Personality and Individual Differences 49 (2010) 264–271

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Personality and Individual Differences

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The rights and responsibilities implied by academic freedom

Earl Hunt *,1

Psychology Department, Box 351525, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195-1525, United States

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:Received 27 December 2009Received in revised form 9 January 2010Accepted 12 January 2010Available online 1 February 2010

Keywords:Academic freedomFreedom of speechCensorshipIntelligenceGroup differences

0191-8869/$ - see front matter � 2010 Elsevier Ltd. Adoi:10.1016/j.paid.2010.01.011

* Tel.: +1 4254541887.E-mail address: ehunt@u.washington.edu.

1 This is an expansion of a talk delivered at a FestschrJr.’s retirement;Minneapolis, June 2009. I am honored tthis occasion. I was also privileged to have a livelyBouchard following the conference, concerning the topiinformative comments. Naturally, though, I alone aexpressed here.

a b s t r a c t

Academics enjoy freedom from retaliation for their statements that goes beyond the freedom accorded toother members of society. Academics are also often called upon to act as advisors, either to society as awhole or to public and private sector clients. This sets up a tension between freedom to speak and an obli-gation to speak responsibly. The problem can be acute in the field of individual differences, for findingsrelated to individual differences touch upon the relations among different racial/ethnic groups, betweengenders, and have implications for educational and personnel policies. Examples are given of situations inwhich, in the author’s opinion, academics have abused their roles as expert advisors by speaking irre-sponsibly. At issue is not whether or not the person speaking reached a correct conclusion, but whetheror not the evidence and reasoning about the evidence met reasonable standards for careful inquiry andanalysis. Formal actions by governments or by university administration are seldom the answer. Stan-dards enforced by professional societies are less problematical, but are far from complete solutions.The best way to handle the problem is to encourage open discussion of the issues involved, both betweenestablished academics and between faculty and students.

� 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

This paper discusses a perennial topic in academia, the impor-tance of freedom of speech and inquiry. It touches on anotherperennial topic of discussion: the role of the academic as an as-dis-passionate-as-possible expert advisor to the rest of society. Whilewe can trace this role back to Socrates, its modern incarnationcame with the rise of the university as a research institution. Pro-fessors at all universities, and especially at research universities,are expected to do more than pass on the previously gathered wis-dom of society to its candidate future leaders. They are expected togenerate new knowledge and to provide advisory opinions; eitherthrough formal arrangements, as in consultancies, testimony as ex-pert witnesses, or service on government panels; or in less formalsettings, such as public lectures, op-ed pieces, and presentations asguests or moderators on television and radio shows. Many profes-sors have embraced this role. And they should, for their servicescan be valuable.

When all the expert does is to pass on specialized informationthat is agreed upon by virtually the entire relevant scientific com-

ll rights reserved.

ift honoring Thomas Bouchardo have been invited to talk on

email discussion with Prof.c of this paper. He made manym responsible for the views

munity, then there is no problem. Problems arise when the informa-tion is relevant to important social policy decisions and there is asubstantial debate within the scientific community about the factsand, more frequently, the appropriate interpretation of those facts.Within psychology debates of this sort have arisen over, amongother topics, the credence that should be given to adults’ ‘recoveredmemories’ of childhood abuse, the efficacy of video programs aseducational devices for infants and toddlers, and the area fromwhich I shall draw most of my examples, group differences in intel-ligence. In each of these cases different segments of society havestrongly held, often incompatible, views. Social activists then lookfor scientists who can provide relevant information. Sometimes thisis done in the hopes that scientific knowledge will point the way to-wards a rational solution of a problem. Unfortunately, though, theactivists often seek scientific opinions primarily to reinforce viewsthat have already been decided upon. As the 19th century Scottishpoet Andrew Lang observed, they use statistics like a drunkenman uses a lamp post; for support rather than illumination.

When an expert enters into social frays, either intentionally orunwittingly, he or she is immediately exposed to debates, charges,and counter-charges, and in many cases is held accountable for thepresumed consequences of the advice. There is nothing wrong withthis; it is one of the hazards of the expert’s role. In general, oneought to be accountable both for one’s actions and for advice thatled others to take action. A classic, and highly illustrative, exampleoccurred in 2005, when the economist Larry Summers, thenpresident of Harvard University, said that one of the reasons forthe relatively low representation of women in the top ranks of

E. Hunt / Personality and Individual Differences 49 (2010) 264–271 265

the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM)fields might be that, compared to their frequency in the population,there is a low proportion of women at very high levels of intelli-gence, something he felt was essential to be at the very top inthe STEM fields. Summers’ remarks set off a political firestorm.Several prominent women academics/scientists left the meetingin protest. A few months later Summers resigned as president ofHarvard. While his remarks were not the only reason that variousgroups opposed Summers’ continuing as president, they wereclearly contributing factors.

There is more to the Summers’ story, but the case so far isinstructive. As leader of a very prestigious university Summersknew, or ought to have known, something about the predictorsof scientific achievement. His remarks understandably alienatedan important social group; people who are committed to increas-ing the participation of women in the STEM fields. All those in-volved, including Summers himself, properly had to consider theeffect of this alienation upon his ability to continue in his role aspresident of Harvard. This is a specific case of a general principle:other things being equal an expert can be held responsible forhis or her opinions. Accountability is usually not direct; expertsdo not offer guarantees of accurate advice any more than physi-cians offer guarantees of cures. Experts are consultants, and whenconsultants do not provide useful advice they do not get new con-tracts, are not renewed in their positions, and so forth.

