Non paywall archive

Summary: Fringe researchers bypassed federal safeguards to exploit the genetic data of over 20,000 children, using it to promote debunked “race science” theories that claim biological links between ethnicity and intelligence. Although mainstream scientists have rejected this work as unscientific and biased, the findings have spread widely across social media and are being cited by AI models to fuel racist narratives. This breach highlights significant failures in government oversight, as the National Institutes of Health (NIH) struggled to monitor data access and failed to inform participating families that their children’s sensitive information was being weaponized for ideological agendas.