J. Philippe Rushton, author of controversial essay on race and brain size, dies at 68
Controversial social psychologist J. Philippe Rushton, whose name was indelibly linked with his theories of race and brain size, has died at the age of 68.
Rushton, a professor at the University of Western Ontario since 1977, died Tuesday at the London Health Sciences Centre of Addison’s disease.
The British-born Rushton published more than 200 academic papers and five books during his career but was best known for Race, Evolution and Behavior: A Life History Perspective (see a review here).
The uproar caused by his 1989 paper that led to the book provoked then-Ontario premier David Peterson to say he should be fired. Rushton and environmentalist and geneticist David Suzuki argued the theories in a highly publicized debate in 1989.
full: http://www.thestar.com/news/obituary/article/1267238--j-philippe-rushton-author-of-controversial-race-and-brain-size-essay-dies-at-68
Salon.com also re-printed an article by the Southern Poverty Law Center reviewing Rushton's legacy, quoting a professor commenting that the death of Rushton marked "the end of an era of academic racists of his style and notoriety." The article noted that Rushton "postulated that brain and genital size are inversely related, implying that whites are more intelligent than blacks and that Asians are the smartest of all."
The Jan./Feb. 1995 issue of Extra! magazine (a publication of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) noted:
Rushton was reprimanded by his school, the University of Western Ontario, for accosting people in a local shopping mall and asking them how big their penises were and how far they could ejaculate. "A zoologist doesn't need permission to study squirrels in his backyard," he groused (Rolling Stone, 10/20/94).
I first learned about this creep Rushton when a conservative blogger cited Rushton's work in an article "The Hunger Games: Proof that white ethnocentrism is natural" (actual serious title!) quoting an article by VDARE: "Importantly, the implicit brain includes mechanisms related to ethnocentrism. There are several different evolved mechanisms that make us prefer people like ourselves and be wary of people in outgroups. Phil Rushton's Genetic Similarity Theory...Birds of a feather do indeed flock together. People tend to make friends and marry people who are like themselves on a wide range of traits, from IQ and personality, to ethnic group and even wrist size."
= new reply since forum marked as read
