27-02-2013, 01:19 PM
Magda Hassan Wrote:Well, JP Rushton would say that because his pay check depends on it. He is a long time recipient of grants by the Pioneer Fund. For ten years until his death Rushton was a director of the Pioneer Fund. All of Rushton's racist works have been well and truly trounced by others. Your friend needs to do more reading. They clearly haven't done much at all. Rushton is not taken seriously by any one with real understanding of biology and psychology. When challenged in a public discussion with a real scientist who specializes in genetics, David Suzuki, it is clear Rushton is completely out of his depth. There are several threads here on Wickliffe Draper here
I thought Rushton was President of and essentially became The Pioneer Fund from 2002 til he coughed black blood and died last year.
Help me explain to me crazy friend (crazier than me, at least. And I keep cats. Give them names. Try to teach them martial arts.) why this source of funding would taint anything that it was associated with, let alone writings on race. That's one of the things she just doesn't get.
The volume of my friend's reading is not really the problem. Her problem is selective dismissal. Anything she reads that supports her crazy = gold. Anything that doesn't, she goes after fine points of grammar.
I've found a lot of rebuttals. But I can never have too many. She's got a real zest for Peer Reviewed sources.
I watched the Rushton-Suzuki debate. It seemed to me that Rushton won. At least, he did by the standards of my Middle School Debate squad. He was in control, calm, clear, presented his argument cogently and understandably. Suzuki seemed rather fraught, kept repeating Lewontin without really explaining him.
Or rather, it seemed Rushton won right up until he was asked about the Pioneer Fund and lied. That was where I became convinced that I had to convince my friend that she didn't have a rhetorical leg to stand on.