The fact that there can be consequences is certainly not inher-ently bad. It can instill a certain hesitancy and honesty into expertopinions. However it can also be stifling. For instance policy mak-ers may prefer to receive only those expert analyses that supporttheir desired programs of action, and may have sufficient controlover the careers of the analysts so that ‘free and honest’ advice ismuted. This apparently has been a problem at the level of foreignand defense policies in the contemporary United States (Treverton,2001). But the phenomenon is far older. In the 18th century Peterthe Great complained that his advisors told him what they thoughthe wanted to hear, not what they actually thought.

It is for this reason that the university-based advisor plays aparticularly important role in society. By custom, and in a substan-tial number of situations by law, an academic expert has an impor-tant immunity from retaliation for the provision of unwantedanalysis. In principle, the academic cannot lose his or her positionfor providing such advice. In our second visit to the Summers case,it is telling that although Summers resigned as president of Har-vard, he retained his position as a professor. Summers’ presidentialrole was not immune from attack for expressing an opinion, hisprofessorial role was. A faculty appointment provides an expertadvisor with two big advantages over the non-academic expert.

The first is that the academic has special credibility, because theuniversity is supposed to have examined the academician’s creden-tials beforehand. The second is that the academic has secure pri-mary employment no matter what is said.

At its best, academic freedom allows faculty experts to speakup, even if their message is seen as an inconvenient truth. . .ormore likely, just inconvenient. . .in influential quarters. (In medie-val times this role was played by the King’s Fool, but let us not ex-plore this analogy further.) However there is another side toacademic freedom. It leaves an opening for the academic consul-tant to say something interesting and possibly influential, but thatgoes beyond what is scientifically justifiable. Professors can (andhave) questioned such things as the morality of third-worldemployment practices by major corporate donors to their univer-sity, without fear of losing their jobs. It is even possible to retaina tenured position after publishing an attack on intercollegiatefootball. Employees of commercial firms who raise public ques-tions about the honesty of their employer’s advertising campaignmay soon join the ranks of the unemployed.

The privileged position of academics, and especially academicsin the sciences, brings with it a special obligation to be conservative,not in the political sense, but in the sense of making sure that whatis said is scientifically justifiable. Politicians and political punditsare notorious for wanting to be the first to publish their opinionson a topic. When academics speak in public they ought to stressthe ‘accurate’ side of the speed-accuracy trade-off. This is especiallythe case when an academic is speaking or writing in a forum wherethe academic is likely to be accepted as an expert: in public lectures,books addressed to general audiences, and advisory boards. Theproblem is present, but less acute, in situations where challengeis easy, such as publication in the scientific literature or testimonyas an expert witness in an adversarial proceeding.

Arguing that academic speakers should stress accuracy is not thesame as saying that they should always be correct. That would be animpossible standard. It is possible to be irresponsible even thoughyou turn out to be correct, and responsible even though, in theend, you turn out to be wrong. A statement is responsible if it isbased on the facts, as they are known to the speaker (or should begiven the area of expertise), and the statement does not ignoreimportant contrary facts or qualifications that are also known (orshould be) to the speaker. If the speaker’s conclusion is later shownto be wrong, on the basis of facts not known to the speaker, that isno shame. Conversely, if faulty reasoning and/or selective citation isused to justify a conclusion, then that is irresponsible even if it turnsout, later, that the conclusion was correct. There are many topics,especially in the social and behavioral sciences, where the situationis ambiguous. Such ambiguities should be acknowledged. One hun-dred percent objectivity is impossible. Nevertheless, it is somethingto be strived for. Scientists should attempt to present evidence in asfair and objective manner as they can. . .even if that keeps them offthe evening news or out of the NY TIMES book review.

2. The case of research on intelligence

The problem is especially cogent for those who study intelli-gence. If an academic psychologist wants to be popular all he orshe has to do is to make a ringing, unqualified assertion aboutthe nature of racial/ethnic or male–female differences in intelli-gence. Depending on what is said, the speaker will be popular withgroup A and vilified by group B, or the reverse. But the statementwill not be ignored! On the other hand, when a speaker makes acarefully qualified statement about group differences in intelli-gence that accurately reflects the state of our current knowledgeone of two things is likely to happen. The most likely outcome isthat the statement will be ignored. The other alternative is thatthe speaker will be vilified by both groups A and B, by one fornot having the courage of his or her convictions and by the otherfor being politically motivated. . .after groups A or B have decided,unilaterally, that the speaker really shared their convictions, butwas afraid to say so.

This problem has been going on for a long time. In 1975 JohnLoehlin, Gardner Lindzey, and J.N. Spuhler reviewed the evidencefor racial differences in intelligence that was available at the time,and, in their final chapters, made two points:

We have been concerned privately by the number of instancesin which the political and social preferences of the investigatorsappear to have grossly biased their interpretation of data.Loehlin, Lindzey & Spuhler, 1975, p. 232.

And

When we have mentioned our general conclusion to colleagues—that the solid evidence to date is compatible with a relativelybroad range of intellectual positions on the ‘race-IQ’ question—a typical response is ‘yes, but what do you really think?’

266 E. Hunt / Personality and Individual Differences 49 (2010) 264–271

Loehlin, Lindzey, & Spuhler, 1975, p. 257.

More than 30 years later the situation has not changed. Thereare pressures to make bold statements. Bold, prematurely conclu-sive statements made to an eager public can have consequencesthat go well beyond embarrassment for the speaker. Nevertheless,academic freedom is an important principle. Rational people are allfor academic responsibility and for academic freedom. The devil isin the details.

3. Free speech protections and restrictions

Many discussions of free speech become polemical, for ‘freespeech’ and ‘enforcing responsibility’ become ends in themselves.It may be more useful to look at freedom to speak and restrictionson speech as control mechanisms, in the engineering rather thanthe social sense.

