Emil O W Kirkegaard

Hi Andy! Read both. The Quillette piece cites narrowly scoped anthropological findings and applies them to arguments outside of the scope of the original, arguing, for example, that cranial differences indicate we must therefore accept psychological differences as racialized. 1/?https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1139279894515310592 …

Indeed, when it comes to the core argument of the Quillette piece, which is that anthropological findings of differences between ethnicities in physiological characteristics must, therefore, mean that there is variation in *cognitive* ability between races.

Citations for this argument include historical studies about the influence of different types of agricultural on the development of differing cultures - which is NOT about race, nor about cognition. But in digging on their citations, I found something else fishy.

In order to support their leap that superficial physiological characteristics must also lead one to conclude that cognitive differences must be present, the Quillette piece links to two papers. The first of which is a study of genetic disease in medieval Jews. The 2nd is... well.

(CW: child sexual abuse) The second piece links to an article with a host of problems, so I'll just start at the top. The article's primary author is Emil O.W. Kierkegaard, a Danish "philosopher" well known for saying pedophiles should be allowed to rape sleeping children.