Helmuth Nyborg

Helmuth Sørensen Nyborg (born 5 January 1937) is a former professor of developmental psychology at Aarhus University, Denmark and Olympic canoeist. His main research topic is the connection between hormones and intelligence. Among other things, he has worked on increasing the intelligence of girls with Turner's syndrome by giving them estrogen. His research has been widely criticized, and in 2007, after having been accused of scientific misconduct, he received a warning from Aarhus University for producing research of unacceptably low quality. In 2007 he retired.^[1][2]

Nyborg is a controversial figure among the Danish public for his research on topics such as the inheritance of intelligence and the relationship between sex and intelligence. His article in Personality and Individual Differences (PAID), in which he reports a 5-point average IQ difference in favour of men,^[3] has led to strong reactions in the Danish public and academia, for example in an editorial by the Danish newspaper Politiken.^[4] A recent article proposing that migration from third world countries to Denmark would cause a dysgenic effect on the country's average IQ over time, has led to Nyborg being indicted to the Danish Council for Scientific Misconduct a second time, accused of committing scientific fraud by using statistic models of population growth known to be erroneous and for not properly attributing the source of the model.^[5][6][7]

In his research Nyborg has argued that white people tend to be more intelligent than blacks (this is scientific consensus among psychometricians, see race and intelligence),^[8] that immigration from non-Western countries leads to a decline in the average intelligence of the receiving Western country^[9] and that atheists tend to be more intelligent than religious people.^{[10][11][12][13]} On 31 October 2013 he was convicted of scientific misconduct by the Danish Council for Scientific Misconduct after a 2 year investigation concerning his paper The decay of Western civilization: Double relaxed Darwinian selection^[14] published in Personality and Individual Differences.^[15]

2005 controversial paper

Nyborg's 2005 paper Sex-related differences in general intelligence g, brain size, and social status ^[3] was published in Personality and Individual Differences. The reported male–female IQ difference in Nyborg's work is about 8 points. According to J. Philippe Rushton, his own research points to an IQ difference of 3.63, and analysis of Nyborg's data would imply a difference 4.55.^[16]

Nyborg was suspended following criticism of his research.^[17] Aarhus University assembled a committee to investigate, and found him innocent of fraud, but guilty of "grossly negligent behavior."^[17] Nyborg was reinstated to his post and given a severe reprimand.^[17] He was eventually acquitted by the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty of the charges of scientific misconduct.^[18] On 21 September 2006, the university gave Nyborg a "severe reprimand", revoked his suspension, and declared the case closed.^[19] According to a 2006 news story in Science: "Colleagues from around the world have rallied to his defense, accusing the university of having political motives, and claiming that the errors in his research were trivial."^[17] After the DCSD cleared Nyborg of the charges of scientific misconduct, two Aarhus University professors, Lise Togeby and Jens Mammen resigned from their positions in the DCSD, citing that the DCSD operated from too narrow of a framework.^[20]

2011 "Revolt Against Civilization" Seminar

On May 28–29, 2011, Nyborg was a keynote speaker at the seminar "Revolt against Civilization" staged by the holocaust denial organization "Dansk Selskab for Fri Historisk Forskning" ("Danish Society for Free Historical Research"),^[21] where he was photographed alongside the other speakers including David Duke, Kevin B. MacDonald and Tomislav Sunić.^[22]

2011 controversy

In 2011 Nyborg published "The Decay of Western Civilization: Double Relaxed Darwinian Selection"^[23] in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, arguing that Denmark was likely to experience a dysgenic effect on intelligence due to immigration from the Middle East. Following publication he was again indicted for the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty, accused of scientific misconduct and plagiarism, by a number of scholars from the University of Aarhus. They accused him of using a statistical model for the demographic prognoses that was based on the work of Jørn Ebbe Vig without giving credit, and for using misleading statistics by assuming that Middle Eastern people in Denmark maintained the same reproduction rates as in their countries of origin.^{[24][25][26][27]}

On 31 October 2013 he was convicted of scientific misconduct by the Danish Council for Scientific Misconduct after a 2 year investigation concerning his paper The decay of Western civilization: Double relaxed Darwinian selection^[14] published in Personality and Individual Differences, they found him guilty on 2 charges (out of 6 in total of which the last was 'various other complaints'). The first was that he had published a paper without a co-author which the UVVU thought he should have credited. Nyborg had actually offered co-authorship to the person in question, but he had refused to be a co-author, so Nyborg chose to publish it himself. Nevertheless, the UVVU chose to find him guilty on that ground. The second was for neglecting to mention in the methodology section that he had converted a total fertility rate into a crude birth rate. When Nyborg learned that this was a problem, he sent an addendum to the journal, which is common practice when errors or omissions are found in published papers. However, the UVVU still considered it scientific misconduct. ^[15]

Olympic Kayaking

Nyborg competed as a sprint canoer in the early 1960s. He won a bronze medal for Denmark in the K-1 4 × 500 m event at the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome.^[28][29]

Publications

He is the editor of a 2003 festschrift, The Scientific Study of General Intelligence: Tribute to Arthur Jensen, published by Pergamon Press (ISBN 0080437931). In 2012 he was the editor of a special issue of Personality and Individual Differences dedicated to celebrating the 80th birthday of another controversial psychometrician, Northern Irish psychologist, Richard Lynn.^[30]

See also

• Sex and intelligence

Notes