Rigid censorship can, and historically has, stifled important sci-entific inquiry. We have two striking examples; the 17th CenturyCatholic Church’s attempt to impose an earth-centric view of theuniverse, which led to the censorship of Galileo, and the 20th Cen-tury Soviet Union’s ruling that Lysenko’s theory of evolution basedon acquired characteristics was to be preferred to Darwin’s theoryof evolution by natural selection. Freedom of speech and inquiryare essential to avoid such intellectual abominations. Freedom ofspeech acts as a control mechanism that keeps society from veer-ing into intellectually barren territory.

On the other hand, no society permits unfettered free speech.The American jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. presented the casefor some control when he said ‘There is no right to falsely cry firein a crowded theatre.’2 It is unlikely that anyone would disagreewith Holmes’ example. However it is instructive to look at the con-text in which he said it. Holmes was writing for the majority in acase in which the US Supreme Court upheld the conviction of aman who had violated a World War I espionage act by handingout leaflets opposing a military draft. Subsequent jurisprudence inthe United States has considerably narrowed the ruling. It is now re-quired that the speech must incite someone to a ‘clear and presentdanger,’ either to people or significant injury to property.

Academics can be faced with situations closely analogous toHolmes’ concern about cries of fire. In 2005 a Danish newspaperpublished a series of unflattering cartoon depictions of the prophetMohammed. Shortly thereafter there were protest riots in severalIslamic nations. It is estimated that as many as 250 people mayhave lost their lives. A scholarly book examining this incidenthas been written (Klausen, 2009). The original intent of the authorwas to include the cartoons with the book. However the publisher,Yale University Press, supported by the President of the University,insisted that the cartoons be removed, out of concern that violentprotests might reoccur. Knowledgeable experts, including diplo-mats, publishers, and academic scholars, disagreed amongst them-selves as to whether this was an unjustified attack on academicfreedom or a reasonable way to avoid a potentially dangerous sit-uation (The Editors, 2009). The issues involved are often not starklyblack or white.

The American stance is based on the First Amendment to the USConstitution (a part of the ‘Bill of Rights’ of citizens vis a vis thegovernment). The relevant part of this amendment is

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of reli-gion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging thefreedom of speech, or of the press;

2 Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, writing for a unanimous decision of the USSupreme Court, Schenk vs. the United States, 249 US 47/(1919).

The European stance is generally more restrictive. It is illegal togive the Nazi salute in Germany, and anyone with a sense of his-tory knows why. The Council of Europe has urged member coun-tries to pass laws banning any statement that ‘‘advocates,promotes or incites hatred (or) discrimination.” The quotes arefrom European regulations for transmissions on the internet. It istelling that the United States declined to endorse this section ofthe international version of the internet regulation bill, because itwas seen as conflicting with the First Amendment.

Specific cases also show the differences in degree of control be-tween Europe and America. The French actress Brigite Bardot hasreceived substantial fines for violating hate speech laws by herpublic statements about Islamic migrants to France.3 Several ofthe quotations attributed to Bardot in the press resemble anti-immi-gration statements that are made regularly, without censorship, bysome television and radio commentators in the United States whoadvocate stricter American immigration policies.

Generalizing, there are two things that make a statement emi-nently worth saying: that it be true and that the statement fur-ther some action that society sees as desirable. This providesgrounds for tension. The assertions ‘‘statement is true” and ‘‘fur-thers some action that society sees as desirable (or undesirable)”can seldom be categorized as being strictly true or false. Insteadthey can be assigned a fuzzy truth value in the sense used in Za-deh’s (1965) fuzzy set theory, a value between 0 and 1, with 0indicating certain falsity and 1 indicating certain truth. Reason-able people can disagree about the truth values to be assignedeither statement. The extent to which a statement is true oftendepends upon its scope. Consider the two statements ‘‘In studyX it was found that women had significantly lower scores thanmen on the Raven Progressive Matrices test ‘‘and ‘‘Women havelower general intelligence than men” Leaving aside the possibilityof fraud, the first statement is an assertion of a fact about testscores, and can easily be shown to be either true or false, i.e.the fuzzy truth value is either near zero or near one. Making afalse statement is always irresponsible science. The second state-ment is a generalization that, presumably, would be based onseveral studies showing results like study X’s. Its truth dependsupon the extent to which the different studies’ results can be gen-eralized and the extent to which the tests involved can be said tobe adequate indices of general intelligence. The fuzzy truth valueof this statement lies between zero and one and may be near themiddle of the range. Moreover, reasonable people, looking at dif-ferent aspects of the data, may in good faith assign different truthvalues.

The same thing is true of other statements about group differ-ences in intelligence. Take the statement ‘‘Black-White differencesin IQ are largely of genetic origin.” As suggested by the earlierquote, Loehlin, Lindzey, & Spuhler appear to assign this statementa truth value between .3 and .7. Rushton and Jensen (2005) write asif the value was near 1, and Nisbett (2009) as if it is close to zero. I,personally, would only be willing to assign a value of zero to thestatement ‘‘Scientists are agreed that Black-White differences inIQ are (largely) (trivially) of genetic origin.”

The same thing is true about the inferential part, that if thestatement is true it may hinder social goals. Here we are evaluatinga causal statement. Take as the example ‘‘If racial differences inintelligence are genetic in origin then hiring or educational admis-sions policies aimed at proportional representation of racial/ethnicgroups are misguided.” This sweeping conclusion contains theassumption that the purpose of an admissions policy is or oughtto be selection of the ‘best and brightest.’ While this is certainlyone goal of personnel selection, it is not the only goal. In a multi-

3 Time, April 15, 2008.

E. Hunt / Personality and Individual Differences 49 (2010) 264–271 267

ethnic community establishing a connection between the commu-nity and the students or employees of an institution may be vital. Ifthe police and courts are seen as outside forces, maintaining therule of law is more difficult. Raising public money for higher edu-cation will be more difficult if an university is seen as excludinglarge segments of the community.

