Sheldon's Legacy of Nude Photos

[Chris Porter]

Post (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CE7D91131F936A25752C0A963958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1) about the thousands of nude photos of freshmen from Yale, Brown, Princeton, etc. Purportedly to measure ectomorphs, mesomorphs, and endomorphs, and derive intelligence standards from body physiognomy. Like phrenology for the body. Science in its more dubious endeavors.

[Ensign Steve]

Pics, or it didn't happen.

And screw you and the NYT for making me click through all nine pages to discover that it was all a giant tease. :pout:

[erimir]

I was hoping to see nude photos.

It's not much of a legacy of nude photos if there are no photos :(

[Chris Porter]

Oh, for goodness sakes. This is about Sheldon's body morphology research, and how it was translated into actual behavior.

[Uthgar the Brazen]

No bewbz, no science. :P

[Sock Puppet]

Oh, for goodness sakes. This is about Sheldon's body morphology research, and how it was translated into actual behavior.Too bad. This IS the Intarweb. No nudie, no clickie.

[But]

Aren't there any photos of nude women? Jeez, make your own ffs. It's not too hard, now is it?

:waiting:

[The Lone Ranger]

I don't object to the fact that the research was done. Even though it seems silly in retrospect, the people doing the research presumably didn't know that at the time.

Nonetheless, it seems that the research was clearly carried out in an unethical manner. Students weren't told the true reason they were being asked to disrobe and allow themselves to be photographed, nor, according to the report, were they even given a choice. That's highly unethical.

It does make you wonder if some of the people involved were more interested in getting nude photos of young men and women than in doing research.

Indeed, the whole thing sounds a little fishy. If the purpose of the photos was to check students' postures, why was it necessary for them to be completely nude? Underpants (and for the women, brassieres) wouldn't have impacted the results in any way, and would have allowed the students to maintain a bit more dignity.


Then there's this:
"From the outset, the purpose of these 'posture photographs' was eugenic. The data accumulated, says Hooton, will eventually lead on to proposals to 'control and limit the production of inferior and useless organisms.' Some of the latter would be penalized for reproducing . . . or would be sterilized. But the real solution is to be enforced better breeding -- getting those Exeter and Harvard men together with their corresponding Wellesley, Vassar and Radcliffe girls."

What has been forgotten by most of us is that the U.S. has had a long history of sterilizing people (sometimes without their knowledge) who were judged to be "inferior." In fact, the United States (not Nazi Germany) was the first country in the world to enact laws allowing the forced sterilization of those judged to be "inferior" for one reason or another. Native Americans, in particular, were very frequently sterilized -- sometimes without their knowledge -- when they were admitted to hospitals for surgery.

The U.S. never had any federal laws mandating the forced sterilization of "inferior" persons, but many states did. The last such forced sterilization occurred in Oregon -- in 1981. Indeed, it has been claimed that the widespread forced sterilization of "inferior" people in the United States is what convinced Hitler that it would be possible to sterilize large numbers of "undesirable" peoples and so eventually eliminate them from the population.

It's a shameful thing in our nation's history that has been very effectively buried. I'd be willing to bet that very few Americans are aware that it used to be more or less routine to sterilize "inferior" people in this country only a few decades ago.

Cheers,

Michael

[Petra]

Damn!

So...it does beg the question...how come there are still so many inferior people in the US? :P


Oh, and I don't know about anyone else, but the name "Hooton" in a thread about nudie rudies made me laff.

[Petra]

Hmm. I'm reading the article now and just found the Marlboro man.

"There was a guy, an adjunct professor of sociology who was working on a grant for the tobacco industry. And what I heard when I was at Wellesley was that, using Harvard posture photos, he had proved conclusively that the more manly you are, the more you smoked. And I believe the criterion for manliness was the obvious one."

[Angakuk]

The really fascinating, and frightening, aspect to this story is the extent to which respect for authority has the power to compel people to act against their own mores and self-interest. That so few raised public objection to these "posture photo" sessions is really quite disturbing. This is certainly a cautionary tale about the perils of passively submitting to authority.

[The Lone Ranger]

Exactly so. Stanley Milgram would have been proud.

Cheers,

Michael