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Eugenics was one of the good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

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Date	Process	Result
September 9, 2006	Good article nominee	Listed
January 28, 2007	Good article reassessment	Delisted

Current status: Delisted good article

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Text and/or other creative content from Eugenics was copied or moved into History of eugenics with this edit. The former page's history now serves to provide attribution for that content in the latter page, and it must not be deleted as long as the latter page exists.

Broader issues with the Singapore section

This section is extremely poorly-sourced, in addition to multiple WP:TONE and WP:EDITORIALIZING problems. It appears that most sources were copied from another article without having been verified. This is not appropriate.

Starting with the first source, what is Blynkt? This article appears to be the only time this website is cited anywhere on Wikipedia, both here and at History of eugenics. This is a red flag. Rhetorically speaking, is this source reliable, and is it being proportionately summarized, in this article, or was this yet another example of writing WP:BACKWARDS?

The very next source is a book review by Stephen Jay Gould from 1984. This, again, appears to have been added backwards, as it doesn't directly support the attached statement: In his speeches, Lee urged highly educated women to have more children, claiming that unless their fertility rate increased, "social delinquents" would dominate. This appears to instead be from the Blynkt source.

The next source sure looks like it was copied from Population control in Singapore without having been checked. Nobody should be citing sources they have not personally verified. If you do not have at least partial access to that source, do not cite it. Further, do not assume that it says anything at all about eugenics unless you can confirm that in some way.

The Nature opinion is WP:PRIMARY.

The NatGeo source is quite long, lists an access date of 2009 indicating yet again that it was copy-pasted without verification, and it doesn't appear to mention 'eugenics' once, making its use here likely WP:SYNTH. Rhetorically, what is the source actually saying, and how does that relate to the larger topic of eugenics?

The Yet more controversial... paragraph is solely supported by a single primary source.

Etc.. This section should be deleted. It could be rewritten from scratch to match reliable sources which specifically contextualize it as a notable example of eugenics. Grayfell (talk) 20:17, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Again, this appears to be WP:EDITORIALIZING language, unverified copy/pasted sources, and the WP:SYNTH use of sources which are not even about eugenics.

I want to really emphasize that Wikipedia is not a platform for publishing original research. Our goal for this article is to summarize reliable independent sources about eugenics. We are not asking editors to combine sources to imply anything about eugenics. That's WP:SYNTH and WP:EDITORIALIZING. The above discussion leads me to believe there is some serious confusion about this.

The book review is from 1984, for the book Not in Our Genes. The review spends a single paragraph discussing Singapore for context of the otherwise unrelated book review. It directly mentions eugenics only once. This source is reliable in some contexts, but for this section of this article, it is extremely flimsy.

The part which says In 1985, incentives were significantly reduced after public – first and foremost Western... Is cited to a primary source from 1984 which says nothing about incentives being reduced a year in the future, and it says nothing whatsoever about this being first and foremost Western. This is transparent editorializing and a misrepresentation of the source to imply a political point. This is not appropriate for a Wikipedia article.

Grayfell (talk) 22:16, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I have made an attempt to clean up this mess, but it's still not great. Again, verify sources and make sure citations are attached to the correct statements. Do not add editorializing. Grayfell (talk) 23:46, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hopes for a new "Ethics" section

I would like to organize arguments in an encyclopedic way that helps readers form opinions consistent with their own beliefs and principles. To that end, I'm looking to:

Focus a little more on each side's core affirmative arguments and a little less on who can accuse the other side of logical fallacies with the funniest names.
Group together arguments that are about the same thing: for example, pros and cons of enforced eugenics, then pros and cons of liberal eugenics.^[a]
Keep each subsection short and tight, by paraphrasing longer quotes, and by relying on links to other wiki articles to provide background^[b]. My hope here is that readers will be able to hold two opposing arguments in their mind at once.

I am optimistic that such an approach can be acceptable to editors in multiple camps: proponents, opponents, and cautious optimists who hope readers will conclude that good things are good and bad things are bad^[c].

If I maintain interest in this subject long enough, and don't get burned out trying to mediate paragraph-by-paragraph disputes, I may try to do this myself. If I do, I will take Grayfell's advice and engage with some overview-type, reliable, secondary-to-tertiary sources before getting too committed to a list of distinctions or even an outline.

^ Other distinctions that appear in the current article include positive/negative and therapeutic/enhancing. I can think of a few others. We'll see which ones actually come up in sources.
^ Background information may include background on scientific concepts, background on ethical principles, and background on non-eugenic practices mentioned in arguments-by-analogy.
^ Part of membership in the latter camp is being open to being wrong about which specific things are good or bad, and wanting readers to come to the correct conclusion rather than the matching conclusion.

