The "JUKES" Family

[egkelly]

Back in the early years of this century, an american sociologist set out to prove that criminality and bad behavior were genetically determined. Supposedly he had identified a family in early 18th century NJ, founded by a dutchman named JUKE. He then traced the descendents of this man down through the years, finding the family lapsing into criminality, mental retardation, etc.,etc.
Has anybody ever heard of this study-was it ever repudiated?

[the_Scarlet_Pimpernel]

I think I know the one youre talking about - my dad inherited a copy of the book, or a similar study, from someone or other. The book showed pictures of Jukes’ descendants, to show how “feeble-minded” and “criminal” they looked. Somebody had quite obviously taken a pen and drawn dark circles around all the eyes, and given everybody “monobrows”. The author said that we should forcibly sterilize criminals, prostitutes, alcoholics, and the mentally handicapped (all of which “societal ills” were interrelated, in his view).
Later, I think in an anthropology or psychology class, a textbook talked about this study and how bunkum it was, how he’d doctored the data, etc. It showed one of the pictures and pointed out the “artwork”.
Im awfully sorry, but I cant remember any names or anything - I havent been in my dad’s house in years. I remember that the book was red, and I think it was called something like “A Study of Feeble-Mindedness”.

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the Artist Formerly Known as Kara

[pluto]

John McPhee refers to the Jukes (who were, I believe a composite of several real families) in his book The Pine Barrens. The study took place in that part of New Jersey. McPhee reports that the locals (nicknamed “Pineys”) are still getting flack about it.

Shameless plug for John McPhee: If you have never read anything by him, run, do not walk, to the nearest library or bookstore and check out any book by him you can find.
He is a staff writer for the New Yorker and is, IMHO, the best non-fiction writer in the world. He has a series of books about United States geography/geology which is excellent and has written on many other subjects as well. He wrote a whole book on oranges (entitled Oranges. I couldn’t keep your interest for two sentences on oranges – he does for an entire book.

The Pine Barrens is one of his early books and a very good one. I hadn’t ever heard of the area till I read the book and now I’d like nothing more than to live there the rest of my life. He’s that good.

“If ignorance were corn flakes, you’d be General Mills.”
Cecil Adams
The Straight Dope

[eden]

Oh! The Jukes! They used to live upstairs from me and it’s all true.

[missdavis102]

My very favorite bedtime book, humorist Will Cuppy’s early 1930s classic anthropology/ comparative physiology text How to Tell Your Friends from the Apes makes reference to the Jukes family, but I never knew what it meant. The section dealing with human lineage is entitled “The Jukes Family, or Where We Come In”. I always kind of figured I should be insulted, but I didn’t quite know why. Thanks to SDMB for clearing it up!

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Insert Random Witticism Here.

[pluto]

RETRACTION!

I got my subnormal families mixed up:

The Pineys are stereotyped as being inbred and stupid, partly because of a 1913 study done by H.H. Goddard. According to John McPhee, who wrote “The Pine Barrens,” the study, based on a family called the Kallikak (a name made up, Goddard said, to protect the real family) said all the people in the pines descended from one man. Some in the family were inbreeds, but others, because of “good blood” from outsiders, became successful. This study branded the Pineys for years to come. It wasn’t until the 1970s that the Pineys came into their own, and now one can find green and white “Piney Power” bumper stickers throughout the pines.

I’ve always heard references to “the Jukes and the Kallikaks” as though they were inseparable, but it looks like they are just instances of similar bigotry.

[ChiefScott]

This was repudiated and dismissed as a viable theory by the documentary Trading Places.
Wherein and transient was placed in a position of authority in an investment firm. The banker who held the position previous to him was disgraced and thrown out onto the street with no money.
The transient learned and excelled at business while the banker resorted to petty crimes to make ends meet.
Concocted by two brothers, the experiment proved definitively that nurturing is far more important than any genealogic trait.

[mr_john]

The entire family should be locked in a box.
But I have read that the entire Jukes study was a fraud.

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“Pardon me while I have a strange interlude.”-Marx

[John_Corrado]

The temptation to make a joke ending in a “Jukes of Hazzard” pun are nearly overwhelming.

[Flypsyde]

This was repudiated and dismissed as a viable theory by the documentary Trading Places.

Obviously, Chief, you are a man of high scientific standards.

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“You know, you’ve got the
brain of a 4-year-old, and I
bet he was glad to get rid of it.”

