I agree that it combines things to try to form a more rhetorically convincing argument, but to me, most of them are convincing on their own. I think it's also

I agree that it combines things to try to form a more rhetorically convincing argument, but to me, most of them are convincing on their own. I think it's also more representative of the author's view that he believes that it was precisely the extreme conviction that white, European society was morally, culturally, and genetically superior that led to the development of methods that were devoid of a preference for position (and thus completely objective) that led to many of the confusing methods in use today. I also think there's a useful distinction to be made between the terms "genetics" and "eugenics". I don't think anyone would argue that there aren't meaningful genetic differences between different groups of humans. It's the degree of extremity and the sheer horror of the conclusions drawn and methods advocated for by eugenicists that makes the distinction. Like yes, an increased probability of sickle cell anemia is a direct result of a population's adaption to an environment rife with Malaria, but that doesn't justify (I'm vaguely paraphrasing Pearson or Galton from memory here) the genocide and replacement of those people with those more capable of exploiting the natural resources of their environment (meaning white Victorian aristocrats, or at least slaves "employed" by white, Victorian aristocrats). It's interesting to see conversations around human genomic differences rise up again with things like CRISPR, and I guess that would fall under "eugenics" but it's clearly not the same thing. I also take issue with the idea that "it's not the science that's bad" in even tacit defense of early 1900s eugenicists. It's very telling to read the descriptions of the studies and conclusions that Galton, Pearson, and Fisher performed. It's telling to watch them discount clear counter-examples or re-define the desirability of traits, to watch them call an aristocrat industrious and a Jewish migrant greedy, to watch them all but spell out exactly what their conclusions are, develop methods "devoid of opinion" and of "pure objectivity through data," and then unabashedly call for the justified forced sterilization, mass genocide, and the denigration of non-white, non-aristocratic, non-male, non-Europeans as deterministically inferior. Sorry for the rant. I wasn't aware of the horrific history of statistics when I decided to take it up, and now I take it as a person mission to fight against the "let the data speak for themselves" attitude. I want to make sure people know what "objective in-difference" with implicit assumptions can justify. Maybe more to the point of your points :D : 1. Yea, not much more to say about that. 2. We do agree based on our conversation elsewhere in these threads. 3. It is bad because of both its immoral position and its faulty scientific work. The justification is equivalent to that of any of the latest unrepeatable studies on power posing and finite will power. 4. Again, it was intentionally misleading (as much as someone wholeheartedly convinced of something is misleading), and doesn't stand up to even contemporary criticisms (IMO). I do think we have objective standards, but I don't think those objective standards are reflected or implied by NHST. Nor do I think a modern person using NHST is somehow a eugenicist by transitivity. It's more that my position is NHST has infected the scientific community precisely because of its self-reported objectivity. I think it's my field's (statistics) personal failure to bear. I think we stayed content too long as the dispensers of "objective methods" without really doing a good job of stressing the nuances and frailties associated with any particular method.