John Philippe Rushton
From Metapedia
John Philippe (Phil) Rushton (born December 3, 1943) is a psychology professor at the University of Western Ontario, Canada, who is best known for his work on intelligence and racial differences, such as his book Race, Evolution And Behavior. Rushton also researches altruism from a number of perspectives.[1] Rushton is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American, British, and Canadian Psychological Associations. In 1988 he was made a Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and in 1992 he received a D.Sc. in psychology from the University of London. He is the current head of the Pioneer Fund.
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[edit] Biography
Rushton was born in Bournemouth, England where his father was a building contractor. His mother was of French descent. His family emigrated to South Africa where Rushton lived from age 4 to 8 (1948-1952). He lived for a time in Canada, and returned to England where he studied psychology at Birkbeck College at the University of London and graduated in 1970. In 1973, he received his Ph.D. from the London School of Economics after studying altruism among children. He was at the University of Oxford until 1974, and taught at York University in Canada from 1974-1976 and the University of Toronto until 1977 when he was hired at the University of Western Ontario and became a full professor in 1985. Rushton has published more than 250 articles and six books, including two on altruism, one on scientific excellence, and co-authored an introductory psychology textbook.[2] Over ten of his papers have appeared in Intelligence a journal for which Rushton sits on the editorial board along with seven other signatories of an opinion piece "Mainstream Science on Intelligence". [3] Co-signer Douglas K. Detterman is founder and editor of the journal that republished the opinion piece.
[edit] Work
[edit] Genetic similarity hypothesis
Rushton began his career with studies on altruism. He has hypothesized a heritable component in altruism and is the creator of the Genetic Similarity Theory, which asserts that individuals tend to be more altruistic to individuals who are genetically similar to themselves (kin selection), and less altruistic, and sometimes outwardly hostile to individuals who are less genetically similar. Rushton describes "ethnic conflict and rivalry" as "one of the great themes of historical and contemporary society" and suggests that it may have its roots in the evolutionary impact on individuals from groups "giving preferential treatment to genetically similar others." Rushton argues that "the makeup of a gene pool [i.e., a human population's total reservoir of alternative genes] causally affects the probability of any particular ideology being adopted."
[edit] Race evolution hypothesis
Rushton wrote Race, Evolution and Behavior (1995) in which he uses the r/K selection theory to explain why he found East Asians consistently averaged high, Blacks low, and Whites in the middle on characteristics which he claims are indicative of nurturing behavior on an evolutionary scale. Rushton began publishing his theory in 1984. He claims that East Asians and their descendants average a larger brain size, greater intelligence, more sexual restraint, slower rates of maturation, and greater law abidingness and social organization than do Europeans and their descendants, who average higher scores on these dimensions than Africans and their descendants.[1]Rushton contends that through the course of world history, there has been an anatomical correlation between brain weight and penis size, that is, the larger the brain, the smaller the penis. "It's a trade off, more brains or more penis. You can't have everything," he told Rolling Stone in 1994. [4]
[edit] Opinions on Rushton and his work
[edit] Support
Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson (one of the two co-founders of the r/K selection theory Rushton's cites) defends Rushton:
I think Phil is an honest and capable researcher. The basic reasoning by Rushton is solid evolutionary reasoning; that is, it is logically sound. If he had seen some apparent geographic variation for a non-human species-a species of sparrow or sparrow hawk, for example-no one would have batted an eye.[5]
Science journalist Peter Knudson stated:
Despite the occasional media stereotype of Rushton as some sort of incompetent scientific adventurist, he has throughout most of his career as a psychologist been seen as a highly competent researcher. He has published more than 100 papers, most of them, particularly those dealing with altruism, in highly respectable journals.[6]
Psychologist (and Pioneer Fund grantee) Hans Eysenck of the University of London said:
Professor Rushton is widely known and respected for the unusual combination of rigour and originality in his work... (and commenting on Rushton's book Race, Evolution and Behavior) ... Few concerned with understanding the problems associated with race can afford to disregard this storehouse of well-integrated information which gives rise to a remarkable synthesis.[2]
[edit] Criticisms of motivation and funding
Since 2002, Rushton has been the president of the Pioneer Fund. Tax records from 2000 show that his Charles Darwin Institute received $473,835 — 73% of that year's grants.[7] The Pioneer Fund has been listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group.[8][9] writes that Rushton has spoken on eugenics several times at conferences of the American Renaissance magazine, in which he has also published a number of articles.[10] Anti-racist Searchlight Magazine described one these meetings as a "veritable 'who’s who' of American white supremacy" but also that Rushton's "imputation that on 'average' Asians might have a higher IQ than whites left more than one diner at our table with a bitter taste in the mouth after an otherwise pleasant meal."[11]
Popular science commentator David Suzuki protested Rushton's racial theories and spoke out against Rushton in a live televised debate at the University of Western Ontario. "There will always be Rushtons in science," Suzuki said "and we must always be prepared to root them out!". "Oh, no!" exclaimed Rushton when asked if he himself believed in racial superiority. He went on to explain that "from an evolutionary point of view, superiority can only mean adaptive value--if it even means this. And we've got to realize that each of these populations is perfectly, beautifully adapted to their own ancestral environments."[12].