[dougie_monty]

In Book about a Thousand Things (1946), author George Stimpson takes up the topic of the Jukes and says, “It should be pointed out that Jukes is not the actual name of the family.” (Compare this to the line on Dragnet “The names have been changed to protect the innocent.”) According to an unabriged dictionary I used to have, the name “Kallikak,” also contrived, was derived from two Greek adjectives meaning together “good-bad.” (Compare “calligraphy” and “cacophony.”)

[Coldfire]

OF COURSE it’s a hoax. Dutchmen aren’t criminals, we all know that

And Juke certainly isn’t a Dutch name.

Ah well. Just my 2 cents. Criminalise the Dutch all you want

Coldfire

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“You know how complex women are”

• Neil Peart, Rush (1993)

[dougie_monty]

Hey, Coldfire, what do the Dutch have to do with it? Did I miss a mention of Dutch people in a posting in this topic? Hey, you should know I don’t disparage the Dutch, from my postings about “Loora Oranjeboom” in the topic “Sex sex sex”…

[pluto]

From the Encyclopedia America Online:

Jukes, a family in New York State that had an unusual record of crime, pauperism, and disease. The name is fictitious.

In 1874, Richard L. Dugdale, while making inverstigations for the New York Prison Association, found six members of the Juke family imprisoned in the same county for various crimes. Tracing the family history back to the 18th century, he discovered that the Jukes were descended from two couple, of which the men were brothers and the women sisters. Information gathered on 709 members of the family, which was heavily inbred, revealed that 140 had been in prison, many had been supported at public expense, and a large number had suffered from poor health.

In his report (1875), Dugdale concluded that heredity was responsible for the high incidence of social maladjustment and disease in the Juke family. About 40 years later, Arthur H. Estabrook make a second study of the Jukes. He reported (1916) a continued concentration of antisocial behavior, but noted that many newer members of the family were normal or even superior in social performance. He ascribed the improvement to reduced inbreeding.

Geneticists and sociologists now reject the basic conclusions of these investigators. In the absence of evidence ruling out the effects of family environment, the Jukes’ behavior must be attributed to a combination of heredity and environment.

Also:

Kallikaks, the pseudonym for a family studied by the American psychologist Henry H. Goddard, in which one branch comprised persons of apparently normal intelligence while the other seemingly contained a large proportion of mentally deficient and criminal individuals. The family descended from Martin Kallikak, an 18th-century American who fathered an illegitimate son by a woman of supposedly low intelligence and later marriead an apparently normal woman. Of 480 traceable descendants of the illegitimate son, Goddard believed that 143 suffered from so-called feeblemindedness or exhibited antisocial behavior. In contrast, the other branch was composed of supposedly normal, or in some cases, superior individuals. Goddard believed that the study proved his theory that mental deficiency is an inherited, recessive trait. He published his findings in The Kallikak Family (1912) and Feeblemindedness: Its Causes and Consequences (1914).

Subsequent research, however, revealed that inheritance of mental ability is a much more complex process than Goddard realized. Moreover, intelligence is influenced by a combination of hereditary and environmental factors. Goddard placed little emphasis on the squalid surroundings of the “degenerate” Kallikaks and how this may have affected their mental development. As a result, his study has not found favor with modern geneticists.

I dunno. Either one of these sounds a lot like my family. Notice that they don’t dispute that many members of these families were troubled, just that the researchers didn’t get the reasons right.

And the similarities in the cases explains the confusion between the two. It sounds like the OP was referring to a combination of the two families. (Wouldn’t that make a wonderful experiment! I’m sure the weddings would be a lot of fun!)

“If ignorance were corn flakes, you’d be General Mills.”
Cecil Adams
The Straight Dope

[Coldfire]

Dougy-Monty, just read the OP.

Coldfire

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“You know how complex women are”

• Neil Peart, Rush (1993)

[the_Scarlet_Pimpernel]

Yah, it was me who was confused about the two. Y’all have jogged my memory - my dad’s book talked about the Kallikak family. It must have been Goddard’s 1914 book that i saw. Sorry if I added to any confusion.
But the problem(s) with Goddard’s study is not just that he got the cause of their “degeneracy” wrong. He also doctored the photos, as I described above, implied that a mentally disabled person was more likely to be a criminal, prostitute, alcoholic, etc., and proposed that mentally disabled people be forcibly sterilized in order to keep the crime rate down.

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the Artist Formerly Known as Kara

[tomndebb]

Stephen J. Gould also discussed the doctored evidence (and showed a photo or two) regarding the Kallikaks in his The Mismeasure of Man.

[dougie_monty]

Anybody remember the Kallikaks from the old “Captain Easy” comic strip?
(Captain Easy’s job isn’t!)