Race and intelligence (potential for bias)

Proponents of genetic explanations of race/IQ correlation have often been criticized both of scientific misconduct and of their intimate links with groups that have historic ties to Nazis and eugenics of the early 19th century, such as the Pioneer Fund. The Pioneer Fund has been characterized by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group.

Proponents of genetic explanations of race/IQ correlation have in turn accused their critics of suppressing scientific debate in the name of political correctness. They claim harassment and interference with both their work and funding.

Scientific misconduct and fraud
There has been no serious claim of systematic misrepresentations by race and intelligence researchers as a group. Note that this group includes both advocates and opponents of the genetic hypothesis. However, individual researchers have been accused. When the head of Pioneer Fund and parly-genetic researcher J. Philippe Rushton's supporting references were examined they were found to include a nonscientific semipornographic book and an article in Penthouse Forum.

Cyril Burt, a prominent researcher whose work regarding the heritability of intelligence is cited by proponents of the genetic hypothesis (such as Rushton), was accused of fraud regarding some of his research with twins.

The Pioneer Fund
Many critics of the genetic hypothesis have criticized the source of much of the funding for researchers supporting this hypothesis, the Pioneer Fund.

Many of the researchers supporting the genetic explanation of the racial IQ disparity, like the IQ researcher and current head of the fund J. Philippe Rushton, have received grants of varying sizes from the Pioneer Fund. In accord with the tax regulations governing nonprofit corporations, Pioneer does not fund individuals; under the law only other nonprofit organizations are appropriate grantees. As a consequence, many of the fund's awards go not to the researchers themselves but to the universities that employ them, a standard procedure for supporting work by academically based scientists. However, in addition to these awards to the universities where its grantees are based, Pioneer has also made a number of grants to other nonprofit organizations. William H. Tucker suggests that they are essentially dummy corporations created solely to channel Pioneer's resources directly to a particular academic recipient and that this is "a mechanism apparently designed to circumvent the institution where the researcher is employed".

Although the fund typically gives away more than half a million dollars per year, there is no application form or set of guidelines. Instead an applicant merely submits "a letter containing a brief description of the nature of the research and the amount of the grant requested." There is no requirement for peer review of any kind; Pioneer's board of directors—two attorneys, two engineers, and an investment broker—decides, sometimes within a day, whether a particular research proposal merits funding. Once the grant has been made, there is no requirement for an interim or final report or even for an acknowledgment by a grantee that Pioneer has been the source of support, all atypical practices in comparison to other organizations that support scientific research. ... However, the SPLC itself has been accused of wrongfully applying the term "hate group" to legitimate organizations.

Complaints of "political correctness"
Robert A. Gordon, criticized for accepting grants from the Pioneer Fund, responded to media criticisms of grant-recipients by stating: "Politically correct disinformation about science appears to spread like wildfire among literary intellectuals and other nonspecialists, who have few disciplinary constraints on what they say about science and about particular scientists and on what they allow themselves to believe."

Complaints of persecution
It is asserted that misguided political correctness has led to large-scale denial of recent developments in the human sciences. For example, Morton Hunt argues that recent years "have witnessed a dramatic upsurge in efforts to impose limits on the freedom of social scientists to explore controversial research questions, particularly questions that could yield answers distasteful to those with certain sociopolitical or ideological agendas".

Steven Pinker argues a fear of the implications of the science of human nature ("mind, brain, genes, and evolution") has led to the perception that these are dangerous ideas. Pinker states regarding recent discussions regarding group differences:

"Whether or not these hypotheses hold up ... proponents of ethnic and racial differences in the past have been targets of censorship, violence, and comparisons to Nazis. Large swaths of the intellectual landscape have been reengineered to try to rule these hypotheses out a priori (race does not exist, intelligence does not exist, the mind is a blank slate inscribed by parents). The underlying fear, that reports of group differences will fuel bigotry, is not, of course, groundless."

summarizes the history of harassment and violence in this area: "For a long time Jensen received death threats, needed body guards while on his campus or others, had his home and office phones routed through the police station, received his mail only after a bomb squad examined it, was physically threatened or assaulted dozens of times by protesters disrupting his talks in the United States and abroad, regularly found messages like 'Jensen Must Perish' and 'Kill Jensen' scrawled across his office door, and much more. Psychologists Richard Herrnstein and Hans Eysenck also had such experiences during the 1970s for defying right thinking about intelligence—Eysenck, for example, being physically assaulted by protesters during a public lecture at the London School of Economics."

