Richard Lynn

Richard Lynn (born 1930) is a British Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Ulster^[1][2] and assistant editor of the controversial journal Mankind Quarterly^[3] who is known for his views on racial, ethnic and national differences in intelligence.^[4]

Lynn was educated at Bristol Grammar School and King's College, Cambridge in England. He has worked as lecturer in psychology at the University of Exeter, and as professor of psychology at the Economic and Social Research Institute, Dublin, and at the University of Ulster at Coleraine. He has written or co-written 11 books and more than 200 journal articles spanning five decades. Two of his recent books are on dysgenics and eugenics.

In the late 1970s, Lynn wrote that he found a higher average IQ in North-East Asians compared to "Europeans" (6 points higher in his meta-analysis), and Europeans to be about 2 standard deviations (or 30 points) higher than Sub-Saharan Africans. In 1990, he proposed that the Flynn effect – an observed year-on-year rise in IQ scores around the world – could possibly be explained by improved nutrition, especially in early childhood. In two books co-written with Tatu Vanhanen he argues that differences in developmental indexes among the nations of the world correlate with, and are possibly caused by, the average IQ of their citizens. He has argued widely that the high fertility of individuals and groups of low IQ constitutes a major threat to Western civilization, as he believes they will eventually come to outnumber high IQ individuals in society. He has argued in favor of political measures to halt this predicted development including anti-immigration measures and different forms of eugenics policies.

Like much of the research in race and intelligence, Lynn's research is controversial. His work is among the main sources cited in the book The Bell Curve. He was also one of the 52 scientists who signed "Mainstream Science on Intelligence", an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal.^[5] He sits on the editorial boards of the journals Intelligence and Personality and Individual Differences,^[6] and on the boards of the Pioneer Fund,^[7] an organisation that has been described as racist in nature, and of the Pioneer-supported journal Mankind Quarterly, which has been called a white supremacist publication.^[8][9] A number of scientists, including Leon Kamin have criticised Lynn's work on the relations between racial and national demography and intelligence for lacking scientific rigour and for promoting a racialist political agenda.^{[10][11][12][13][14][15]} A number of studies by historian of psychology William H. Tucker and others, have described Lynn as being associated with a network of scholars and organisations working to promote scientific racism.^{[16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24]} In 2010 on his 80th birthday he was celebrated with a special issue dedicated to his work and career in Personality and Individual Differences, edited by Danish psychologist Helmuth Nyborg, with contributions by Nyborg, J. Philippe Rushton, Satoshi Kanazawa and several other psychologists.^[25]

Early life and career

Lynn is the son of the British botanist Sydney Cross Harland (1891—1982), Fellow of the Royal Society known for his work on cotton genetics. His parents divorced when he was young and he only met his father again in 1949 upon his return from Peru to become Professor of Genetics at the University of Manchester.^[26]

Lynn was educated at Bristol Grammar School and University of Cambridge in England.^[2] He has worked as lecturer in psychology at the University of Exeter, and as professor of psychology at the Economic and Social Research Institute, Dublin, and at Ulster University at Coleraine.

In 1974 Lynn published a positive review of Raymond Cattell's A New Morality from Science: Beyondism, in which he brought attention to the idea that "incompetent societies have to be allowed to go to the wall" and that "the foreign aid which we give to the under-developed world is a mistake, akin to keeping going incompetent species like the dinosaurs which are not fit for the competitive struggle for existence."^[27] In recent years, Lynn has cited the work of "Cyril Burt and Ray Cattell on the decline of genotypic intelligence arising from dysgenic fertility" as an important influence on his own thought.^[28]

Race differences in intelligence

Lynn's psychometric studies were cited in the 1994 book The Bell Curve and were criticised as part of the controversy surrounding that book.^[29] In his article, "Skin color and intelligence in African Americans," 2002, Population and Environment, he concludes that lightness of skin color in African-Americans is positively correlated with IQ, which he claims derives from the higher proportion of Caucasian admixture.^[30] However, Lynn failed to control for childhood environmental factors that are related to intelligence, and his research was criticized by a subsequent article published in the journal.^[31]

In IQ and the Wealth of Nations (2002),^[32] Lynn and co-author Tatu Vanhanen argue that differences in national income (in the form of per capita gross domestic product) correlate with, and can be at least partially attributed to, differences in average national IQ. One study following up on Lynn and Vanhanen's hypothesis, "Temperature, skin color, per capita income, and IQ: An international perspective",^[33][34] is listed as the most downloaded article in Intelligence at ScienceDirect (Jan–March 2006).^[35]

Lynn's 2006 Race Differences in Intelligence: An Evolutionary Analysis^[36] is the largest review of the global cognitive ability data. The book organises the data by nine global regions, surveying 620 published studies from around the world, with a total of 813,778 tested individuals.