In addition to disagreements over the truth value of a statementand its implication, people can disagree over the weight thatshould be placed on the statement and the implications. While itwould be difficult to quantify this in a survey, one suspects thatscientists place more weight on the truth of a statement, while pol-icy makers, and those who would like to influence policy makers,such as the media, place more weight on the implications. In gen-eral, scientists are biased toward saying that almost any true state-ment may be uttered responsibly, while policy makers worry aboutwhat will happen if the statement is made. However the distinc-tion is not absolute. There was considerable debate amongst scien-tists over the desirability of releasing the genome sequence of thesmallpox virus, because of the balance between the benefits tomedicine and the costs if the information were to be used in biot-errorism. In the 1970s suggestive evidence was produced indicat-ing increased criminality in men with an XYY genotype. Whilethat debate subsided (Hunt, in press), there is certainly a possibil-ity that advances in behavioral genetic research might produce asimilar finding, which could trigger a debate over surveillancebased on genetic screening, not for the individual’s good but forsociety’s. My point is certainly not to take stands on a hypotheticalfinding and debate. The point is just that a debate analogous to thedebate over the smallpox genome could occur within the behav-ioral sciences.

4. The source of restrictions on free speech

Governments are not the only sources of limitations on freespeech. Indeed, because governments in the modern democraciesmust follow the rule of law, non-governmental action may be morerestrictive. Non-governmental actions come from three sources:economic forces, the press in its roles of informing and speakingfor the public, and the more vaguely defined social circle importantto the speaker.

Economic retaliations can take several forms. The most explicitis loss of employment. In the United States, so long as no contrac-tual arrangement is violated, you can lose your job because youremployer does not like what you say. Radio and television com-mentators, and editorial writers, can be dropped from employ-ment if their public views diverge from the views of theiremployers, or if their employers see these views as hurting corpo-rate profit. Furthermore, there is no protection from boycotts.While it is true that a professor can speak out against the policiesof corporate donors to the university without fear of direct attackon his or her employment, it is also true that the corporate donorsare under no obligation to continue their donations to the profes-sor’s institution.

When it comes to free speech the press is singled out for specialprivilege, which it exercises enthusiastically. Paradoxically, thiscan act to restrict the free speech of others. The press will vigor-ously defend its right to free speech. . .including its freedom toquote you out of context, mangle your interview, and even, withinbroad limits, to put words into your mouth. Here is an example.The statement is from a review of a book on intelligence by Nisbett(2009);

Beyond a certain threshold__an I.Q. of 115, say —there is no cor-relation between intelligence and creativity or geniusJim Holt: NY TIMES REVIEW OF BOOKSMarch 17, 2009/

There are two things wrong with this statement. First, it is fac-tually incorrect. People with very high IQ scores do, in general,accomplish more than people with IQs in the 115–120 range(Lubinski, Benbow, Webb, & Bleske-Rechek, 2006; Terman & Oden,1959). The other thing that is wrong with the statement is that,although you would never realize this from the review, Nisbettnever wrote it. It was injected into the review either because thereviewer thought that this was the drift of Nisbett’s argument(an argument that could ‘sort of’ be defended from Nisbett’s criti-cism of interpretations that are often made of IQ scores) or becausethe reporter felt that the statement was common knowledge.

The press will not hesitate to put words in your mouth. Some-times these amount to willful distortions. You cannot do anythingabout this. Far more often, though, the press is either looking for aheadline-catching quote, where out-of-context quotation is fairgame, or the press has molded your message into something thatthey believe you were trying to say and that they can say for youin a way that will be newsworthy. If you say something that couldbe construed as supporting a particular misconception, or thatcould be construed as an attack on dearly-held beliefs, the presswill take it and run with it. Speakers cannot stop this. They canonly word their public remarks in a way that does not encouragemisinterpretation.

Finally, there is the speaker’s own social circle: the group ofpeople whom the speaker knows, depends upon, and certainlywishes to maintain relations with. This was explained by no lessa person than Mark Twain:

We consciously or unconsciously pay more attention to tuningour opinions to our neighbor’s pitch and preserving his approvalthan we do to examining the opinions searchingly and seeing toit that they are right and sound.

Twain, 1905/2008, pg. 50.

Twain himself limited some of his attacks on religion to tractsthat were published only after his death, possibly in order to main-tain good relations with his extended family. Today any academicwho wishes to advance along the chair-dean-provost-presidentline, a perfectly legitimate ambition, is well advised to be thought-ful about any statement concerning group differences in intelli-gence. Ostracism from faculty colleagues will be as marked animpediment to advancement as attack from outside the academy.

5. The protection afforded by academic freedom

The argument thus far has made three points. The first is that allsocieties put some restrictions on speech, and that the idea ofrestriction is not completely irrational. The second is that thereare two aspects to evaluating a speech: worrying about the truthof what is said and worrying about the implications of saying it.Scientists generally emphasize the truth, other parts of societymay emphasize the implications. The third point is that restrictionson speech are enforced, in different ways and to different degrees,by governments, by economic concerns, and by ‘public opinion,’ asexpressed both in the media and by one’s own social network. Wenow look at the issue of academic freedom.

When it comes to free speech, academics enjoy a special privi-lege. By tradition and often by legally binding contractual arrange-ments in faculty codes, academics are protected against theiremployers’ desires to punish them for what they say.

A striking example of this occurred at the University of Coloradoin the 2005–2009 period. Ward Churchill, a Professor of EthnicStudies, made public references to the victims of the September9th, 2001 destruction of the World Trade Center, as ‘Little Eich-mans.’ This term, and other statements, could be read as Churchill’ssaying that, as representatives of capitalism, the victims had gotten

268 E. Hunt / Personality and Individual Differences 49 (2010) 264–271

what was coming to them. In spite of considerable public furor, theUniversity of Colorado did not immediately dismiss Churchill formaking these statements. However, he was eventually dismissed.I revisit this case below, for it had further instructive characteris-tics. The lengthy process in the Churchill case stands in strikingcontrast to a similar case in the private sector. In April, 2007 DonImus, a CBS radio talk show host, made derogatory racial and sex-ual comments about the women on the Rutgers University basket-ball team. Imus was fired within a week.

