1350 words

I’ve been writing on this blog since June 15th, 2015. Back then, I held staunch hereditarian beliefs. Rushton’s views on testosterone were enticing to me, especially his theoretical article with Templer (Rushton and Templer, 2012). When I first read it I thought “Oh, justification for my prior beliefs about blacks and crime.” Then, when I started studying anatomy and physiology, I reread the paper and thought “Wow who gave the OK to publish this mess?”

So in February of 2018 I published a critique of the article, Do pigmentation and the melanocortin system modulate aggression and sexuality in humans as they do in other animals? A Response to Rushton and Templer (2012). I critiqued many of the claims in their article; its biggest weakness completely handwaving the warnings of Ducrest et al (2008) that human populations “are therefore not expected to consistently exhibit the associations between melaninbased coloration and the physiological and behavioural traits reported in our study.” Rushton and Templer dodged this by saying that we should compare African and European crime rates and that we do, indeed, see that Africans commit more crimes than whites and Africans have darker skin than whites so this is sort of “preliminary evidence” for the relationship in human races.

However, unfortunately for Rushton, Cernovsky and Litmann (2019) reanlyzed the INTERPOL crime data:

When all data from the same two Interpol Yearbooks are re-calculated, most of the statistically significant trends in the data are in the direction opposite to Rushton’s beliefs: Negroids had lower crime rates than Caucasoids with respect to sexual offenses, rapes, theft, and violent theft or robbery, with most correlation coefficients exceeding .60. While we do not place much credence in such Interpol statistics as they only reproduce information provided by government officials of different countries, our re-analysis indicated that Rushton excluded data that would discredit his theory.

So, if we accept the INTERPOL data—as Rushton did—then we would be justified in saying that the proposed relationships and causal pathways do not hold.

Then at the end of October the Twitter account @evopsychgoogle wrote a long thread with a strong, in-depth critique of the arguments and sources in Rushton and Templer (2012). He then published his critique as a letter to the editor of Personality and Individual Differences (PaID). In the letter, he exposes the shoddy logic of Rushton and Templer, while showing their misreadings of sources and misunderstanding of pleiotropy. Their main point in the paper is that LHT may explain why dark-skinned individuals are more violent, mature faster, etc while they also argue that the melanocortin system is a physiological coordinator of LH traits and skin color.

Testosterone production is a simple bodily process—to quote myself from November, 2017:

There are five simple steps to testosterone production: 1) DNA codes for mRNA; 2) mRNA codes for the synthesis of an enzyme in the cytoplasm; 3) luteinizing hormone stimulates the production of another messenger in the cell when testosterone is needed; 4) this second messenger activates the enzyme; 5) the enzyme then converts cholesterol to testosterone (Leydig cells produce testosterone in the presence of luteinizing hormone) (Saladin, 2010: 137). Testosterone is a steroid and so there are no ‘genes for’ testosterone.

Cells in the testes need to take cholesterol and then convert it into testosterone with the luteinizing hormone. According to Rushton and Templer, the result of this bodily process is part of the reason why blacks are more violent than whites—they have higher levels of testosterone and testosterone causes aggression/violence. Surely, Rushton and Templer were aware of Rohrmann et al (2007) who showed no difference in testosterone between blacks and whites. Surely Rushton and Templer were aware of all of the research that I cited in what I would call my ‘master article’ on race, testosterone, prostate cancer, and aggression. Rushton and Templer, quite obviously on a review of the literature, are misleading their readers.

Thankfully this paper has only been cited 15 times in the past 8 years since it was published. Evolution, presumably, accounts for the differences in death, AIDS rate, testosterone, lower life expectancy, etc. One recent citation can be found in the textbook Race and Crime (Gabiddon and Greene, 2018, 5th edition) in a discussion about Rushton’s r/K selection theory and causes for Rushton’s proposed relationship. They write (pg 122-123):

As with all theories, there have been several criticisms of the r/K selection theory. First, Rushton generally underemphasizes sociological factors. Most of his cross-national comparisons point strictly to numbers, without taking into account variables such as socioeconomic status, and other important sociological variables (Whihte, 2018). Second, in the 21st century, there are few “pure” races, especially in the United States, as noted in Chapter 1. White sexual aggression against Black females during the slave era produces countless mixed-race offspring. Therefore, the rigorous adherence to the Black-White-Asian split is problematic. Finally, if Rushton;s theory were true, what would explain White aggression as early colonizers and their current involvement in wars and violence across the globe? In contrast to Rushton’s theory, Bradley (1978) argued that, as a result of migration to colder regions, since the beginning of humanity, Whites have been the global aggressors.

So, testosterone does not cause aggression and it does not cause crime; the melanocortin system does not work in such a way that works for Rushton and Templer’s theory (Cone, 2006).

Hilliard (2012: 73) stated that “No evidence shows that racism motivated Rushton” while Dutton (2018) stated the same, interviewing Rushton’s ex-wife (whom he had an illegitimate black son with). But, knowing what we know about testosterone and Rushton’s views on blacks and whites, knowing about his (false) views on testosterone and race (while citing old, flawed studies like Ross et al) we can call into question the claim that Rushton had no racial animus. @evopsychgoogle also brought up the fact that COIs and funding sources were not brought up (this being Rushton’s final paper before his death and the fact that he was the head of the Pioneer Fund at the time means we don’t have to ask where the funding came from). Rushton and Templer should have never been published in the first place.

Lastly, Clark et al (2020) argued that ‘intelligence’ as ‘measured‘ by ‘IQ tests’ modulates the relationship between religiosity and crime at a country-wide level. They, of course, used Lynn’s global ‘IQ’ data. Though, there were many critiques of the paper and the data used in it (see here, here, and here) and Clark et al decided to finally retract their paper due to the problems of Lynn’s dataset. So, if they retracted due to the problems with Lynn’s dataset, does that mean that other papers that relied on Lynn’s shoddy work (e.g., Richardson, 2004; Morse, 2008) should be retracted too? Ebbeson (2020) notes the flawed ‘IQ estimates’ used in Clark (2020), noting the small, unrepresentative child samples used, along with showing that their dataset leads to “notions” which “are incompatible with psychological science” so “all conclusions drawn from these data are invalid.”

Clark et al “lost confidence in their findings” since “the homicide data have limitations that call [their] findings into question” while “The IQ data … have much more serious issues.” “Serious” is an understatement. To quote Ebbeson (2020)

For example, in the ‘NIQ_QNWSAS’ dataset, several African, South Asian and Central American countries have an average IQ below 50, such as Nepal (national IQ: 43.0), Sierra Leone (national IQ: 45.1), Guatemala (national IQ: 47.7) and Gambia (national IQ: 49.8) These estimates would seem to suggest that a majority of the population in these countries are moderately, severely, or profoundly cognitively impaired. (cf. Table 1). This notion is incompatible with psychological science and there is no doubt that these estimates are wrong.

All in all, this is not a good week for “HBD”—Rushton is being exposed for the know-nothing about physiology that he is, and Lynn’s ‘national IQ’ numbers are getting the scrutiny they finally deserve. So, I hold, if Clark et al was retracted for those reasons, we need to retract ALL papers that relied on Lynn’s ‘national IQ data.’ People may cry ‘censorship! HBD is dead!’, but ‘HBD’ (what I would term psychological hereditarianism) has been long dead. Rushton and Templer’s paper should have never been published but it’s better late than never that it is finally getting retracted. If you’re saying that Rushton and Templer got retracted for “political reasons” then it’s clear that you did not read either of the two existing critiques of the paper.