ArticleBehavior genetics2026
Was the Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study Abhorrent or Just Controversial?
Article in Behavior genetics, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
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.
The trial behind it
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Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
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Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
The Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study (MTRAS) has been a source of enduring controversy due to its goal of addressing genetic and environmental explanations of Black-White IQ differences. The study followed the intellectual development of 130 Black and interracial children adopted into relatively advantaged White households. However, contrary to the initial interpretations of its original researchers, MTRAS became a tool for hereditarian racial ideologies. Its findings were appropriated and publicized by figures associated with racist research agendas, such as J. Philippe Rushton. We contend that the design of MTRAS was never capable of achieving its most ambitious scientific aims and, as a result, unintentionally contributed to a body of speculative literature that leveraged its inconclusive findings to support harmful discriminatory ideologies. To the extent that MTRAS was both limited in scientific value and potentially harmful, this paper examines the question: was MTRAS abhorrent race science?
Identifiers
42397652What 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.