Twin research was a methodological pretext for Menegle's race science. He & his scientific peers escaped prosecution, laundering their reputations in Rome & founding precursors to @ISTStwins/ @twins_congress & Twin Research and Human Genetics @CambridgeUP http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/06/22/revisiting-mengeles-malignant-race-science

Have been thinking more about this - @adamgopnik writes that "no one suggests that Mengele's twin or eye-color research was of lasting value ... the genetics of eye color was never going to be cracked by the the gruesome business of collecing a lot of eyes"

Mengele was not "participating in a mad science" that ended in 1945. One form of abject violence ended but the utilitarian desire for twin data continues. Twin researchers amass twin data - including eye colour - in bioresources storing the data of hundreds of thousands of twins

What does "lasting value" mean in the history of science? I don't know. But it cannot be limited to evaluations of hypotheses. Legacies include research infrastructures, collaborative networks, experimental values and ontologies, & continued targeting of research participants.

Many contemporary research scientists are horrified or bemused at the suggestion that they share in this 'legacy'. Most are not twins & they have not been born into a scientific category as 'natural experiments' or 'living laboratories'

The lasting value of twins to Mengele and to those that come after him is that their contribution to this science is not enduring – a means to an end.

So I don't agree w/ @adamgopnik when he says that Mengele's experiments had no lasting value; to do so is to erase how Mengele's favoured research subjects continue to be treated as necessarily & naturally valuable to the science of human genetics. A very political legacy.