When it comes to free speech, academics have privileges. Theyare not as absolute as we might like, but they do exist.

We have these privileges because society believes, correctly,that our society needs a body of experts who inquire freely, andwhose knowledge can be tapped when there is a social need todo so. Society’s part of this bargain is that such inquiries will notbe limited. The professoriate’s part of the bargain is that they havean obligation either to give responsible advice or, when they speakon the basis of opinion alone, make it clear that they are not claim-ing any more expertise than any other citizen might have. Some-times the bargain breaks down – on both sides.

6. Illustrations

I am now going to give a few examples of cases where, in myopinion, academics have spoken out as if they had scientific justi-fication for their statements, even though the data were shaky. Be-fore doing so, I want to make two qualifications. First, I have a greatdeal of respect for some of the people in my examples. However inthe particular cases I shall cite them for, I think they went far be-yond what the evidence would support. In some cases they didso in environments where they did not think they would be chal-lenged by equally knowledgeable colleagues, thus taking fulladvantage of their position. Second, I think they were sincere. Theybelieved that what they said was correct; they just were too firm insaying what they did.

I will start with a case that I regard as a particularly egregiousexample of selective citation of evidence in order to support aconclusion.

Case Number 1. Richard Lynn and Tutu Vanhanen presentedwhat purported to be reviews of the research on intelligence insub-Saharan Africa (Lynn & Vanhanen, 2002, 2006). There weretwo aspects to their work. They reported that there is a high corre-lation between indices of national intelligence test scores and indi-ces of national social and economic well-being. This is easy toverify, for if you take a wide variety of social, education, wealth,and public health measures across a set of countries, there is ahuge general factor, which shows the not-too-surprising fact thatthe more economically developed a country, the higher its popula-tion scores on other variables indicating well-being (Rindermann,2007; Rindermann, 2008). Lynn and Vanhanen rushed to assigncausation to the correlation between IQ scores and socio-economicvariables, a mistake in reasoning that is discussed in introductorystatistics courses. They then went onto make another, and in myopinion more serious, error.

Lynn and Vanhanen made, and discussed in some detail, esti-mates of the mean IQ of the populations of various sub-SaharanAfrican nations. The estimates were staggeringly low. To illustrate,their lowest data point was 59, for Equatorial Guinea. The estimatefor Nigeria was 69, and other estimates were similarly low. Theyassigned an overall IQ of 67 to the region (Lynn & Vanhanen,2006, Table 9.6). An IQ of 67 would be accepted in American courtsas (among other things) evidence for legally diminished responsi-bility due to mental incapacity.

Three of Lynn and Vanhanen’s data points are illustrative of thequality of this work.

1. The data point given for Equatorial Guinea (Fernandez-Ballest-eros, Juan-Espinosa, Colom, & Calero, 1997) was the figure thatthe original authors reported for children in a school for thementally disabled in Madrid! The article in question did men-tion Equatorial Guinea, in another section, but made no men-tion of any intelligence testing in that country.

2. The estimate for Nigeria was based upon two data points from alarger table provided by the original author (Ferron, 1965). Theremainder of the table produced a higher estimate (Wicherts,Dolan, & van der Maas, 2010).

3. The estimate for Ethiopia was based on testing of EthiopianJewish immigrants to Israel, not Ethiopians. The Ethiopian Jew-ish community in Israel consists of immigrants and children ofrecent immigrants from an ancient Ethiopian community thatfollowed an agrarian subsistence economy and that encoun-tered considerable hostility within Ethiopia. Neither the Israeliresidents nor those Ethiopian Jews still resident in Ethiopiacan remotely be considered representative samples of the pop-ulation of Ethiopia, any more than the Hmong residents in theUnited States today could be considered representative of thepopulation of Laos.

Lynn and Vanhanen appear to be committed to genetic explana-tions of group differences in intelligence. This, in itself, is a not-unreasonable (but unproven) hypothesis. Although Lynn andVanhanen did not present any data on genetics, they concludedthat (a) the differences in intelligence between nations were genet-ic and (b) there is very little that can be done about it. Lynn andVanhanen (2002) closed by saying.

Intelligence differences between nations will be impossible toeradicate because they have a genetics

(Lynn & Vanhanen, 2002, pg. 195).

And four years later:

The persistence of differences in intelligence between nations isinevitable, and so too will be the consequences; the persistenceof national differences in wealth. Or as St. John put it two thou-sand years ago ‘‘The poor you will always have with you.”

Lynn & Vanhanen, 2006, pg. 293.

The sub-Saharan African nations have serious problems, duepartly to the lack of the cognitive skills required to prosper in thepost-industrial age. Lynn and Vanhanen’s statements invite Afri-cans and others simply to give up trying to do much about it. Usingfar better data and statistical techniques, Wicherts et al. (2010)estimated the mean intelligence test score in sub-Saharan Africato be 81, a value that Wicherts et al. point out is about the valuefor the North European nations in 1950, after allowing for risesin test scores throughout the 20th century. This puts a rather dif-ferent light on the ‘persistence of national differences in wealth.’for, as is well known, both the wealth and the intelligence testscores of Northern Europe have improved markedly since the1950s. Even if the difference in intelligence test scores betweenthe sub-Saharan and European-North American populations isdue to genetics, there is no proof that the differences are immuta-ble. Moreover, the genetic cause is by no means proven; there areample historic and geographical-economic reasons why sub-Saha-ran African cultures might have lagged in technological develop-ments that may also have impacted intelligence test scores there.

