I mean, if we wanted every human on Earth to be over 6' tall, we could just cull the short ones (or stop them from reproducing), and this is scientifically valid, but, of course, evil.
As far as lobotomy, I don't know, but it seems to be widely discredited inasmuch as it didn't achieve its aims (or if it did, the aims themselves were highly questionable)
Given the title, lobotomy is an apt reference "The originator of the procedure, Portuguese neurologist António Egas Moniz, shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine of 1949 for the "discovery of the therapeutic value of leucotomy in certain psychoses"," - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobotomy
> I mean, if we wanted every human on Earth to be over 6' tall, we could just cull the short ones (or stop them from reproducing), and this is scientifically valid, but, of course, evil.
What's scientifically valid about that? What part of the scientific process is being utilized? What hypothesis is being tested?
If you're implying that people would start to be taller because we are culling short people, then you're talking about "artificial selection", not "eugenics". People who believe that there are groups of humans that are inferior or superior based on genetic differences would love for you to conflate the two concepts because that gets them closer to their political goals that have historically resulted in unimaginable human suffering.
> or stop them from reproducing
It may not be possible to breed any trait to any distribution one would like.
For body size, maybe, also depending on maternal nutrition. But apparently there is (and anthropologists think always has been) a certain percentage of people with schizophrenia even though it carries a severe reproductive disadvantage.
Similarly, it may well be that personality always approaches a certain distribution like a random experiment.
The culling mechanism would work in any case, of course.
"6 feet, 6 figures, 6 inches" is unironically eugenics.