Turkheimer: "How to Diagnose Abhorrent Science"

A geneticist publishes a handy guide for censors to know which scientific findings to memoryhole.

From the Hastings Center Report:

How to Diagnose Abhorrent Science

Lucas J. Matthews, James Tabery, Eric Turkheimer

First published: 24 December 2024

https://doi.org/10.1002/hast.4946

Abstract

What makes certain scientific research controversial? And when does scientific research go beyond being merely controversial to be something far worse? We propose a diagnostic framework for distinguishing between scientific research that is merely controversial and that which is abhorrent. Our framework places research projects along two axes of a value-harm map. Most research, fortunately, is both valuable and harmless. However, research may be controversial if it is either valuable but harmful or harmless but valueless. The most concerning quadrant of our value-harm map includes research that is both valueless and harmful, which is abhorrent science. The article's analysis considers a series of case studies, highlighting “new genomic race science” as an exemplar of abhorrent science.

Because, obviously, we know ahead of doing the research which unwanted results might prove harmful and valueless and therefore are abhorrent. That’s just how science works!

At least, that’s how science is increasingly working in the 2020s as more and data is put off limits to scientists who won’t swear to not publish pre-defined “repugnant results.”

There are rare examples of trends in the opposite direction, such as the founding by moral philosopher Peter Singer’s Journal of Controversial Ideas, which publishes both moral philosophers’ late night dorm room brainstorms and, sometimes, empirical research in the human sciences.

Dr. Turkheimer, a behavioral geneticist (see my old post on an earlier co-written Turkheimer attack on abhorrent scientific research by the likes of Charles Murray: “Vox: Charles Murray is 80% right and we can't prove he's wrong about the other 20%”), was invited by Singer’s journal to be part of the endlessly protracted review of a study on the obviously important topic of “Intelligence of Refugees in Germany: Levels, Differences and Possible Determinants” by Heiner Rindermann, Bruno Klauk, and James Thompson.

Eventually, Turkheimer failed to persuade the Journal of Controversial Ideas’ editors to spike the article as too controversial, despite his popular argument that it’s abhorrent for people to be aware of facts relevant to setting policy on topics that Turkheimer prefers them to be ignorant about.

Like this article, my response is partly paywalled, although I like to tell myself I provided a bigger chunk free. You need to subscribe to comment on partly paywalled posts.

Thus, on his Substack, Turkheimer then complained about the Journal of Controversial Ideas publishing this controversial finding that refugees in Germany appear to be about 10 or so IQ points lower on average than Germans.

Turkheimer goes on:

Hardcore scientific free speech types will dismiss the “Avoid Abhorrent Conclusions” vertex. Shouldn’t we follow the data wherever it leads? The problem with this is that it would mean that we are never free from some disgusting arguments. There has to be, I think, some scientific equivalent of stare decisis. Would JCI publish a defense of the economics of slavery or health benefits of female circumcision?

Yeah, Singer might well publish one of his fellow moral philosophers’ thought experiments about God knows what, such as beastiality. But what Turkheimer is objecting to publishing is not some 3 am What If session in the sophomore dorm, but a sizable work of social science research into a massively important question of relevance: How is the German Chancellor’s 2015 decision on her personal whim to let in a million Muslim men working out?

Again, I don’t think the point is so much that these ideas are abhorrent. The point is that eventually the scientific community decides that an issue is closed. In my opinion the idea that immigrants are less evolved than white Europeans is one of those ideas.

After all, Turkheimer seems to believe, if Germans are allowed to know scientific facts about the impact of immigration policies, they might democratically vote to reform those policies, and it would be the end of democracy if Germans democratically changed their immigration policy to became more like Danish immigration policy. Or something.

Anyway, Turkheimer argues, you can just tell which scientists are going to turn out to be the Good Guys, like Turkheimer, and who are the Bad Guys:

Finally, as in most things “heterodox,” the system has a mysterious tendency to drift rightward. There have been some good pieces on this phenomenon in the political realm by the heterodox writers Cathy Young and Thomas Chatterton Williams. This is a very complicated phenomenon and I have already gone on too long, but I’ll say this: I think part of the problem is that the scientific alt.right has hacked the algorithm. They know that there is a branch of heterodox science publishing that has pushed itself so far down in the lower left of the editorial triangle that they can be convinced to publish anything, as long as it is written in serious-sounding language. Sometimes it is OK to say no.

By the way, a much more promising-sounding intervention by an academic man of the left, fortunately, appears to be an upcoming book, The Social Genome, by Princeton sociologist Dalton Conley. As I’ve mentioned before, Professor Conley went back to grad school to earn a second doctorate in biology so he could write in a scholarly manner about the interplay of sociology and genetics. Here’s his next book on its Amazon page:

The Social Genome: The New Science of Nature and Nurture

Hardcover – March 18, 2025

by Dalton Conley (Author)

A pioneering scientist presents a mind-expanding account of the sociogenomics revolution, which promises to upend everything we know about human development.

For more than 150 years, the question of nature versus nurture has been one of the most contentious issues in the human sciences. On the one side are “blank-slaters,” who believe we are mainly shaped by our environment. On the other side are “hereditarians,” who believe in the primacy of genes. From the start, the fight has been highly politicized and extremely bitter, given that it has implications for how we think about racial disparities, meritocracy, reproduction, and free will itself. In The Social Genome,, pioneering scientist Dalton Conley demonstrates that this longstanding debate is fundamentally misguided. The true question is not nature versus nurture, but how nature and nurture interact to make each of us who we become.

The Social Genome is a sweeping account of the sociogenomics revolution, which has, in the last decade, upended many of our notions about human development. Sociogenomics brings together advances in molecular genetics and traditional social and behavioral science. The key tool is the polygenic index, which allows us to analyze DNA to measure a child’s genetic potential. Today, we can estimate a child’s adult height, how far they will go in school, and their weight as an adult―all from a cheek swab, finger prick, or vial of saliva. Conley and other researchers are using this new science to shed light on the ways in which genes shape our world, influencing how each person both creates and responds to the environment around them. Conley reveals a world where children’s DNA influences the nurture they extract from their parents; the genes of our schoolmates affect our likelihood of smoking as much as our own DNA does; and spouses’ genes influence each other’s moods and behaviors. Looking forward, Conley envisions a future where dating, education, public health, and other institutions have been radically altered by the sociogenomic revolution.

As Conley argues, we should no longer think of nature versus nurture, but about how our genes seek the nurture they need to express themselves and how, in turn, our environments are made partly from the genes of other people. The Social Genome presents a nuanced, powerful perspective on individual potential and social dynamics and raises critical ethical questions about how we will navigate a future where we have access to far more genetic information than ever before.

Personally, like Conley and unlike Turkheimer, I tend to believe that knowledge is better than ignorance.