Lynn's meta-analysis lists the average IQ scores of East Asians (105), Europeans (99), the Inuit (91), Southeast Asians and indigenous peoples of the Americas each (87), Pacific Islanders (85), Middle Easterners (including South Asians and North Africans) (84), East and West Africans (67), Australian Aborigines (62) and Bushmen and Pygmies (54).^[37][38][39]

Lynn has previously argued that nutrition is the best-supported environmental explanation for variation in the lower range,^[40] and a number of other environmental explanations have been advanced. Ashkenazi Jews average 107–115 in the US and Britain due to their better performance in verbal and reasoning tests even though they performed lower in visual and spatial ability tests, but those in Israel average lower.^[41] Lynn argues the surveyed studies have high reliability in the sense that different studies give similar results, and high validity in the sense that they correlate highly with performance in international studies of achievement in mathematics and science and with national economic development.

Following Race Differences in Intelligence, Lynn co-authored a further paper^[42] along the lines of IQ and the Wealth of Nations with Jaan Mikk (Šiauliai University, Lithuania) – in press in Intelligence – and has co-authored a second book on the subject with Vanhanen, IQ and Global Inequality, which was published later in 2006.^[43]

Another of Lynn's books is The Global Bell Curve, published in June 2008.^[44] In describing the book, Lynn says "it concludes that IQ is a key explanatory variable for the social sciences, analogous to gravity in physics."^[45] It was reviewed by J. Philippe Rushton around the time of publication.^[46]

In a paper published in 2005 about the IQ in Mexico, Richard Lynn reported that Mexicans of European descent had an IQ of 98, Mestizos in Mexicos had an IQ of 94 and indigenous peoples of Mexico had an IQ of 83, explaining the lower than expected IQ of Indians on their poor nutrition and other social factors:

Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices test was administered to a representative sample of 920 white, Mestizo and Native Mexican Indian children aged 7–10 years in Mexico. The mean IQs in relation to a British mean of 100 obtained from the 1979 British standardization sample and adjusted for the estimated subsequent increase were: 98·0 for whites, 94·3 for Mestizos and 83·3 for Native Mexican Indians.

— Ethnic and Racial Differences on the Standard Progressive Matrices in Mexico^[47]

In a 2010 paper about IQ in Italy,^[48] Lynn contends that IQs are highest in the north (103 in Friuli-Venezia Giulia) and lowest in the south (89 in Sicily) and correlated with average incomes, and with stature, infant mortality, literacy and education. The lack of any actual IQ test data in this paper was criticised.^[49] According to him "the lower IQ in southern Italy may be attributable to genetic admixture with populations from the Near East and North Africa". In the same way, he thinks that this "also accounts for the IQs of around 90 for several countries in the Balkans whose populations are of partly European and partly Near Eastern origin."

Lynn's book The Chosen People: A Study of Jewish Intelligence and Achievement (2011, ISBN 978-1593680367) provides a review of the studies of intelligence in both the Ashkenazic and non-Ashkenazic Jewish populations throughout the world.

Sex differences in intelligence

Lynn's research correlating brain size and reaction time with measured intelligence led him to the problem that men and women have different-sized brains in proportion to their bodies.^[50] At that time, it was a consensus in the field of psychology that there isn't any sex differences in intelligence. In 1994, Lynn concluded in a meta-analysis that an IQ difference of roughly 4 points does appear from age 16 and onwards, but detection of this had been complicated by the faster rate of maturation of girls up to that point, which compensates for the IQ difference. This reassessment of male-female IQ has been bolstered with meta-analyses with Paul Irwing in 2004^[51] and 2005^[52] which found a difference of 4.6 to 5 IQ points .They saw no evidence that this is due primarily to the male advantage in spatial visualisation, and concluded that some research previously presented as showing that there are no sex differences actually demonstrates the opposite. A further study of 1,258 11-year-olds in Mauritius derived a difference of more than 6 IQ points.^[53]

Despite some criticism,^[54] their theory was supported by subsequent research at the time.^{[55][56][57][58]} However, in the following years, researchers such as Timothy Z Keith, Johannes Rojahn and Alan S Kaufman found contradictory results in gender IQ differences with Keith even finding an adult female latent advantage in general factor or Kaufman finding no difference in general intelligence.^{[59][60][61][62]} Keith asserts that difference in Lynn's findings can be attributed in not using latent factors to measure their meta-analysis of sex differences.^[59] Rojahn's study found the discrepancies between the gender development were smaller than predicted by Lynn and in fact were so small that they have little or no practical importance.^[60]

Dysgenics and eugenics

Dysgenics

In Dysgenics: Genetic Deterioration in Modern Populations, Lynn reviews ^[63] the history of eugenics, from the early writings of Bénédict Morel and Francis Galton through the rise of eugenics in the early 20th century and its subsequent collapse. He identifies three main concerns of eugenicists such as himself: deterioration in health, intelligence and conscientiousness. Lynn asserts that natural selection in pre-industrial societies favoured traits such as intelligence and character but no longer does so in modern societies. He argues that due to the advance of medicine, selection against those with poor genes for health was relaxed.

