysis limitations. A study performed by Pearson on British Jewish schoolchildren is examined in light of ethical and professional statistical practice. The methodology used and inferences made by Pearson and his coauthor are sometimes questionable and offer insight into how Pearson's support of eugenics and his own British nationalism could have potentially influenced his often careless and far-fetched inferences. A short background into Pearson's work and beliefs is provided, along with an in-depth examination of the authors' overall experimental design and statistical practices. In addition, portions of the study regarding intelligence and tuberculosis are discussed in more detail, along with historical reactions to their work.
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23179067What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.