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Dysgenics refers to any decrease in the prevalence of traits deemed to be either socially desirable or generally adaptive to their environment due to selective pressure disfavouring their reproduction.

In 1915 the term was used by David Starr Jordan to describe the supposed deleterious effects of modern warfare on group-level genetic fitness because of its tendency to kill physically healthy men while preserving the disabled at home. Similar concerns had been raised by early eugenicists and social Darwinists during the 19th century, and continued to play a role in scientific and public policy debates throughout the 20th century.

More recent concerns about supposed dysgenic effects in human populations were advanced by the controversial psychologist and self-described "scientific racist" Richard Lynn, notably in his 1996 book Dysgenics: Genetic Deterioration in Modern Populations, which argued that changes in selection pressures and decreased infant mortality since the Industrial Revolution have resulted in an increased propagation of deleterious traits and genetic disorders.

Despite these concerns, genetic studies have shown no evidence for dysgenic effects in human populations. Reviewing Lynn's book, the scholar John R. Wilmoth notes: "Overall, the most puzzling aspect of Lynn's alarmist position is that the deterioration of average intelligence predicted by the eugenicists has not occurred."

See also

• Degeneration theory – Concept from the 18th and 19th centuries
• Devolution (biology) – Notion that species can revert to primitive forms
• Flynn effect – 20th-century rise in intelligence test scores
• Heritability of IQ – Percent of variation in IQ scores in a given population associated with genetic variation
• List of congenital disorders
• List of biological development disorders
• Recent human evolution – Biological evolution of Homo sapiens from 50,000 years ago until present

References

1. Rédei, George P. (2008). Encyclopedia of Genetics, Genomics, Proteomics, and Informatics, Volume 1. Springer. p. 572. ISBN 978-1-4020-6755-6.
2. Jordan, David Starr (2003). War and the Breed: The Relation of War to the Downfall of Nations (Reprint ed.). Honolulu: University Press of the Pacific. ISBN 978-1-4102-0900-9.
3. Carlson, Elof Axel (2001). The Unfit: A History of a Bad Idea. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press. pp. 189–193. ISBN 9780879695873.
4. Carlson, Elof Axel (2001). The Unfit: A History of a Bad Idea. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press. ISBN 9780879695873.
5. • Min, Alex (18 November 2020). "Racist Pseudoscience Has No Place At Harvard". Harvard Political Review. Lynn is a self-described 'scientific racist'...
   • Sehgal, Parul (12 February 2020). "Charles Murray Returns, Nodding to Caution but Still Courting Controversy". The New York Times. Richard Lynn, for example, a self-described 'scientific racist,' ...
   • Evans, Gavin (2 March 2018). "The unwelcome revival of 'race science'". The Guardian. ...Richard Lynn, who has described himself as a 'scientific racist'.
6. ^ Fischbach, Karl-Friedrich; Niggeschmidt, Martin (2022). "Do the Dumb Get Dumber and the Smart Get Smarter?". Heritability of Intelligence. Springer. pp. 37–39. doi:10.1007/978-3-658-35321-6_9. ISBN 978-3-658-35321-6. S2CID 244640696. Since the nineteenth century, a 'race deterioration' has been repeatedly predicted as a result of the excessive multiplication of less gifted people. Nevertheless, the educational and qualification level of people in the industrialized countries has risen strongly. The fact that the 'test intelligence' has also significantly increased, is difficult to explain for supporters of the dysgenic thesis: they suspect that the 'phenotypic intelligence' has increased for environmental reasons, while the 'genotypic quality' secretly decreases. There is neither evidence nor proof for this theory. Citations in original omitted.
7. Lynn, Richard (1997). Dysgenics: Genetic Deterioration in Modern Populations (PDF). Praeger Publishers. ISBN 9780275949174.
8. Conley, Dalton; Laidley, Thomas; Belsky, Daniel W.; Fletcher, Jason M.; Boardman, Jason D.; Domingue, Benjamin W. (14 June 2016). "Assortative mating and differential fertility by phenotype and genotype across the 20th century". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 113 (24): 6647–6652. Bibcode:2016PNAS..113.6647C. doi:10.1073/pnas.1523592113. PMC 4914190. PMID 27247411.
9. Bratsberg, Bernt; Rogeberg, Ole (26 June 2018). "Flynn effect and its reversal are both environmentally caused". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 115 (26): 6674–6678. Bibcode:2018PNAS..115.6674B. doi:10.1073/pnas.1718793115. PMC 6042097. PMID 29891660.
10. Neisser, Ulric (1998). The Rising Curve: Long-Term Gains in IQ and Related Measures. American Psychological Association. pp. xiii–xiv. ISBN 978-1557985033. There is no convincing evidence that any dysgenic trend exists. . . . It turns out, counterintuitively, that differential birth rates (for groups scoring high and low on a trait) do not necessarily produce changes in the population mean.
11. Wilmoth, John R. (1997). "Review of Dysgenics: Genetic Deterioration in Modern Populations". Population and Development Review. 23 (3): 664–666. doi:10.2307/2137584. ISSN 0098-7921. JSTOR 2137584.

• Eugenics
• Evolutionary biology
• Futures studies