Talk:American Eugenics Society

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Seems like there must have been connection between this org and the Eugenics Record Office besides Harry H. Laughlin. The Laughlin article mentions the AES only in passing, and the ERO and AES articles each fail to mention the other.  ?? Mwanner 14:22, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)

So nobody finds this worthy of an article/research?--Shink X 19:04, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

There are some great resources listed in the external links section of Eugenics. Go for it. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 20:59, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

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BetacommandBot (talk) 17:32, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Eugenics: Positive or negative?

Did the American Eugenics Society favor positive or negative eugenics? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 160.94.47.16 (talk) 19:58, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Eugenics by definition is for a more genetically positive race.96.234.160.68 (talk) 23:43, 17 December 2019 (UTC)ClaybourneAmans

The meaning of the words "positive" and "negative" depends on context. In this context, "positive" means "encourage the reproduction of superior people, who are like me", and "negative" means "discourage the reproduction of inferior people, who are not like me (and if I am impatient, kill them off)". --Hob Gadling (talk) 07:49, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

Answer to your question

Its main thrust has changed greatly over the years. It's important to keep in mind the whole subject of Eugenics has a very poisoned origin. Depending on who was running AES, and the mores and attitudes of society, it promoted its aims to be anything from what most people today would consider unquestioningly unacceptable all the way down to what is merely a troublesome concept minus the nasty details. The organization today still seems interested in the overall subject of how social forces impact human evolution but the word 'Eugenics' has basically become a lightning rod and a deservedly unmentionable word. It gets suspiciously close these days to the subject, but seems to have worked overtime to mute a still very unsettled past of recklessly defining, and enlisting society's help in actively weeding out 'inferior' racial and hereditary traits. People are still alive today who were victims of the 'educational' efforts and influence of the AES.

You can find much good information on these two pages:

http://www.ferris.edu/HTMLS/othersrv/isar/archives2/sources/aes.htm

http://www.amphilsoc.org/mole/view?docId=ead/Mss.575.06.Am3-ead.xml

Ssybesma (talk) 04:24, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

C0rrection required:-List of Presidents

Robert Retherford the physicist linked on the article died in 1981, is listed as being president from 1991 to 1994. The Robert Retherford that was the present is someone different. Please correct.

75.49.251.113 (talk) 11:42, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

Renaming?

Why is this page entitled "American Eugenics Society" when they've since renamed themselves? Shouldn't it be referred to using the name that they've chosen for themselves rather than the popular name? A redirect from 'American Eugenics Society' to the new, renamed page should then be established. SyntaxBlitz (talk) 12:59, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

I changed the name of the article from the American Eugenics Society to the Society for Biodemography and Social Biology. The previous names of the Society will still redirect to this article. This name change is in accordance with Wikipedia's reasons to move a page. "The subject of the article has changed its name and the new name has come into majority use." Wikipedia:Moving_a_page#Reasons_for_moving_a_page. The Society's website and all of their academic journals reflect this name change, so the new name has come into majority use. Misscosmo (talk) 18:27, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

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Requested move 15 November 2023

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) -- Maddy from Celeste (WAVEDASH) 11:08, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

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Society for Biodemography and Social Biology → American Eugenics Society – The society is now dissolved and is still overwhelmingly referred to as the American Eugenics Society (see ngram). ~ F4U (talk • they/it) 21:40, 15 November 2023 (UTC) — Relisting. Arbitrarily0 ^(talk) 05:20, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

Question. Do you have other examples of pages that reverted to an older name? I am hesitant to do so because that's not the final name of the organization. Mason (talk) 04:28, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

@Smasongarrison Having articles with the title being the older name of the organization is not uncommon, it's just that the current name often tends to be the most commonly used name for most articles. However, in this case, the ngram demonstrates that "American Eugenics Society" is by far and unambiguously the WP:COMMONNAME (I would go as far and say that this organization is really only notable under their previous name).

As for examples, there's National Guardian, Turkey, Blip.tv, Marvel Productions, Secretary for Mines (New South Wales), Rowntrees F.C., Twitter, etc. ~ F4U (talk • they/it) 19:15, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

I appreciate your efforts in finding examples; those are very helpful. In terms of commonname, I'm only seeing AES in the ngram [1]. The other two names ("Society for Biodemography and Social Biology" and "Society for the Study of Social Biology") in your link are both "longer than five words. Omitting ngram from results." according to google error message I'm getting. So I don't really see how the ' the ngram demonstrates that "American Eugenics Society" is by far and unambiguously the WP:COMMONNAME' ) Mason (talk) 19:48, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

Ah, my bad, this is the one I meant to send: [2] ~ F4U (talk • they/it) 20:13, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

Gotcha! Thanks. So I actually tried those variants. But, I didn't find them particularly compelling, because the names being compared had to be shortened in order to make the software work. I'm not confident that we can assume that the data underlying this graph are comparable. My data scientist senses are tingling... but I can dig into it, so see if I can understand what's happening under the hood.

Regardless, I'm pretty conflicted over the name. On the one hand, I think I'm extra hesitant to revert to the old name because I know several of the people who were involved in the organization after the rename (and they're never have joined under the old name and major organization turnover). But, on the other hand, I also believe that organizations like this one *need* to grapple with their legacy with eugenics. Mason (talk) 20:51, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

I don't see an issue with using shortened portions of the names since the results will still inclusive of the longer variants (and if anything are overestimates of true usage). You can also compare Google Scholar results here: American Eugenics Society vs Society for Biodemography and Social Biology or Society for the Study of Social Biology (the majority of the results for the latter two coming from the society itself), which also show a major difference in coverage. ~ F4U (talk • they/it) 09:08, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

"results will still inclusive of the longer variants" That's the thing I'm not convinced about. It really depends on how the data are handled on the backend. Mason (talk) 13:55, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

From my experience using Google ngram, I don't see any way that the results wouldn't be inclusive.

Regardless, the Google Scholar results also clearly evidence that the activities of the society following the name change are frankly not notable. Even after its dissolution, journals and books have continued to publish academic works about the society—but they don't call it the "Society for Biodemography" in these works, they call it the "American Eugenics Society". There are still tens of publications each year discussing/examining the "American Eugenics Society"; on the other hand, I see very few, if any, secondary publications in the past fifty years discussing the society using either of the newer names. ~ F4U (talk • they/it) 19:16, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

I'm glad that you're confident from your experiences using ngram. But I'd need to know a lot more about how the corpus is created, how the data processed and how much is actually indexed. My skimming of a PLOS one paper [3] cautions against using the ngram as a measure of popular usage. So for me, I don't think that the case is really that clear cut. Mason (talk) 00:49, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

• Support per nom. After an organization closes, it often makes the most sense to pick the most "notable" title over its full career rather than merely the name at the end, especially if it was less relevant in its final years. The 2008-2019 period of the Society doesn't appear to have been very relevant. SnowFire (talk) 04:56, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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