Arthur Patterson

https://dspace.library.uvic.ca/bitstream/handle/1828/1794/DissertationFinalJEF2008.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

psychiatrist Arthur Paterson, continued to argue vociferously against anticipation, citing the same kinds of statistical errors and fallacies that had been levelled against anticipation over fifteen years earlier. At this time, anti-sterilization activists used Mott’s conception of anticipation to argue against the proposed legalised sterilization of the unfit that the Eugenics Society supported. These anti-eugenicists held that Nature was already working to end or mend degenerate stocks by means of anticipation. Opposition to sterilization was widespread. A. F. Tredgold, who normally supported the eugenic programme, was leery of legislating sterilization, for a variety of reasons. Not surprisingly, both Labour and religious groups, particularly Catholics, were also concerned about the proposed legislation as were members of the new Left-leaning group of mathematically trained Mendelians that was beginning to rise to scientific prominence. The strongly anti-eugenicist Lionel Penrose began what became a decades-long campaign against anticipation in the early 1930s. Penrose viewed the concept of anticipation as one of many outdated modes of inheritance advocated by eugenicists. He sought to raise the standard of human genetics by introducing ideas based on the new analytical techniques offered by mathematical Mendelism, which had recently been introduced to England. Various researchers attempted to explain anticipation within the new context of mathematical Mendelism, but none was successful. Despite the arguments raised against anticipation by the unlikely threesome of Pearson, Paterson, and Penrose, physicians continued to invoke the notion to diagnose and treat certain disorders