Other examples include: the Rolling Stone magazine featured a 1994 article titled "Professors of HATE" (in five-inch letters) with a photo of J. Phillipe Rushton's face doctored to look "ghoulish." The British Daily Mail headlined a 1999 interview with Arthur Jensen "Is This Man Truly the World's Most Loathsome Scientist?", disruption of lectures, censuring from academic superiors (e.g. Rushton), police investigation (e.g. Rushton in 1989, and Tatu Vanhanen in Finland in 2004), harassment of family (e.g. Hans Eysenck's children were reportedly treated badly by teachers, causing Eysenck to change the family name to Evans), and even death threats (e.g. Jensen, Rushton, and Glayde Whitney), bomb threats (e.g. Jensen, Rushton, and Charles Murray) and physical assault (e.g. Eysenck was assaulted by Maoist protestors in 1973 while giving a lecture; Arthur Jensen).

Supporters of race and intelligence research have accused other scientists of suppressing scientific debate for political purposes. Behavioral geneticist Glayde Whitney argued in his controversial 1995 presidential address to the Behavior Genetics Association that suppression of debate on both individual and group hereditary differences has occurred as a result of a larger ideology of "environmental determinism for all important human traits ... [a] 'Marxist-Lysenkoist' denial of genetics."

Scientists who openly support the genetic hypothesis have in a number of occurrences faced harassment and interference with their work or funding. Critic of race science William H. Tucker considers these events to be unjustified, "intolerable violation of academic freedom” . When J. Phillipe Rushton was being censured by superiors at his University of Western Ontario in 1989 "despite," as Tucker notes, "being the recipient of a prestigious Guggenheim fellowship and having one of the most productive records of peer-reviewed publication in his department," even notable scientists who had criticized his work, such as James Flynn and Jack Block, wrote to the university on his behalf.

On the other hand, Tucker writes: Although such incidents are intolerable violations of academic freedom, there is an inescapable irony in the complaints of Pioneer grantees, so many of whom have demonstrated precious little concern that their conclusions have been offered, as part of a concerted campaign by the members of the fund that supports their research, to prevent some of their fellow citizens from attending school with whites, being allowed to use "white" public facilities, or being served in "white" establishments. Challenged to repudiate such misuse of his own work, Jensen has steadfastly refused to do so, claiming to be entirely apolitical, although he did not hesitate to appear before a legislative committee as part of a group of notorious opponents of civil rights seeking to halt school integration. Indeed, Jensen was fully aware that the source of his funds considered him part of the "team" providing the "essential ammunition" for maintaining educational apartheid. Pearson, who quickly cleared his department at the University of Southern Mississippi of faculty with liberal opinions so that he could replace them with unqualified neo-Nazis, authored an outraged book in 1991, lamenting the plight of Pioneer scientists harassed by the forces of political correctness, none of whom have lost their academic positions. Only months later, one of his pseudonymous articles in the Mankind Quarterly called for "modification of the 'Bill of Rights'" to deal with the problem of "uncontrolled immigration" and "ghetto welfare children." Rushton has not only contributed to American Renaissance publications and graced their conferences with his presence but also offered praise and support for the "scholarly" work on racial differences of Henry Garrett, who spent the last two decades of his life opposing the extension of the Constitution to blacks on the basis that the "normal" black resembled a European after frontal lobotomy. Informed of Garrett's claim that blacks were not entitled to equality because their "ancestors were ... savages in an African jungle," Rushton dismissed the observation as quoted "selectively from Garrett's writing," finding nothing opprobrious in such sentiments because the leader of the scientific opposition to civil rights had made other statements about black inferiority that were, according to Rushton, "quite objective in tone and backed by standard social science evidence." Quite apart from the questionable logic in defending a blatant call to deprive citizens of their rights by citing Garrett's less offensive writing—as if it were evidence of Ted Bundy's innocence that there were some women he had met and not killed—there was no sense on Rushton's part that all of Garrett's claims, whether or not "objective," were utterly irrelevant to constitutional guarantees, which are not predicated on scientific demonstrations of intellectual equality. Understandably and appropriately outraged at the violation of their own academic freedom, Pioneer grantees have found nothing objectionable in attempts, based on scientific conclusions that they have promulgated, to deprive others of their rights.

The Pioneer Fund
Many critics of the genetic hypothesis have criticized the source of much of the funding for researchers supporting this hypothesis, the Pioneer Fund.

Many of the researchers supporting the genetic explanation of the racial IQ disparity, like the IQ researcher and current head of the fund J. Philippe Rushton, have received grants of varying sizes from the Pioneer Fund. In accord with the tax regulations governing nonprofit corporations, Pioneer does not fund individuals; under the law only other nonprofit organizations are appropriate grantees. As a consequence, many of the fund's awards go not to the researchers themselves but to the universities that employ them, a standard procedure for supporting work by academically based scientists. However, in addition to these awards to the universities where its grantees are based, Pioneer has also made a number of grants to other nonprofit organizations, essentially dummy corporations created solely to channel Pioneer's resources directly to a particular academic recipient. William H. Tucker suggests this is "a mechanism apparently designed to circumvent the institution where the researcher is employed".