He has written articles for VDARE, a website that advocates reduced immigration into the United States.[13] Stefan Kühl wrote in his book The Nazi Connection: eugenics, American racism, and German national socialism that Rushton was a part of the revival of public interest in scientific racism in the 1980s.[14]
William H. Tucker, critic of the hereditarian point of view, states:
Rushton has not only contributed to American Renaissance publications and graced their conferences with his presence but also offered praise and support for the "scholarly" work on racial differences of Henry Garrett, who spent the last two decades of his life opposing the extension of the Constitution to blacks on the basis that the "normal" black resembled a European after frontal lobotomy. Informed of Garrett's assertion that blacks were not entitled to equality because their "ancestors were ... savages in an African jungle," Rushton dismissed the observation as quoted "selectively from Garrett's writing," finding nothing opprobrious in such sentiments because the leader of the scientific opposition to civil rights had made other statements about black inferiority that were, according to Rushton, "quite objective in tone and backed by standard social science evidence." Quite apart from the questionable logic in defending a blatant call to deprive citizens of their rights by citing Garrett's less offensive writing—as if it were evidence of Ted Bundy's innocence that there were some women he had met and not killed—there was no sense on Rushton's part that all of Garrett's assertions, whether or not "objective," were utterly irrelevant to constitutional guarantees, which are not predicated on scientific demonstrations of intellectual equality."[15]
The Southern Poverty Law Center has criticized for Rushton for another statement. "But people are pulling their hair out and are saying, ‘What about Toronto the Good? Where did it go to?’ What about Ottawa? I’m sure it is the same? What about Montreal? I’ll bet you it’s the same. I’ll bet it’s the same in every bloody city in Canada where you have black people. It’s inevitable that it won’t be."[16]
[edit] Criticisms of methodology
- See also: Race, Evolution and Behavior
There have been criticisms of Rushton's work in the scholarly literature, most of which Rushton has replied to, often in the same journals. For example, Zack Cernovsky, in the Journal of Black Studies, has made several criticisms, such as "some of Rushton's references to scientific literature with respects to racial differences in sexual characteristics turned out to be references to a nonscientific semipornographic book and to an article in the Penthouse Forum."[17]
Steven Cronshaw and colleagues wrote in a paper for the International Journal of Selection and Assessment in 2006 that psychologists should critically examine the science employed in Rushton's race-realist research. Through a re-analysis of the validity criteria for test bias using data reported in the Rushton et al. paper they assert that the testing methods were in fact biased against Black Africans. They disagree with other aspects of Rushton's methodology such as the use of non-equivalent groups in test samples.[18] Rushton replied in the next issue of the journal saying his results were valid and it was the criticisms that were wrong.[19]
Lisa Suzuki and Joshua Aronson of New York University wrote in 2005 that Rushton has ignored evidence that fails to support his position that IQ test score gaps represent a genetic racial hierarchy. He has not changed his position on this matter for 30 years.[20] Rushton replied in the same issue of the journal.[21]
After mailing a booklet to psychology, sociology, and anthropology professors across North America, Hermann Helmuth, a professor of anthropology at Trent University, asserted: "It is in a way personal and political propaganda. There is no basis to his scientific research." Rushton said, "It's not racist, it's a matter of science and recognizing variation in all groups of people."[22]
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Rushton's UWO faculty page with links to selected publications
- Rushton's personal page and curriculum vitae
- Biography from the Pioneer Fund
- Abridged version of Race, Evolution, and Behavior
- "Psych prof accused of racism" The Gazette of UWO February 1, 2000
- Review of "Race, Evolution, and Behavior" including a discussion of circumstances surrounding its publication by Irving Horowitz.
- Journal: Intelligence - List of editorial board members.
- Article on StormWiki
[edit] Works by Rushton
- "The New Enemies of Evolutionary Science", essay by Rushton
- "The Mismeasures of Gould", Rushton, 1997.
[edit] Pro-Rushton
- "Academia's road to ruin", editorial by Ian Hunter
- "Race, Rushton, And Us: Getting Used To What We Can't Change"
- "Paternal Provisioning versus Mate Seeking in Human Populations", Edward M. Miller, 1994. An alternative explanation for Rushton's racial triochotomy, derived from parental investment theory instead of differential K theory.
