Publisher reviews national IQ research by British ‘race scientist’ Richard Lynn

^{"Richard Lynn" by Matt Gibson licensed under CC by SA 3.0} 

A leading academic publisher is reviewing its decision to publish research papers by the late British professor Richard Lynn, an influential figure in the discredited field of “race science” who argued western civilisation was threatened by genetically inferior ethnic groups.

Elsevier provides access to more than 100 papers by Lynn, including several iterations of his “national IQ” dataset, which purports to show wide variations in IQ between different countries but which has been criticised by mainstream scientists for serious flaws in its methodology.

The database, a cornerstone of scientific racism ideology that was first published in 2002, is being used in online propaganda by a new generation of well-funded “race science” activists, whose activities were uncovered in a recent investigation by the Guardian and the anti-racism group Hope Not Hate.

Scientific racism’s supporters tend to argue certain ethnic groups are genetically predisposed to criminality or low intelligence. Mainstream geneticists consider it a pseudoscience without credible supporting evidence.

There have been repeated calls for publishers...