Editing Ronald Fisher (section)

==Eugenics==
{{Eugenics sidebar|pre-war academics}}
In 1911, Fisher became founding Chairman of the University of Cambridge Eugenics Society, whose other founding members included [[John Maynard Keynes]], [[R. C. Punnett]], and [[Horace Darwin]]. After members of the Cambridge Society – including Fisher – stewarded the First International Eugenics Congress in London in summer 1912, a link was forged with the [[Eugenics Society (UK)]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Fisher Box |first1=Joan |title=R.A. Fisher, the life of a scientist |year=1978 |publisher=Wiley |isbn=978-0-471-09300-8 |pages=26–27}}</ref> He saw [[eugenics]] as addressing pressing social and scientific issues that encompassed and drove his interest in both genetics and statistics. During World War I Fisher started writing book reviews for ''[[The Eugenics Review]]'' and volunteered to undertake all such reviews for the journal, being hired for a part-time position.

The last third of ''[[The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection]]'' focused on eugenics, attributing the fall of [[civilization]]s to the fertility of their upper classes being diminished, and used British 1911 census data to show an inverse relationship between fertility and social class, which was partly due, he claimed, to the lower financial costs and hence increasing social status of families with fewer children. He proposed the abolition of extra allowances to large families, with the allowances proportional to the earnings of the father.<ref name=Adelaide>{{cite web |title=Series 12. Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher (1890–1962) Statistician and geneticist. Papers 1911–2005. Papers on Eugenics. 1911–1920, 1936 |url=https://www.adelaide.edu.au/library/special/mss/fisher/ |publisher=University of Adelaide |access-date=7 September 2017|ref=MSS 0013}}</ref><ref name=NewScientist>{{cite journal |last1=Norton |first1=Bernard |title=A 'fashionable fallacy' defended |journal=New Scientist |date=27 April 1978 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YvpI6azxNaoC&pg=PA223 |quote=Fisher worked as he did ''because he was an ardent eugenist.'' (original italics) ... Careful study of Fisher's writings, moreover, enables one to establish strong connections between the problems that Fisher faced ''qua'' eugenist and the work in genetics outlined above.}}</ref><ref name=Cruz>{{cite journal |last1=Andrade da Cruz |first1=Rodrigo |title=Ronald Fisher and eugenics: Statistics, evolution and genetics in the quest for permanent civilization |journal=Circumscribere: International Journal for the History of Science |date=1980 |volume=19 |page=53 |publisher=Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo, Brazil (PhD Thesis) |doi=10.23925/1980-7651.2017v19;p153|doi-access=free }}</ref> He served in several official committees to promote eugenics, including the Committee for Legalizing Eugenic Sterilization which drafted legislation aiming to limit the fertility of "feeble minded high-grade defectives ... comprising a tenth of the total population". It was proposed that this policy would allow for voluntary sterilisation. Fisher was against the idea of forced sterilisation.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Blacker |first1=C.P. |author-link1=Carlos Blacker |title=The sterilization proposals: A history of their development |journal=Eugen Rev |volume=22 |issue=4 |page=240 |date=1931|pmid=21259955 |pmc=2984995 |ref=Blacker_proposal |quote=Amemorandum was accordingly circulated to the Council signed by Dr. R.A. Fisher, Professor Huxley, Dr. J.A. Ryle, Mr. E.J. Lidbetter, and myself, asking for authorization to form a sub-committee, the aim of which would be to secure the legalization of eugenics sterilization. The memorandum was unanimously approved by the Council, and in this way the nucleus of the existing Committee for Legalizing Eugenic Sterilization was formed.}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |title=Report of Committee for Legalizing Eugenic Sterilization |journal=Postgraduate Medical Journal |date=1930 |volume=6 |issue=61 |page=13 |pmc=2531824 |ref=report_sterilization_review|doi=10.1136/pgmj.6.61.13|doi-access=free }}</ref>

Beginning in 1934, Fisher became disillusioned with the Eugenics Society over concerns that its activities were increasingly aimed in a political rather than scientific direction; he formally dissociated with the Society in 1941.<ref name="bodmer21" />

Fisher wrote a testimony on behalf of the eugenicist [[Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer]]. He wrote that, although the Nazis used Verschuer's work to give scientific support for their ideology, it was "[Verschuer's] misfortune rather than his fault that racial theory was a part of the Nazi ideology."<ref name="bodmer21" /><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Weiss |first1=Sheila Faith |title=After the Fall: Political Whitewashing, Professional Posturing, and Personal Refashioning in the Postwar Career of Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer |journal=Isis |date=2010 |volume=101 |issue=4 |page=745 |doi=10.1086/657474 |jstor=10.1086/657474 |pmid=21409983 |s2cid=28148032 }}</ref> He conducted extensive correspondence with von Verschuer over decades, which is held at the [[University of Adelaide]].<ref name="Keane 2022">{{cite web | last=Keane | first=Daniel | title=Nazi scientist Otmar von Verschuer's correspondence with British biologist illuminates corruption of medicine | website=ABC News |publisher= [[Australian Broadcasting Corporation]] | date=31 August 2022 | url=https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-08-31/verschuer-fisher-letters-on-tobacco-and-nazi-medicine/101376720 | access-date=30 August 2022}}</ref>