A mad science

In blogging about the "primacy" of science, I wrote about my lifelong worry over STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) without the humanities and the social sciences.

There are those who defend the "pure research" of science.  It is all about the curiosity and to make order out of the chaos, they say.  If you are nodding in agreement, then Adam Gopnik wants you to think about Josef Mengele.

Remember Mengele?  Wiki will refresh your memory:

He is mainly remembered for his actions at the Auschwitz concentration camp, where he performed deadly experiments on prisoners, and was a member of the team of doctors who selected victims to be killed in the gas chambers^[a] and was one of the doctors who administered the gas.

Yes, that Mengele.

Gopnik writes that Mengele’s work in Auschwitz was what we would call “pure research.”  Gopnik quotes from David G. Marwell's book, Mengele:

He pursued his science not as some renegade propelled solely by evil and bizarre impulses but rather in a manner that his mentor and his peers could judge as meeting the highest standards. . . . The notion of Mengele as unhinged, driven by demons, and indulging grotesque and sadistic impulses should be replaced by something even more unsettling. Mengele was, in fact, in the scientific vanguard, enjoying the confidence and mentorship of the leaders in his field. The science he pursued in Auschwitz, to the extent that we can reconstruct it, was not anomalous but rather consistent with research carried out by others in what was considered to be the scientific establishment.

The scientific establishment!

Mengele is gone, but the echoes of that scientific establishment are heard even today.  Like at the university where I earned my graduate degrees.

The building where my school was housed was called VKC, which was short for Von Kleinsmid Center. As I wrote in this 3-year old post, "That building was home to me through all the years that I was there."

It was named after the university's fifth president.  Well, he was a first-rate eugenicist too!

Eugenics was absolutely part of the "pure research" during his days.

All these years, the university let that slide.  And then George Floyd died.  Black Lives Matter started reverberating across the world.  The university acted quickly:

[The] executive committee of the USC Board of Trustees unanimously voted to remove the name and bust of Rufus Von KleinSmid from a prominent historic building on the University Park Campus. Both were removed last night. Students, faculty, staff, and the Nomenclature Policy Committee have pushed for this for years. He was the University’s fifth President, for 25 years. He expanded research, academic programs, and curriculum in international relations. But, he was also an active supporter of eugenics and his writings on the subject are at direct odds with USC’s multicultural community and our mission of diversity and inclusion

USC was founded in 1880.  Five years after that, in 1885, Stanford University was founded.  It's first president was David Starr Jordan.  "He was also one of the most influential eugenicists of the early 20th century."  And a white supremacist. A racist.

Unlike USC's swift action, Stanford is moving in the slow lane: "President Marc Tessier-Lavigne will appoint a committee to review requests that question views and practices of the university’s founding president and his mentor."

Mengele was, therefore, not that much of an outlier among the scientists of his day.  How terrible!  Gopnik writes, "Mengele was not, it turns out, a mad scientist. It was worse than that. He was participating in a mad science."