Fascinatingly, in the introduction to the 1938 edition (copyright police missed this one), Boas writes:
"Still worse is the subjection of science to ignorant prejudices in countries controlled by dictators. Such control has extended particularly to books dealing with the subject matter of race and culture. Since nothing is permitted to be printed that runs counter to the ignorant whims and prejudices of the governing clique, there can be no trustworthy science. When a publisher whose pride used to be the number and value of his scientific books announces in his calendar a book trying to show that race mixture is not harmful, withdraws the same book after a dictator comes into power, when great encyclopedias are rewritten according to prescribed tenets, when scientists either do not dare or are not allowed to publish results contradicting the prescribed doctrines, when others, in order to advance their own material interests, or blinded by uncontrolled emotion, follow blindly the prescribed road, no confidence can be placed in their statements. The suppression of intellectual freedom rings the death knell of science."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Boas
You can evaluate Boas' logic yourself, by reading his The Mind of Primitive Man (1911) - free online:
http://archive.org/stream/mindofprimitivem031738mbp#page/n10...
Fascinatingly, in the introduction to the 1938 edition (copyright police missed this one), Boas writes:
"Still worse is the subjection of science to ignorant prejudices in countries controlled by dictators. Such control has extended particularly to books dealing with the subject matter of race and culture. Since nothing is permitted to be printed that runs counter to the ignorant whims and prejudices of the governing clique, there can be no trustworthy science. When a publisher whose pride used to be the number and value of his scientific books announces in his calendar a book trying to show that race mixture is not harmful, withdraws the same book after a dictator comes into power, when great encyclopedias are rewritten according to prescribed tenets, when scientists either do not dare or are not allowed to publish results contradicting the prescribed doctrines, when others, in order to advance their own material interests, or blinded by uncontrolled emotion, follow blindly the prescribed road, no confidence can be placed in their statements. The suppression of intellectual freedom rings the death knell of science."
Indeed:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_D._Watson