It is well known that Skinner founded the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior because other journals were disinterested in studies that focused on the behavior of individual organisms. Less well documented is the relationship between methods Skinner rejected and eugenics, the effort to alter human gene pools by excluding those judged to be inferior. In this talk, I will discuss documents published by the developers of mathematical techniques for analyzing large sets of data that overtly offered pseudo-scientific legitimacy to the practices of military imperialism and genocide. I will provide evidence of links between scientific racism and the widespread adoption in medical, psychological, and educational sciences of empirical epistemologies that allow for those at the tail ends of a distribution to be ignored or abandoned. I will provide evidence that Skinner persistently rejected the eugenic dream that was prevalent during his lifetime but that he may have needed to exercise caution in how strongly he decried these practices. Finally, I will comment on recent events that have resulted in a period of reckoning for the field of behavior analysis. If we are truly a field that advances by assessing the needs of individual organisms and tailoring unique interventions to help them flourish, then we are likely to survive this period of reckoning, realign with Skinner’s anti-eugenicist inclinations, and help the world make progress toward a more just and equitable future.
Learning Objectives:
Identify racist and genocidal ideas in seminal works by Sir Francis Galton, Karl Pearson, and Ronald Fisher.
Analyze writings by dominant medical, psychological, and educational researchers adopting the methods and social agenda promoted by Galton and his colleagues.
Examine writings by BF Skinner on the implications of a concern focused on the behavior of individual organisms.
Discuss relationships between the neurodiversity and diversity, equity, and inclusion movements and the field of behavior analysis