We have prepared a compilation of recent articles documenting present-day censorship in science and explaining the mechanism by which censorship in science operates. Nothing in life is to be feared; it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so we may fear less. —
In my 60 yearlong career as a scientist there has rarely been a period in which powerful people who were inconvenienced by my findings were not trying to censor me., often by trying to destroy my livelihood and sometimes successfully.
In the period in which it was dominated by its Democrats, the House Committee on the Climate Crisis cancelled me from my unpaid job as adviisor to the Committee on issues of policy for the offense of reeatedly telling them there was no such crisis!
Ugh. I want to like much of the argument here, but then, I remember that Bo Winegard has, for years, been an enthusiastic and uncritical advocate for race science, for genetic differences in IQ between races, and for the bogus "IQ of each country" dataset. IIRC his contract was not renewed halfway through his tenure clock. Cory Clark seems a lot smarter in general, but has some kind of bizarre blindspot when it comes to Winegard, and coauthored a paper with Winegard that was basically an attempt to smuggle the national IQ dataset into the mainstream. IIRC they retracted the submitted paper after online outrage.
Ah yes, the Editor in Chief Patricia J.Bauer said, "Clark and colleagues requested that this article be retracted out of concern that some of the measures used in the research were invalid. Specifically, they note that the National IQ dataset used in their analyses, largely based on Lynn and Vanhanen's (2012) compilation, are plagued by lack of representativeness of the samples, questionable support for some of the measures...[etc etc]. They explicitly expressed concern that leaving the article in the literature could 'prolong the use of Lynn & Vanhanen's cross-national IQ measures.' As Editor of Psychological Science, I have decided to honor the authors' request and retract this article. I hope that this action will encourage all researchers to exercise extreme care in selection and use of the data sets on which they base their analyses,conclusions, and interpretations. Critiques of Lynn and Vanhanen's (2012) National IQ data were available in the literature prior to the publication of Clark et al. (2020). It is unfortunate that these critiques were not consulted, thereby potentially avoiding publication and the necessity for retraction."
The question has to be asked -- how in the heck did Cory Clark not realize all of this before assembling a whole article and submitting it?!?
I submit that this is a case where online critique and retraction were just, and not censorship. So it's hard to have a blanket rule - in a world where, somehow, there are still some scientific racists around and/or highly flawed datasets deriving from them, it is legit to exercise critical judgment and reject/retract such articles. The problem comes when similar claims are made against research that is not horribly flawed, e.g. to establish a fake consensus, etc. etc. I would be interested in a serious attempt to develop principles to distinguish inappropriate censorship from legitimate identification of fundamentally flawed data/claims that is being pushed for nonscientific reasons.
Which is why no one has claimed "censorship" in any of the resources you can find here for that Clark et al 2020 paper. And now back to our regularly scheduled discussion of the dangers of scientists censoring science...
Censorship only helps tyrants.
In my 60 yearlong career as a scientist there has rarely been a period in which powerful people who were inconvenienced by my findings were not trying to censor me., often by trying to destroy my livelihood and sometimes successfully.
Not all times are alike. And now the problem of censorship and cancelations is particularly acute and dangerous.
This is an excellent resource, thank you for the hard work to produce this article
Essential and important work, thank you so much for writing this.
The cruelest epithet for a scholar would have to be "inoffensive".
"Harmless."
-- Douglas Adams.
Valuable compendium.
This has to change!
Merry Christmas!
In the period in which it was dominated by its Democrats, the House Committee on the Climate Crisis cancelled me from my unpaid job as adviisor to the Committee on issues of policy for the offense of reeatedly telling them there was no such crisis!
You were goring their grifting ox.
Ugh. I want to like much of the argument here, but then, I remember that Bo Winegard has, for years, been an enthusiastic and uncritical advocate for race science, for genetic differences in IQ between races, and for the bogus "IQ of each country" dataset. IIRC his contract was not renewed halfway through his tenure clock. Cory Clark seems a lot smarter in general, but has some kind of bizarre blindspot when it comes to Winegard, and coauthored a paper with Winegard that was basically an attempt to smuggle the national IQ dataset into the mainstream. IIRC they retracted the submitted paper after online outrage.
Ah yes, the Editor in Chief Patricia J.Bauer said, "Clark and colleagues requested that this article be retracted out of concern that some of the measures used in the research were invalid. Specifically, they note that the National IQ dataset used in their analyses, largely based on Lynn and Vanhanen's (2012) compilation, are plagued by lack of representativeness of the samples, questionable support for some of the measures...[etc etc]. They explicitly expressed concern that leaving the article in the literature could 'prolong the use of Lynn & Vanhanen's cross-national IQ measures.' As Editor of Psychological Science, I have decided to honor the authors' request and retract this article. I hope that this action will encourage all researchers to exercise extreme care in selection and use of the data sets on which they base their analyses,conclusions, and interpretations. Critiques of Lynn and Vanhanen's (2012) National IQ data were available in the literature prior to the publication of Clark et al. (2020). It is unfortunate that these critiques were not consulted, thereby potentially avoiding publication and the necessity for retraction."
The question has to be asked -- how in the heck did Cory Clark not realize all of this before assembling a whole article and submitting it?!?
I submit that this is a case where online critique and retraction were just, and not censorship. So it's hard to have a blanket rule - in a world where, somehow, there are still some scientific racists around and/or highly flawed datasets deriving from them, it is legit to exercise critical judgment and reject/retract such articles. The problem comes when similar claims are made against research that is not horribly flawed, e.g. to establish a fake consensus, etc. etc. I would be interested in a serious attempt to develop principles to distinguish inappropriate censorship from legitimate identification of fundamentally flawed data/claims that is being pushed for nonscientific reasons.
Which is why no one has claimed "censorship" in any of the resources you can find here for that Clark et al 2020 paper. And now back to our regularly scheduled discussion of the dangers of scientists censoring science...