The Buffalo massacre shooter contorted genetic studies to support his hateful views
No well-intentioned researcher expects that their work will be used to justify violence. But following the racist massacre of 10 innocent African Americans in a Buffalo, N.Y., supermarket on May 14, one of us experienced just that. We join other researchers in condemning any use of genetics to justify racism or hate.
The shooter’s document deceptively extracts data from the 2018 study, combining it with another genetics study to present statistical artifacts to bolster the shooter’s false claims. Had the initial study instead been done on a million individuals of estimated African genetic ancestry, then based on his misguided exercise the shooter could have instead concluded that Black people have a genetic intellectual advantage over white people.
Ethical scientific research requires a delicate weighing of risks and benefits. When this weighing occurs, risks to the individual are factored into the equation, but broader risks to society seldom are. The scientific community has been incentivized to outsource responsibility to existing regulations and review boards to make these calculations. Any research involving human participants must obtain Institutional Review Board approval, and researchers working with human subjects in the U.S.
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