Journals that published Richard Lynn’s racist ‘research’ articles should retract them

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In 2012, the Elsevier journal Personality and Individual Differences published a special issue that included articles with titles like “Life history theory and race differences: An appreciation of Richard Lynn’s contribution to science” and “National IQs and economic outcomes.” At a celebratory dinner at the Oxford and Cambridge Club in London, contributors to the issue awarded Lynn a ceremonial sword and a pair of horns. Lynn, an academic psychologist, was being honored “for his long-standing contributions to Eugenics and Psychometrics.”

Why such honors were bestowed on someone who espoused racist ideas, and even racial cleansing, is perplexing. “I was not sure,” Lynn wrote in his memoir, “why they had given me the horns, which are traditionally presented to cuckolds in England. I then spoke on the decay of European civilisation resulting from … the immigration of non-European peoples.” Even more baffling is why journals and publishers haven’t retracted his paper, and resist calls for retraction.

Lynn, who died in 2023, was a professor at...