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Articles by Theodore M. Porter
Democracy counts: On sacred and debased numbers
Democracy depends on numbers. This has been recognized since the founding of the American republic. The US Constitution defined terms for periodic elections and for the reapportionment of representatives among the states as their populations grew. Unfortunately, not all terms were commendable. The new republic was made half slave and half free by design, in a manner as absurd as it was shameful and degrading.
Five ways to ensure that models serve society: a manifesto
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The COVID-19 pandemic illustrates perfectly how the operation of science changes when questions of urgency, stakes, values and uncertainty collide — in the ‘post-normal’ regime. Well before the coronavirus pandemic, statisticians were debating how to prevent malpractice such as p-hacking, particularly when it could influence policy1. Now, computer modelling is in the limelight, with politicians presenting their policies as dictated by ‘science’2.
By Andrea Saltelli, Gabriele Bammer, Erica Charters, Monica Di Fiore, Emmanuel Didier, Wendy Espeland, John Kay, Samuele Lo Piano, Deborah Mayo, Roger Pielke Jr, Theodore M. Porter, Arnald Puy, Ismael Ràfols, Jerome Ravetz, Erik Reinert, Daniel Sarewitz, Philip Stark, Andrew Stirling, Paolo Vineis Verified, Tommaso Portaluri
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Nature
Verified
Using Data to Understand the World
THE ART OF STATISTICS: How to Learn from Data. David Spiegelhalter. 426 pp. Basic Books, 2019. $32. Can statistics be understood without mathematical formulas? Yes, up to a point. The Art of Statistics: How to Learn from Data, by David Spiegelhalter, is an introduction to the study of data and statistics for interested readers; it resembles in some ways an introductory textbook but is much less formal. The book emphasizes basic concepts and tools of data representation and leaves out the algebra.
Should We Reopen the Asylums?
In 1939 the British physician Lionel Penrose published an article that described an inverse relationship between prisons and asylums—the so-called Penrose Hypothesis. Widely respected in medical circles for his pioneering work on Down syndrome and other hereditary disorders, Penrose was better known for applying mathematical formulas to nagging social issues.
What Mental Asylums Reveal About Human Heredity
What Mental Asylums Reveal About Human Heredity People speak of genes and DNA nowadays as if they were as tangible as English peas and Ferris wheels, and as if the personal traits that matter to us correspond to impalpable entities identified by modern genetics and genomics. The human concern with heredity is, of course, much older.Read Full Article »
The archives of madness tell their own story of genetics – Theodore M Porter | Aeon Essays
People speak of genes and DNA nowadays as if they were as tangible as English peas and Ferris wheels, and as if the personal traits that matter to us correspond to impalpable entities identified by modern genetics and genomics. The human concern with heredity is, of course, much older. Charles Darwin’s cousin Francis Galton began preaching human improvement through planned breeding in 1865, and his name is still practically synonymous with the eugenics movement, which took off a few decades later.
Eugenic Madness Before We Even Had a Word for Eugenics
Theodore M. Porter is a professor of history at UCLA and author of Genetics in the Madhouse: The Unknown History of Human Heredity. It is often dismissed now in terms like these. A century ago, most educated people thought of eugenics the way we think now of genetics, as a base of scientific knowledge that can make us healthier, more attractive, more efficient. It fell out of favor in the 1950s and 1960s, when the word came to be associated with Nazi forced sterilization campaigns.
The fetishization of quantification
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