Regarding intelligence, Lynn examines sibling studies. Lynn concludes that the tendency of children with a high number of siblings to be the least intelligent is evidence of dysgenic fertility. Lynn concedes that there has been a genuine increase in phenotypic intelligence, but argues that this is caused by environmental factors and is masking a decline in genotypic intelligence.

Lynn points to evidence that those with greater educational achievement have fewer children, while children with lower IQ come from larger families ^[64] as primary evidence that intelligence and fertility are negatively correlated. Continuing the theme of correlates of fertility, socioeconomic status appears to have a negative effect on fertility, which Lynn thinks is because there is increasingly ineffective use of contraception with declining socioeconomic class. Regarding intelligence, Lynn agrees with Lewis Terman's comment in 1922 that "[t]he children of successful and cultivated parents test higher than children from wretched and ignorant homes for the simple reason that their heredity is better".

Lynn goes on to present evidence that socio-economic status is positively correlated with indicators of conscientiousness such as work ethic and moral values and negatively with crime. Next the genetic basis of differences in conscientiousness is discussed, and Lynn concludes that twin studies provide evidence of a high heritability for the trait. The less conscientious, such as criminals, have more offspring.

While most of the book discusses evidence for dysgenics in developed countries, Lynn acknowledges that it is less strong in developing countries, but concludes that "dysgenic fertility [...] is a worldwide phenomenon of modern populations" (p. 196).

Lynn concludes with an examination of counter-arguments. These include that the traits discussed are not genetically determined, that intelligence and fertility can be inversely related without dysgenics, that socio-economic classes do not differ genetically, and that there is no such thing as a 'bad gene'. These arguments are dismissed, and Lynn asserts that these trends represent a serious problem. Finally, he expresses support for eugenics, which is the subject of his next book, Eugenics: A Reassessment.^[65]

Dysgenics has been praised as "could be one of the most important books written in the last fifty years" by Glayde Whitney, a behavioral geneticist and psychology professor at Florida State University.^[66]

A review of Dysgenics by W.D. Hamilton, FRS, Royal Society Research Professor in evolutionary biology at the University of Oxford, was published posthumously in 2000.^[67] In this lengthy review, written according to the author in "rambling essay format", Hamilton writes that Lynn, "discussing the large bank of evidence that still accumulates on heritability of aptitudes and differentials of fertility, shows in this book that almost all of the worries of the early eugenicists were well-founded, in spite of the relative paucity of their evidence at the time"; in the second half of the review, several directions not covered in Lynn's book are explored.

Another review of Dysgenics was written in 2002 by N.J. Mackintosh, FRS, Emeritus Professor of Experimental Psychology in the University of Cambridge.^[68] Mackintosh writes that, "with a cavalier disregard for political correctness, he argues that the ideas of the eugenecists were correct and that we ignore them at our peril." While recognising that the book provides a valuable and accurate source of information, he criticises Lynn for "not fully acknowledg[ing] the negative relationship between social class and education on the one hand, and infant mortality and life expectancy on the other." He calls into question Lynn's interpretation of data. He also points out that according to Lynn's reading of the theory of natural selection, "if it is true that those with lower IQ and less education are producing more offspring, then they are fitter than those of higher IQ and more education"; he writes that, on the contrary, the eugenecists' arguments rest not as Lynn suggests on some "biological imperative, but rather on a particular set of value judgements."

In Eugenics: A Reassessment (2001),^[65] Lynn argues that embryo selection as a form of standard reproductive therapy would raise the average intelligence of the population by 15 IQ points in a single generation (p. 300). If couples produce a hundred embryos, he argues, the range in potential IQ would be around 15 points above and below the parents' IQ. Lynn argues this gain could be repeated each generation, eventually stabilising the population's IQ at a theoretical maximum of around 200 after as little as six or seven generations.

