Journals that published Richard Lynn’s racist ‘research’ articles should retract them
By Dan Samorodnitsky, Kevin Bird, Jedidiah Carlson, James Lingford, Jon Phillips, Rebecca Sear, and Cathryn Townsend,
STAT
| 06. 20. 2024
Photo modified from original by Gothik from Wikimedia Commons under CC by S.A. 3.0
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...
Related Articles
By Pallab Gosh and Gwyndaf Hughes, BBC News | 06.26.2025
Work has begun on a controversial project to create the building blocks of human life from scratch, in what is believed to be a world first.
The research has been taboo until now because of concerns it could lead to...
Since the “CRISPR babies” scandal in 2018, no additional genetically modified babies are known to have been born. Now several techno-enthusiastic billionaires are setting up privately funded companies to genetically edit human embryos, with the explicit intention of creating genetically modified children.
Heritable genome editing remains prohibited by policies in the overwhelming majority of countries that have any relevant policy, and by a binding European treaty. Support for keeping it legally off limits is widespread, including among scientists...
By Rhys Blakely, The Times | 06.24.2025
Scientists have created fertile mice from male genetic material alone, a breakthrough that could one day open the door to human babies who inherit their genes from two fathers.
The experiment, led by Professor Yanchang Wei at Shanghai Jiao Tong...
By Ron Leuty, San Francisco Business Times | 06.16.2025
23andMe's two-step sale to a nonprofit led by former CEO Anne Wojcicki is nothing more than a dance around California's genetic privacy law, state Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a filing late Monday, one day before a judge will...