Lynn and Vanhanen labeled the last section of their 2006 book‘policy implications,’ As the closing quotation given above indi-cates, if policy makers were to listen to Lynn and Vanhanen theywould take a negative mindset with respect to a serious socialproblem. I have no doubt that some people who want to be policymakers will do so. Lynn and Vanhanen were irresponsible.

E. Hunt / Personality and Individual Differences 49 (2010) 264–271 269

Case Number 2. We return to the Summers’ case, discussed ear-lier. As part of the furor following Summers’ remarks, the journalSCIENCE published a letter from over seventy prominent educatorsand scientists, saying, among other things.

There is little evidence that those scoring at the very top of therange in standardized tests are likely to have more successfulcareers in science.

Muller et al., 2005.

That statement is incorrect. In his famous studies of the lives ofthe gifted, Terman found that people whose childhood IQ scoreswere over 170 accomplished more than those with scores in the130–170 range. Fifty years later, and with a very different cohort,Lubinski et al. (2006) found similar results. High test scores docount.

The signers of the Muller et al. letter were all distinguished sci-entists, but insofar as I can determine not one of them had everstudied or published in the field of intelligence. Because of theirreputations and because of the venue they chose to publish in,there is little doubt in my mind that they wanted to put the impri-matur of science onto a statement about the need to recruit morewomen into science and engineering technologies There is a verygood argument, on policy and social philosophical grounds, thatsociety ought to do more to open up opportunities in the scienceand technology fields for both women and minority group mem-bers regardless of any data about test scores and success in scien-tific careers. However using your position and title to makeunwarranted claims about empirically established facts isirresponsible.

Given this incident, one has some sympathy with the book re-viewer quoted earlier, who could well have thought that he wassimply stating a well known scientific fact. Repeat a myth often en-ough and it will be accepted as true.

Case Number 3. Lynn and Vanhanen have not been the onlyones to make the case for a genetic basis for racial differences inintelligence. Following earlier controversially received remarksby Arthur Jensen, Rushton and Jensen (2005) asserted that the ‘de-fault hypothesis’ ought to be that 80% of the IQ gap betweenWhites and African Americans is genetic. Their argument for thiswas that studies of twins raised apart have indicated that the her-itability coefficient in Whites is approximately .8.

The 80% estimate is somewhat higher than many other esti-mates of the heritability of intelligence in Whites. This is a minorissue. The more serious issue is that there is neither direct norany good indirect evidence for the link between this basically(within some margin of quantitative error) factual assertion aboutheritability of IQ and the causal attribution for the racial IQ gap.Rushton and Jensen do suggest that the difference may be due tobrain size, inferred from differences in estimated cranial capacity,but some back-of-the-envelope calculations show that even ifyou were to accept their argument, the brain size effect would befar too small to account for the sizable IQ score gap between racialgroups (Hunt, in press, Chapter 11). Individual differences in vari-ance in one group, even when they are genetic, simply cannot beused to explain mean differences between groups that may havevery different origins, and at present the origins of these differ-ences are unknown.

Notice, though, that I did not say that racially/ethnically-basedgenetic differences cannot explain the racial/ethnic disparities inIQ scores. The fact that Rushton and Jensen’s 80% figure has (atpresent, at least) no empirical support is not proof that the geneticeffect is absent. However there are people who have leaped to thisconclusion.

Case Number 4. Let us return to Nisbett’s (2009) book, discussedearlier. After documenting some environmental effects on intelli-gence, Nisbett said”

For the race difference in IQ we can be confident that genes playno role at all.

Nisbett, 2009, p. 197.

Nisbett documents environmental effects, but seems to arguethat these findings rule out genetic effects. He does not say a wordabout reaction range. (Nor, for that matter, do Rushton and Jensen.)Showing an environmental effect does not rule out the possibilityof genetic effects. Showing that there is a genetic effect does notrule out an environmental effect. Biology 1 (second semester). Boththe Nisbett and the Rushton and Jensen statements were, in myopinion, irresponsible.

7. What to do about it

Irresponsible statements, wrapped in the trappings of scienceand delivered with the prestige of a professorial appointment,can be harmful, both to science and society. There are peoplewho want to hear statements like those of Lynn and Vanhanen,or Rushton and Jensen, because they will use those statements tojustify claims that it is futile to improve the economic position ofimpoverished nations, or to argue that we should not be concernedtoo much about racial/ethnic inequalities in social and economicstanding. On the other side of the argument, there are many peoplewho want to hear Nisbett’s message, because, if it is true, therewould be no harm in cutting off certain lines of research on thegenetics of human intelligence. The argument also implies that ifevery group is provided equal resources, then outcomes will beequal. It follows that if outcomes are not equal that must be dueto failure to provide equal resources, inviting a search for villainsrather than a more constructive discussion of what special re-sources may be needed to achieve desired outcomes.

If policy makers are convinced by Muller et al.’s assurance thathigh test scores do not count for anything, why should the policymakers waste money on programs for the exceptionally gifted?Or, put another way, why should they pay any attention to hightest scores when deciding who is selected to enter such a program?Irresponsible statements can do real harm.

Two different things happen to encourage the making of irre-sponsible statements. If an extreme statement is made on the sideof current popular wisdom the speaker is widely applauded and of-fered prestigious platforms from which to speak. If it is made onthe opposite side, the speaker will still find some people who willapplaud ‘courage.’ If the speaker is an academic attacked by thepowers that be, he or she can don the mantle of Galileo and cryout that you cannot hide truth. Either way, the speaker will be lis-tened to. In Twain’s terms, everyone simply finds an audience thatapproves of them, and thus avoids searching examination of theirideas. But if you make the careful, searching analysis that Twainadvocates you are likely to produce qualified, nuanced statementsthat are more likely to be correct. . .and also more likely to be metwith yawns at best (except perhaps by specialists in the field).