In the same book Lynn discusses proposals by David Lykken and others before him to introduce a license scheme for would-be parents. Lynn agrees in principle but suggests that the only practical way to make it work would be to introduce the compulsory sterilisation of every girl and boy at aged 12 – either via medical procedures which each adult would have to apply to get removed or via a virus that would cause sterility for a set period of time.^[69]

Eugenics received praise in a review by behavioural geneticist and Pioneer grantee, David T. Lykken as "[an] excellent, scholarly book ...one cannot reasonably disagree with him on any point unless one can find an argument he has not already refuted."^[70]

Pioneer Fund

Lynn currently serves on the board of directors of the Pioneer Fund, and is also on the editorial board of the Pioneer-supported journal Mankind Quarterly, both of which have been the subject of controversy for their dealing with race and intelligence and eugenics, and have been accused of racism, e.g., by Avner Falk and William H. Tucker.^[71][72][73] Lynn's Ulster Institute for Social Research received $609,000 in grants from the Pioneer Fund between 1971 and 1996.^[74]

Lynn's 2001 book The Science of Human Diversity: A History of the Pioneer Fund^[75] is a history and defence of the fund, in which he argues that, for the last sixty years, it has been "nearly the only non-profit foundation making grants for study and research into individual and group differences and the hereditary basis of human nature ... Over those 60 years, the research funded by Pioneer has helped change the face of social science."

Reception

Lynn's review work on global racial differences in cognitive ability has been cited for misrepresenting the research of other scientists, and has been criticised for unsystematic methodology and distortion.

David King, the coordinator of the watchdog group Human Genetics Alert, said "we find Richard Lynn's claims that some human beings are inherently superior to others repugnant."^[4]

Many of the data points in Lynn's book IQ and the Wealth of Nations were not based on residents of the named countries. The datum for Suriname was based on tests given to Surinamese who had emigrated to the Netherlands, and the datum for Ethiopia was based on the IQ scores of a highly selected group that had emigrated to Israel, and, for cultural and historical reasons, was hardly representative of the Ethiopian population. The datum for Mexico was based on a weighted averaging of the results of a study of "Native American and Mestizo children in Southern Mexico" with results of a study of residents of Argentina.^[76]

The datum that Lynn and Vanhanen used for the lowest IQ estimate, Equatorial Guinea, was taken from a group of children in a home for the developmentally disabled in Spain.^[77] Corrections were applied to adjust for differences in IQ cohorts (the "Flynn" effect) on the assumption that the same correction could be applied internationally, without regard to the cultural or economic development level of the country involved. While there appears to be rather little evidence on cohort effect upon IQ across the developing countries, one study in Kenya (Daley, Whaley, Sigman, Espinosa, & Neumann, 2003) shows a substantially larger cohort effect than is reported for developed countries (p.?)^[76]

In a critical review of The Bell Curve, psychologist Leon Kamin faulted Lynn for disregarding scientific objectivity, misrepresenting data, and for racism.^[78] Kamin argues that the studies of cognitive ability of Africans in Lynn's meta-analysis cited by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray show strong cultural bias. Kamin also reproached Lynn for concocting IQ values from test scores that have no correlation to IQ.^[79] Kamin also notes that Lynn excluded a study that found no difference in White and Black performance, and ignored the results of a study which showed Black scores were higher than White scores.^[80]

Journalist Charles Lane criticised Lynn's methodology in his article in the The New York Review of Books, "The Tainted Sources of The Bell Curve" (1994).^[81] Pioneer Fund president Harry F. Weyher Jr. published a response accusing the reviewer of errors and misrepresentation; Lane also replied to this with a rebuttal.^[82]

In 2002 an academic dispute arose after Lynn claimed that some races are inherently more psychopathic than others, and other psychologists criticised his data and interpretations.^[83][84] Psychologist Leon Kamin has also claimed that "Lynn's distortions and misrepresentations of the data constitute a truly venomous racism, combined with the scandalous disregard for scientific objectivity".^[85]

Controversies

Richard Lynn is also listed in the extreme files by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a white nationalist.^[85] The civil group has tracked Lynn's record of controversial statements for example a 2011 interview with a neo-Nazi Alex Kurtajic where he stated^[85] "“I am deeply pessimistic about the future of the European peoples because mass immigration of third world peoples will lead to these becoming majorities in the United States and westernmost Europe during the present century. I think this will mean the destruction of European civilization in these countries.” Lynn was quoted in the Jan 1,1995 news article Racism Resurgent saying “What is called for here is not genocide, the killing off of the population of incompetent cultures. But we do need to think realistically in terms of the ‘phasing out’ of such peoples…. Evolutionary progress means the extinction of the less competent. To think otherwise is mere sentimentality.”^[86]

Other quotes that were recorded by the civil rights group consists of:

I think the only solution lies in the breakup of the United States. Blacks and Hispanics are concentrated in the Southwest, the Southeast and the East, but the Northwest and the far Northeast, Maine, Vermont and upstate New York have a large predominance of whites. I believe these predominantly white states should declare independence and secede from the Union. They would then enforce strict border controls and provide minimum welfare, which would be limited to citizens. If this were done, white civilization would survive within this handful of states.”

