Gerhard Meisenberg

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Gerhard Meisenberg
Gerhard Meisenberg (cropped).jpg
Gerhard Meisenberg (2018)
Born (1953-01-22) 22 January 1953 (age 71)
Dortmund, Germany
Alma mater University of Bochum (M.Sc), University of Munich (Ph.D) [1]
Scientific career
Fields Biochemistry
Institutions Ross University School of Medicine (c. 1984 – c. 2018) [2] [1]
Thesis  (1981)

Gerhard Meisenberg (born 22 January 1953) is a German biochemist. As of 2018, he was a professor of physiology and biochemistry at Ross University School of Medicine in Dominica. [2] [1] He is a director, with Richard Lynn, of the Pioneer Fund, which has been described as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. [3] He was, until 2018 or 2019, the editor-in-chief of Mankind Quarterly , which is commonly described as a white supremacist journal and purveyor of scientific racism. [4]

Contents

Meisenberg was on the editorial board for the journal Intelligence until late 2018. [5] [6] :79 Geneticist Daniel MacArthur, writing for Wired , described a letter Meisenberg sent to Nature as advocating for the future use of selective breeding or genetic engineering if group genetic differences in intelligence are found. [7] Meisenberg attended and helped organize the London Conference on Intelligence, [6] :81 [8] and was one of 15 attendees to collaborate on a letter defending the conference following media reports of its ties to white supremacy, neo-Nazism, and racist pseudoscience. [9]

Research

Meisenberg has proposed a model of economic development in nations that attempts to predict future development based on historical trends in intelligence, education and economic growth. [10]

Science journalist Angela Saini, in an opinion for The Guardian , has said that Meisenberg's views on race and intelligence are "unsupported by evidence" and "generally receive little to no attention from within the everyday scientific community". [11]

Meisenberg wrote and self-published the 2007 book In God's Image: The Natural History of Intelligence and Ethics, claiming that genotype determines both physiology and behavior. Evolutionary biologist and historian R. Paul Thompson, for The Quarterly Review of Biology , described the book as well written, but based on unsupported generalizations, saying "the overall program of the book [is] too extreme, too ideologically driven, and too biologically and anthropologically unsophisticated." [12] Anthropologist Jonathan M. Marks, for the International Journal of Primatology , criticized both the underlying premise of the work, and Meisenberg's "uncritical and cavalier approach" to the topic. Marks compared the book with those by J. Philippe Rushton and Immanuel Velikovsky. [13]

Books

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References

  1. 1 2 3 As of July 2018, Meisenberg was listed as faculty one Ross University's website:
    "Gerhard Meisenberg". medical.rossu.edu. Archived from the original on 26 July 2018. Retrieved 25 July 2018.
    As of May 2019, he was no longer listed.
  2. 1 2 Schoenberger, Chana R. (14 May 2001). "Palm Tree M.D.s". Forbes. Retrieved 8 May 2019. Biochemist Gerhard Meisenberg, a 17-year veteran...
  3. Van der Merwe, Ben (19 February 2018). "It might be a pseudo science, but students take the threat of eugenics seriously". New Statesman. Retrieved 6 March 2019.
    • Van der Merwe 2018
    • Jackson Jr., John P.; Winston, Andrew S. (7 October 2020). "The Mythical Taboo on Race and Intelligence". Review of General Psychology. 25 (1): 3–26. doi:10.1177/1089268020953622. S2CID   225143131.
    • Joe L. Kincheloe, et al., Measured Lies: The Bell Curve Examined, Palgrave Macmillan, 1997, p. 39
    • Ibrahim G. Aoudé, The ethnic studies story: politics and social movements in Hawaiʻi, University of Hawaii Press, 1999, pg. 111
    • Kenneth Leech, Race, Church Publishing, Inc., 2005, pg. 14
    • William H. Tucker, The funding of scientific racism: Wickliffe Draper and the Pioneer Fund, University of Illinois Press, 2002, pg. 2
  4. Van der Merwe 2018.
  5. 1 2 Saini, Angela (2019). Superior: The Return of Race Science. Beacon Press. ISBN   9780807076910 . Retrieved 7 May 2019.
  6. Macarthur, Daniel (12 March 2009). "Race and intelligence: the debate continues". WIRED. Retrieved 6 September 2017.
  7. Busby, Eleanor (2 May 2019). "Cambridge college sacks academic over links to far-right extremists". The Independent. Retrieved 7 May 2019.
  8. Rindermann, H. (2018). Cognitive Capitalism: Human Capital and the Wellbeing of Nations. Cambridge University Press. pp. 410–412.
  9. Saini, Angela (22 January 2018). "Racism is creeping back into mainstream science – we have to stop it". the Guardian. Retrieved 25 July 2018.
  10. Thompson, Paul (June 2008). "Reviewed Work: In God's Image: The Natural History of Intelligence and Ethics by Gerhard Meisenberg". The Quarterly Review of Biology . 83 (2): 195–196. doi:10.1086/590587.
  11. Marks, Jonathan (2 October 2007). "Gerhard Meisenberg: In God's Image. The Natural History of Intelligence and Ethics". International Journal of Primatology . 28 (5): 1189–1190. doi:10.1007/s10764-007-9194-9. S2CID   37983316.