Lee Willerman was an American psychology professor and eugenicist known for work on twin studies. Willerman was dissertation advisor and mentor for anti-transender psychologist J. Michael Bailey, who has published work on eugenic ideologies.
Background
Willerman was born ion July 26, 1939 and grew up in Chicago. Willerman earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Roosevelt University in 1961 and 1964 respectively. Willerman earned a doctorate from Wayne State University in 1967. After a three-year stint at National Institutes of Health, Willerman completed a post-doctoral year at the University of Michigan in the Department of Human Genetics. In 1971 Willerman took a position at University of Texas at Austin, remaining there until dying at age 57 on January 10, 1997.
Eugenics
In 1974, Willerman joined the American Eugenics Society, and Willerman subsequent work involved eugenics-themed hypotheses. Willerman’s first study examined IQ and birth weight differences between identical twins, finding that the twin who had been heavier at birth tended to be higher in IQ. Willerman worked with Joseph M. Horn and John C. Loehlin on a major study of adoptive families, the Texas Adoption Project. Much of this work involved psychometrics and research into neuroanatomical predictors of intelligence.
Interracial offspring of white mothers obtained significantly higher IQ scores at 4 years of age than interracial offspring of Negro mothers, suggesting that environmental factors play an important role in the lower intellectual performance of Negro children.
Willerman (1970)
Willerman also had a hypothesis that tangled capillaries in fingernail beds were evidence for a likelihood of schizophrenia, because similar capillaries in the brain were “allowing free radicals to leak into the brain.”
Eugenicists and hereditarians have long recognized the value of twin studies because they provide a natural control for experiments. Bailey’s initial work on twins led to several papers on the heritability of “homosexuality.”
Willerman and J. Michael Bailey
Willerman seems to have been a parental figure for Bailey, shaping views and setting Bailey on a hereditarian career path:
My advisor, Lee Willerman, was a much better role model. Lee was one of the most intellectually and personally delightful people I’ve ever met, and he led me to discover a love of individual differences·IQ, sex differences, psychopathology, behavior genetics, etc. And he taught me the human sexuality course when I learned about an interesting theory of sexual orientation, which I investigated for my dissertation. The theory involved maternal prenatal stress, and I found no evidence for it. However, I loved the research area, and have stayed there, more or less.
Bailey has since published eugenic articles:
- stating it is “morally acceptable” to screen for and abort gay fetuses: “selection for heterosexuality may benefit parents and children and is unlikely to cause significant harm.”
- arguing that “offering sex offenders the opportunity to be castrated in return for a reduced sentence is not ethically problematic coercion.”
References
Bailey JM (2003). Personal information. via his Northwestern University website. https://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/JMichael-Bailey/personal.html [archive]
Loehlin JC, Horn JM, Schultz R, Raz N, Bailey JM (1997). Lee Willerman (1939-1997). Intelligence, 1997, 24, 323-328.
Faulkner LR, Durbin JR Lee Willerman obituary via University of Texas at Austin.
Freeman, Karen (January 31, 1997) Lee Willerman, 57, Authority On Genes’ Role in Intelligence. New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/1997/01/31/us/lee-willerman-57-authority-on-genes-role-in-intelligence.html
Willerman L, Naylor AF, Myrianthopoulos NC (1974). Intellectual development of children from interracial matings: Performance in infancy and at 4 years. Behavior Genetics volume 4, pages83–90 (1974) https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01066706
Willerman L, Naylor AF, Myrianthopoulos NC (1970). Intellectual Development of Children from Interracial Matings. Science Vol 170, Issue 3964 pp. 1329-1331 https://doi.org/10.1126/science.170.3964.1329
Twin studies via bookrags.com http://www.bookrags.com/sciences/genetics/twin-studies-wog.html
Resources
Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org)