'Reform' eugenics and the decline of Mendelism

By the mid-1930s, according to Daniel Kevles, 'mainline eugenics had generally been recognized as a farrago of flawed science.' By then, most geneticists accepted that eugenic sterilization could not rid society of its undesirables. But paradoxically, eugenics still had supporters even among its scientist critics, whom Kevles called 'reform eugenicists'. My opinion is that there was no such sharp turning point in eugenics. Reliance on simple mendelian inheritance faded away, but eugenics continued much as before until after World War II. In this paper, I consider the history of the eugenics movement in terms of its concepts of the inheritance of 'feeble-mindedness' and psychosis as single-gene recessives, and sterilization as a means of control.