Accusations of "political correctness"
It is asserted by some that misguided political correctness has led to large-scale denial of recent developments in the human sciences, including research regard group differences in cognitive ability. Steven Pinker argues a fear of the implications of the science of human nature ("mind, brain, genes, and evolution") has led to the perception that these are dangerous ideas. Pinker states regarding recent discussions regarding group differences:

"Whether or not these hypotheses hold up ... proponents of ethnic and racial differences in the past have been targets of censorship, violence, and comparisons to Nazis. Large swaths of the intellectual landscape have been reengineered to try to rule these hypotheses out a priori (race does not exist, intelligence does not exist, the mind is a blank slate inscribed by parents). The underlying fear, that reports of group differences will fuel bigotry, is not, of course, groundless."

Gottfredson accuses others of maintaining a "double standard" for research that finds unpopular results and a "stiff professional tax on scholars whose work on race or intelligence discomfits reviewers for non-scientific reasons they need not articulate" Gottfredson further argues that high quality of work is no protection from this bias, citing the example of Arthur Jensen as both one of the most eminent and one of the most vilified psychologists, hence the word Jensenism.

Accusations of racism
A racist motivation is frequently ascribed to some researchers who work on questions of race and intelligence. Both historical and contemporary researchers have been described as racists, and some critics hold that it is racist to assert that there are cognitive or behavioral differences between ethnic groups. For example, psychologist Jerry Hirsch has claimed that Arthur Jensen has "avowed goals" that were "as heinously barbaric as were Hitler's and the anti-abolitionists"

Others have raised serious concerns about the Pioneer Fund, which according to the Southern Poverty Law Center "has funded most American and British race scientists, including a large number cited in The Bell Curve" The Pioneer fund has been criticized for having a eugenic and racist political agenda, and history tied to Nazi-sympathizers. Pioneer Fund grantees include J. Phillipe Rushton (current head of the orgnization), Arthur Jensen, Linda Gottfredson, Richard Lynn, Hans Eysenck, Thomas Bouchard, David Lykken, Henry Garrett, William Shockley, Philip Vernon, and Audrey Shuey. Critics of the fund include the SPLC, IQ critic William H. Tucker, and historian Barry Mehler and his Institute for the Study of Academic Racism. The Pioneer fund has been characterized by the Southern Poverty Law Center as being a "hate group," using the definition "attack[ing] or malign[ing] an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics". According to Keith Booker, president of the Wilmington Delaware chapter of the NAACP, the Pioneer Fund "supports only research that tends to come out with results that further the division between races... by justifying the superiority of one race and the inferiority of another... this research is being done in the name of white supremacy." Tucker has argued that some prominent researchers advancing genetic explanations have also opposed school integration. Prominent critic Ulric Neisser, who was the chairman of the APA's 1995 task force on intelligence research regards the fund as helping "change the face of social science" and as being "a weak plus".

Researchers who accept grants from the Pioneer Fund have been subject to criticism regarding bias. Anti-racist Searchlight Magazine notes Pioneer head J. Phillipe Rushton has given a speech at an American Renaissance meeting that Searchlight describes as a "veritable 'who’s who' of American white supremacy." In the early 1990s, the University of Delaware imposed a "prohibition on the receipt of funding (by a faculty member) from the Pioneer Fund, amidst accusations that the Fund had a "history of supporting racism, anti-semitism and other discriminatory practices". Grantee Linda Gottfredson fought a two-year battle with the university before it rescinded its prohibition, arguing that a ban on funding restricted academic freedom. The Scientist 1992 Although there is no direct evidence that the Pioneer Fund has biased the research one critic notes:

"The real question is not did the Pioneer Fund make you alter your scientific findings but why did the Pioneer Fund fund you? ... It's not so much a question of whether or not they influence an individual scientist but rather the scientists they choose to fund in the first place."

Robert A. Gordon, criticized for accepting grants from the Pioneer Fund, replied to media criticisms of grant-recipients: "Politically correct disinformation about science appears to spread like wildfire among literary intellectuals and other nonspecialists, who have few disciplinary constraints on what they say about science and about particular scientists and on what they allow themselves to believe."

Threats and harassment
Researchers who propose that differences in average intelligence are due to the genetics of race have been subject to threats and harassment. has summarized the history of harassment and violence against Arthur Jensen and others. "For a long time Jensen received death threats, needed body guards while on his campus or others, had his home and office phones routed through the police station, received his mail only after a bomb squad examined it, was physically threatened or assaulted dozens of times by protesters disrupting his talks in the United States and abroad, regularly found messages like 'Jensen Must Perish' and 'Kill Jensen' scrawled across his office door, and much more. Psychologists Richard Herrnstein and Hans Eysenck also had such experiences during the 1970s for defying right thinking about intelligence—Eysenck, for example, being physically assaulted by protesters during a public lecture at the London School of Economics."

In 1999 demonstrators prevented Jensen from speaking at an academic conference in London of the Galton Society (formerly known as the Eugenics Society) at which 3 race and intelligence researchers were scheduled to speak including  Walter Kistler.