The problem is to find a way to discourage irresponsibility with-out producing a cure that does far more damage than the irrespon-sible statements themselves. This is not easily done.

Government actions are out of the question. In the United Statesthe First Amendment explicitly forbids them, and the reasons forthis are instructive for other democratic nations as well.

What about actions by the university? There is an analog in re-search organizations outside the university. Many industrial re-search organizations require authors to circulate their papers forclearance prior to submitting them for publication, and prior to

270 E. Hunt / Personality and Individual Differences 49 (2010) 264–271

making public statements where the authors are identified by theiraffiliation.

While having your papers reviewed informally by colleagues isalways advisable, clearance review within the university is not agood idea. Aside from impracticality, the people ordering the re-views – deans, provosts, and presidents – would be the peoplemost exposed to political pressures from outside the university.Having pre-release review controlled by the people responsiblefor university relations with external bodies such as the alumni,donors, or state officials, could quickly lead to major restrictionson academic inquiry.

After-the-fact reviews by universities also raise tremendousproblems. To see this, let us take another look at the Ward Chur-chill case.

The governor of Colorado demanded that Churchill be fired. Thepresident of the university declined to do so immediately, but, inaccordance with University regulations, convened a faculty reviewcommittee to examine charges of inappropriate behavior. Thecommittee found that Churchill’s statements about the 9–11 vic-tims were protected under the regulations guaranteeing academicinquiry. However during that review the committee received alle-gations about Churchill’s conduct on other matters, chiefly con-cerning inaccurate statements and/or failure to give credit toothers’ work in his writing. The committee determined that Chur-chill had behaved in a professionally incompetent manner and rec-ommended that he be disciplined but not dismissed. Acting on thisreport, the university president, and subsequently the Regents,after their own review hearing, dismissed Churchill. The dismissalwas not ostensibly for his statements about the 9–11 disaster. Itwas for his professional incompetence.

Churchill claimed that he had been wrongfully dismissed, suedfor damages, and asked the court to reinstate him to the faculty. Acivil jury agreed that his dismissal had been at least partly becauseof his statements, but concluded that he had not been illegallydamaged by his dismissal, which was justified on other grounds.At the direction of the trial judge, the jury awarded Churchill$1.00 nominal damages. The judge then declined to order the Re-gents to reinstate Churchill, saying that the university authorities,not the courts, were responsible for assuring the quality of the uni-versity faculty (Naves, 2009).

The case may be further appealed, but as of now (December,2009) Churchill is no longer employed by the University. It isimpossible for an outsider to know how serious Churchill’s in-stances of academic incompetence were. When I read the trialjudge’s account of his decision, I had the disturbing feeling thatat least some of the actions for which Churchill was dismissed,such as incorrectly characterizing findings or arguments by others,were disturbingly close to some of the examples I have cited asirresponsible behavior.

The threat to academic freedom is clear. Universities generallydo not take actions against a faculty member specifically forexpressing unpopular opinions. When they do, they often lose incourt. However the faculty member who states an unpopular opin-ion can reasonably expect that all the rest of his/her professionalactivities will be subjected to a sweeping examination. Churchill’sis not the only case in which this has happened, but it is one inwhich the genesis of the examination is particularly clear, andhas been documented in public records (Naves, 2009).

There is clearly a double standard here. Faculty members whomake statements in support of a popular opinion will not receivesweeping examinations of both the responsibility of the statementand the competence of their other activities. Faculty who makestatements in contradiction of such an opinion, or even of an opin-ion that is popular in a powerful audience, can expect sweepingexaminations of both their reasoning about the statement andany other errors that they may have committed. There are ample

instances of this sort of control mechanism outside of academia.The prohibition-era gangster Al Capone was convicted for tax eva-sion, after the government could not make a legal case for murderand racketeering. That result clearly advanced society. When thissort of sanction is applied to speech, though, it evades the spiritof academic freedom while appearing to abide by the principle.

Faculty behaviors constituting plagiarism, inaccurate summari-zation of the literature, data falsification, or any other instance ofincompetent professional behavior should not be condoned. A casecan be made that universities should be more vigilant in watchingfor and prosecuting such behavior than they presently are. That is aseparate issue. Incompetence and fraud are offenses to be exam-ined on their own, not as opportunities to stifle the expression ofopinion.

Some professional societies have codes of conduct and are will-ing to take action against members who act unprofessionally. Thisis necessary when the profession involves delivery of professionalservices to the public. The American Psychological Association andthe American Medical Association have, and need, elaborate codesof professional conduct and mechanisms for enforcing them. Thesituation is less clear for scientific societies. As in the case of uni-versity officials, professional society officers are subject to pres-sures to make members hew the popular line. Even more likely,because participation in voting is often rather low, the governanceof professional societies may be subject to capture by a relativelysmall group of activists who have a particular social view.

Professional societies can have a positive role, not by policingirresponsibility, but by encouraging careful, responsible state-ments. The medical societies do this already, by warning that iffindings have been presented to the public – by way of newspa-pers, public speeches outside of scientific societies, and the like –those findings will generally not be accepted in scientific publica-tions. In other words, some sort of peer review should normallycome first. Such a policy should have loopholes, because therecan be situations in which findings are so dramatic, or of such greattimely importance, that the normal order of things should be re-versed. Also, peer review is not perfect. There is a case for publica-tion of chapters and books that are outside the peer review system.However the societies should make it clear that in most cases theorder of things should be scientific publication followed by popularpresentation, not the other way around.

