bad science
In 1912 Henry Herber Goddard published a book called “The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-Mindedness”.
This purported to demonstrate that ‘feeble mindedness’ was hereditary. It was very popular at the time and played to the growing pseudo-science of #eugenics
It was also featured in Nazi propaganda.
Unfortunately the lineage of the Kallikak family that led to the ‘feeble minded’ girl who supposedly started the investigation was a fabrication. Goddard had invented a liaison with a feedle minded barmaid as the source of the ‘feeble minded’ gene.
https://collections.countway.harvard.edu/onview/items/show/6220
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001g927?partner=uk.co.bbc&origin=share-mobile
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