— Richard Lynn interview with controversial magazine Right NOW!^[85]

If the evolutionary process is to bring its benefits, it has to be allowed to operate effectively. This means that incompetent societies have to be allowed to go to the wall… . What is called for here is not genocide, the killing off of the populations of incompetent cultures. But we do need to think realistically in terms of "phasing out" of such peoples. If the world is to evolve more better humans, then obviously someone has to make way for them otherwise we shall all be overcrowded. After all, ninety-eight per cent of the species known to zoologists are extinct. Evolutionary progress means the extinction of the less competent. To think otherwise is mere sentimentality.

— Richard Lynn quote from Raymond Cattell’s A New Morality from Science: Beyondism, 1974^[85][86]

In their extremist files, the Southern Poverty Law Center states in their words that "Since the 1970s, Richard Lynn has been working tirelessly to place race, genes, and IQ at the center of discussions surrounding inequality. Through his own writings and those published by his Ulster Institute for Social Research, in Northern Ireland, Lynn argues that members of different races and nations possess innate differences in intelligence and behavior, and that these are responsible for everything from the incarceration rate of black Americans to the poverty of developing nations. Lynn is also an ethnic nationalist who believes that countries must “remain racially homogenous” in order to flourish" The center in their own words has also stated that "Lynn uses his authority as professor (emeritus) of psychology at the University of Ulster to argue for the genetic inferiority of non-white people"^[85]

Works

• Lynn, Richard (2001). Eugenics: A reassessment. Praeger Publishers. ISBN 9780275958220. 
• Lynn, Richard; Vanhanen, Tatu (2002). IQ and the wealth of nations. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger. ISBN 9780275975104. 
• Lynn, Richard (2011) [1996]. Dysgenics: Genetic deterioration in modern populations. Praeger Publishers. ISBN 9780275949174. 
• Lynn, Richard; Vanhanen, Tatu (2012). Intelligence: A unifying construct for the social sciences. Ulster: Ulster Institute for Social Research. ISBN 9780956881175. 

Notes

References

• Cavalli-Sforza, L. L., Menozzi, P., & Piazza, A. (1994). The history and geography of human genes. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
• Flynn, J. (1982). "Lynn, the Japanese, and environmentalism". Bulletin of the British Psychological Society 35: 411. 
• Flynn, J (1984). "The mean IQ of Americans: massive gains 1932 to 1978". Psychological Bulletin 95: 29–51. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.95.1.29. 
• Flynn, J (1987). "Massive gains in 14 nations: what IQ tests really measure". Psychological Bulletin 101 (2): 171–91. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.101.2.171. 
• Lykken, D (2004). "The New Eugenics". Contemporary Psychology 49: 670–672. 
• Lynn, Richard (1978). "Ethnic and Racial Differences in Intelligence, International Comparisons". Human variation: The biopsychology of age, race, and sex. Academic Press. ISBN 0-12-529050-0. 
• Lynn, Richard (1982). "IQ in Japan and the United States shows a growing disparity". Nature 297 (5863): 222–3. doi:10.1038/297222a0. 
• Lynn, Richard (1990). "The role of nutrition in secular increases of intelligence". Personality and Individual Differences 11 (3): 273–285. doi:10.1016/0191-8869(90)90241-i. 
• Lynn, Richard (1996). Dysgenics: Genetic Deterioration in Modern Populations. Praeger Publishers. ISBN 0-275-94917-6. 
• Lynn, Richard (2001). Eugenics: A Reassessment. Praeger Publishers. ISBN 0-275-95822-1. 
• Lynn, Richard. (2010). In Italy, north–south differences in IQ predict differences in income, education, infant mortality, stature, and literacy. Intelligence, Volume 38, Issue 1, January–February 2010, Pages 93–100
• Malloy, J. (2006). "A World of Difference: Richard Lynn Maps World Intelligence". Gene Expression. Retrieved 22 February 2006. 
• Martin, N (2001). "Retrieving the 'eu' from eugenics". Nature 414 (6864): 583. doi:10.1038/414583a. 
• Neisser, U. (1997). Rising Scores on Intelligence Tests. American Scientist, Sept.-Oct

External links

• Official website