Gerhard Meisenberg
Gerhard Meisenberg (2018)
Born (1953-01-22) 22 January 1953 (age 71)
Dortmund, Germany
Alma materUniversity of Bochum (M.Sc), University of Munich (Ph.D)[2]
Scientific career
FieldsBiochemistry
InstitutionsRoss University School of Medicine (c. 1984 – c. 2018)[1][2]
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.[1][2] 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]

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

References

  1. ^ a b Schoenberger, Chana R. (14 May 2001). "Palm Tree M.D.s". Forbes. Retrieved 8 May 2019. Biochemist Gerhard Meisenberg, a 17-year veteran...
  2. ^ a b c 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.
  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.
  4. ^
    • 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
  5. ^ Van der Merwe 2018.
  6. ^ a b Saini, Angela (2019). Superior: The Return of Race Science. Beacon Press. ISBN 9780807076910. Retrieved 7 May 2019.
  7. ^ Macarthur, Daniel (12 March 2009). "Race and intelligence: the debate continues". WIRED. Retrieved 6 September 2017.
  8. ^ Busby, Eleanor (2 May 2019). "Cambridge college sacks academic over links to far-right extremists". The Independent. Retrieved 7 May 2019.
  9. ^
  10. ^ Rindermann, H. (2018). Cognitive Capitalism: Human Capital and the Wellbeing of Nations. Cambridge University Press. pp. 410–412.
  11. ^ Saini, Angela (22 January 2018). "Racism is creeping back into mainstream science – we have to stop it". the Guardian. Retrieved 25 July 2018.
  12. ^ 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.
  13. ^ 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.
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