What are They Afraid of?

I/o is as politically neutral and middle-of-the-road as they come on X; sometimes painfully so. He’s an outspoken critic of MAGA and of White-nationalism. However, he leans toward race-realism, and here’s what he (she?) recently tweeted:

The decoding of the human genome brought powerful tools to investigate the relationship between genes, race, and IQ. But fear of where this research might go led the best genetic database in the US to remove access to scientists investigating race and IQ.

The survey of scientists conducting research in this area published in 2020 indicated that findings on human intelligence have been tipping over the past few decades in favor of those who believe race IQ gaps have at least a partial genetic basis. The left has waged a continuous campaign of smears, misinformation, data suppression, censorship, cancellation, grants withholding, and even physical intimidation and violence, to stop this research. Activist scientist Eric Turkheimer famously wrote that if the hereditarian hypothesis were ever proved correct it would be like an “atom bomb going off.”

One of the most highly-regarded researchers on intelligence in the world, James Lee, writes that “a policy of deliberate ignorance has corrupted top scientific institutions in the West… journals will often reject submissions that offend prevailing political orthodoxies, especially if they involve controversial aspects of human biology and behavior—no matter how scientifically sound the work might be…”

“American geneticists now face an even more drastic form of censorship: exclusion from access to the data necessary to conduct analyses, let alone publish results… The restrictions appear to be invented to impede research on certain topics that… are out of bounds.”

city-journal.org/article/dont-even-go-there

I’ll go ahead and post some of the linked article*, but first I want to emphasis that I’m not claiming that NIH officials have strong evidence of genes/alleles that cause racial differences in IQ. More likely, they know that there MIGHT BE such evidence in the data, and they’re doing everything in their control to prevent it from seeing the light of day.

James Lee is a behavioral geneticist at the University of Minnesota. The article is from 2022, so this is not “breaking news.” Still, it needs to be brought up as much as possible.

A policy of deliberate ignorance has corrupted top scientific institutions in the West. It’s been an open secret for years that prestigious journals will often reject submissions that offend prevailing political orthodoxies—especially if they involve controversial aspects of human biology and behavior—no matter how scientifically sound the work might be. The leading journal Nature Human Behaviour recently made this practice official in an editorial effectively announcing that it will not publish studies that show the wrong kind of differences between human groups…

My colleagues at other universities and I have run into problems involving applications to study the relationships among intelligence, education, and health outcomes. Sometimes, NIH denies access to some of the attributes that I have just mentioned, on the grounds that studying their genetic basis is “stigmatizing.” Sometimes, it demands updates about ongoing research, with the implied threat that it could withdraw usage if it doesn’t receive satisfactory answers. In some cases, NIH has retroactively withdrawn access for research it had previously approved.

Note that none of the studies I am referring to include inquiries into race or sex differences. Apparently, NIH is clamping down on a broad range of attempts to explore the relationship between genetics and intelligence.

What is NIH’s justification? Studies of intelligence do not pose any greater threat to the dignity of their participants than research based on non-genetic factors. With the customary safeguards in place, research activities such as genetically predicting an individual’s academic performance need be no more “stigmatizing” than predicting academic performance based on an individual’s family structure during childhood…

NIH’s responsibility is to protect the safety and privacy of research participants, not to enforce a party line. Indeed, no apparent legal basis exists for these restrictions. NIH enforces hundreds of regulations, but you will search in vain for any grounds on which to ban “stigmatizing” research—whatever that even means.

The restrictions appear to be invented to impede research on certain topics that anonymous bureaucrats with ideological motivations have decided are out of bounds. It’s impossible to know whether senior NIH officials have instigated the restrictions or merely accepted them tacitly. Perhaps they are unaware of the problem; officials far down the bureaucratic ladder are responsible for approving specific applications…

The federal government was under no obligation to assemble the magnificent database that is the dbGaP. Now that it has done so at taxpayer expense, however, it does have an obligation to provide access to that database evenhandedly—not to allow it for some and deny it to others, based on the content of their research.

*I’ve requested permission to post the entire article. If received, I’ll update the post accordingly

This entry was posted in freedom of speech issues, government/corporate discrimination against whites, Race science. Bookmark the permalink.

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