The second thing that professional societies and journals coulddo is be a little more stringent in the evaluation of articles report-ing data that are almost certain to make it to the press very quickly,before the scientific community has a chance to respond with ver-ifications and replications. The argument for this is a simple one.Any ‘first finding’ may or may not hold up. Eventually, criticismsand failures to replicate put the scientific ship back on course.However this may take a surprisingly long time. In the meantime,if the first finding is one that catches the public eye, or the eye ofpolicy makers, the damage may well have been done. Thereforewhen the finding is one with implications for public policy or de-bate, a sense of scientific responsibility dictates caution. In an ear-lier paper Jerry Carlson and I (Hunt & Carlson, 2007) used theanalogy that it is sensible to be more careful when you carry dyna-mite than when you carry potatoes. I think this analogy holds.

There are two counter-arguments to this proposal. One is thatall research should be carried out to the highest standards. Thisargument is correct in Nirvana, but it is irrelevant in the worldwe live in. Research is not done in a vacuum. There are limits tobudgets, there are limits to time, professional pressures to publish,and other constraints. The early proponents of statistical analysisthought that results should be reported only if the probability ofa false positive result was one in a thousand (Bernstein, 1998, p.123). We have compromised on 1 in 20, because otherwise the sci-entific enterprise would come to a stop.

E. Hunt / Personality and Individual Differences 49 (2010) 264–271 271

The principle generalizes. Virtually every research project is acompromise between idealism and feasibility. When the resultsare likely to be carried forward to the non-scientific communityquickly, referees and editors should demand more idealism thanthey normally do. This has to be a judgment call, and people willinevitably differ in their judgments. One of the strengths of ourmulti-journal system is that no one editor or set of reviewers canchoke off a good paper; if the authors persevere it will be publishedsomewhere. If a paper is irresponsible and multiple referees canshow why it is irresponsible then the paper will be properlychoked off.

The other argument is that if scientists publish irresponsiblythey will be exposed by failures to replicate or by open, publishedcriticism. After all, Lynn and Vanhanen have now been questionedby Wicherts and his colleagues, and there were several critiques ofthe Rushton and Jensen article, so what is the problem?

The problem is that critiques and failures to replicate often do notgenerate the same publicity and interest as a sharply stated, crisp(albeit erroneous) positive finding does. This is especially true ifthe original finding reinforces a popular belief or desired state, evenwhen that belief is a myth or the desired state does not exist. There isa good illustration of this. Ceci and Liker (1986) published a clever,catchy study in which they found that an intelligence test did notpredict experienced horse-race bettors’ abilities to predict the oddsbefore race time. As of August 15, 2009 this article had been cited 90times. Detterman and Spry (1988) published a careful, unexcitingpaper in which they showed, by excellent statistical reasoning, thatthe Ceci and Liker paper had very low statistical power, and was inall likelihood a ‘Type II’ error. The two papers were published inthe same journal. Detterman and Spry have been cited 7 times.

I could cite a number of similar cases. There is also a subtlerproblem. I speculate, for I cannot prove the point, that refutationand failure to replicate published findings actually receive morerigorous refereeing than original, boldly stated articles. I can imag-ine two causes for such extra rigor. One is a ‘presumption of truth’for a paper already published. This is especially the case if theauthor of the original paper is asked to be a referee; a practice thatI think should be discouraged. (Providing the original author with achance to write a rebuttal is a different matter.) The second is thatwhen a paper is submitted that challenges a paper that has beenaccepted, the challenger is in effect asking the editor and refereesof the first paper to admit that they made a mistake. They maybe understandably loath to do so. For this reason, among others,a policy of strict term limits for editors and turnovers of editorialboards are both good ideas.

Institutional policies such as encouraging pre-publication re-view for constructive criticism, without any implication of reviewfor clearance, and careful review of strongly stated papers, whichwill have a cost in time of review, can reduce the incidence of irre-sponsible publication, without doing serious damage to the princi-ple of freedom of inquiry. But they will only help. Ultimately it isup to individuals to have internal standards that make them unli-kely to be irresponsible. Since no one thinks, initially, that he or sheis acting irresponsibly, when writing on topics of immediate socialrelevance it is a good idea to get comments from one’s colleagues,and especially those colleagues whom you believe are likely to dis-agree with you. As Twain pointed out, this is hard, because receiv-ing criticism makes us uncomfortable.

Unfortunately the cost of circulating comments may be morethan discomfort. A good case can be made that informal criticismsfrom colleagues within an academy that has disturbingly uniformsocial views is, at present, a greater threat to the expression ofunpopular ideas than are threats from academic administrationor from voices outside the academy (Coleman, 1991; Kronman,2007). There is an understandable temptation to circulate pre-pub-lication drafts to people whose work you admire, and you admire

them because you know they think like you do. As any engineerworking with control systems will tell you, positive feedback is abad thing.

There is no way out of these competing pressures. Scientistswho deal with topics of social importance have to walk a path be-tween irresponsibility, on the one hand, and self-censorship forfear of offending on the other. Even silence can be misinterpreted.People who say (as I do) that ‘‘we do not know the cause” on topicssuch as the racial/ethnic inequalities in intelligence will find thatpeople with stronger opinions, on both their right and left, willdamn them for cowardice. The problem is never going to be com-pletely solved. There is one way to move toward a solution.

Talk about the problem. Discussions with graduate students on‘how to publish’ too often devolve into advice on ‘how to get by thereviewers.’ Such discussions have their place, but it is not the onlyplace. We also need more discussions of our responsibility to pub-lish our findings, even when we fear that someone may use themin the service of a cause that we do not like. Students and facultyat all ranks should be involved in these discussions. The discus-sions will be far more useful if they are conducted as inquiries intothe balance between vital inquiry and the damages possible fromirresponsible statements than if they are conducted as emotionalappeals for either absolute freedom to speak, protected from anyconsequences, or as equally emotional demands that restrictionson inquiry must be accepted to achieve some social good.

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