Jruderman (talk) 17:53, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It is a serious mistake to treat these camps (proponents, opponents, and cautious optimists) as being equivalent. Attempting to avoid conflict and find a compromise is false balance, because Wikipedia is not a platform for promoting fringe views. Even if a fringe view seems reasonable to some in good faith, it is still a fringe view. The article has already become bloated with 'background', florid filler language, and fringe sources which falsely imply a level of legitimacy which is directly contradicted by reliable sources. I hope it is obvious why this is a problem. Grayfell (talk) 18:57, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Grayfell, simply removing, say, dozens of scholarly sources you personally disagree with won't do. If you want to balance it more, how about you extend the "Nazi eugenics" entry that is currently basically a single paragraph and or transclude an improved lede from somewhere like that?

Careful and historically accurate perspectives like that would find no backlash by the likes of me at all. But, again, massive removals on flimsy grounds are a very different story. Biohistorian15 (talk) 19:21, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Your comment misrepresents the many, many problems your edits have caused. Using boldface to call them "flimsy" doesn't make them flimsy. Your edits have introduced far too many WP:EDITORIALIZING terms and WP:SYNTH claims.

As one example from my recent attempt to clean up this mess: "It should be noted, however, that not all proponents of human enhancement necessarily find such a net reduction in the diversity of human geno- and or phenotypes desirable at all." uses editorializing language to say nothing of substance. Who are "proponents of human enhancement"? This introduced a vague opinion in euphemistic language, presents it as significant enough that "it should be noted" (which is specifically cited as an example of WP:EDITORIALIZING), but this completely fails to provide any context, much less attribution. This is an extremely poor way of explaining this, and only adds even more bloat to an already bloated article. That is setting aside for the moment the serious issues with the source itself. There are many other examples that could be provided. Grayfell (talk) 19:38, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, thanks. Now that you are being concrete I can try to fix that issue. Biohistorian15 (talk) 09:50, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You have not fixed any of those issues, nor indicated that you even understood them, since you have been repeating the same mistakes in recent edits. I have again attempted to restore more neutral language to the article. Much more work is still needed. Grayfell (talk) 21:47, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Grayfell is right that avoiding false balance is a major concern. My aim is not to dictate which information is included, but to improve the organization of information that is included based on policy and consensus. I don't expect all editor camps to be equally happy, but I do hope that clear scoping can lower the temperature a bit as a side effect. Jruderman (talk) 20:25, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

maybe removing "Status quo bias" would be justified
Regrouping loose objections like "subjective hence not science" might make sense

Biohistorian15 (talk) 19:25, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Liberal humanism and deontology

Regarding this edit. I tried to save it, but it's not worth it. I started to go over it line-by-line trying to fix problems, but there would be nothing left when I was done, so I skipped to the end and deleted it.

The entire section was written like an argumentative essay, not like an encyclopedia article. Even if I deleted the many, many instances of WP:EDITORIALIZING language, WP:WEASELs, WP:EUPHEMISMs and pointless filler words, the section would still be a cobbled-together mishmash of WP:SYNTH to promote a specific, non-neutral point of view.

As one example the context-free mention of Jürgen Habermas having a cleft palette was copied verbatim from Jürgen Habermas, but nowhere does that article make a connection between this factoid and Habermas' views on eugenics, making this yet again synth. That article doesn't use the word eugenics at all.

That was just one example, but the entire section was nothing but problems like this.

Many of these other sources do not mention eugenics either, and many of the points are disproportionately summarized to promote a very specific view that is contrary to the mainstream.

There is so, so, so much of this junk in the article now, and I expect that more work like this will need to be done to bring the article back to something resembling WP:NPOV and to comply with WP:MOS. The article now cites Richard Lynn for basic facts and recommends his work in the further reading section. I suppose WP:FRINGEN might have some insight, but the pro-fringe issues are just one part of a deeper and more fundamental problem here. Grayfell (talk) 20:04, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

[1] Other distinctions that appear in the current article include positive/negative and therapeutic/enhancing. I can think of a few others. We'll see which ones actually come up in sources.

[2] Background information may include background on scientific concepts, background on ethical principles, and background on non-eugenic practices mentioned in arguments-by-analogy.

[3] Part of membership in the latter camp is being open to being wrong about which specific things are good or bad, and wanting readers to come to the correct conclusion rather than the matching conclusion.

[a]

[b]

[c]