If you read the replies you’ll see that Pinker was always a race science supporter, it’s just that nobody paid any attention. Maybe we should start noticing when celebrity scientists are fans of pseudoscientific ideas, and adjust our opinion of their competence accordingly

Virginia Heffernan@virginiaheffernan.bsky.social · 3w ago

What happened to Steven Pinker? I only felt free to write this because he blocks me: www.thenerve.news/p/steven-pin...

Hilarious stuff from hypocrite-in-chief Bill Ackman, currently bankrolling Francesca Gino, who has *check notes* sued three brave scholars for telling the truth.

there’s actual policy based on his (allegedly) faked data! there was a primetime crime drama where the lead character was based *on him*!

In the context of the Trump regime’s assaults on academic freedom and free speech, this means official U.S. policy is that race science is one of the very few things it’s acceptable to do at a university, and must be promoted by the state, while most other pursuits should be crushed by the state.

Sunder Katwala (sundersays)@sundersays.bsky.social · last mo.

Nathan Cofnas and the US Ambassador to Belgium say that the University of Ghent have now lifted his suspension, thanking the US government for supporting him (with threats of retaliation). The Ambassador says that Cofnas will be able to complete his one year appointment to March 2027.

Academic freedom is when a foreign government dictates how and even whether a university investigates misconduct

Sunder Katwala (sundersays)@sundersays.bsky.social · last mo.

Nathan Cofnas and the US Ambassador to Belgium say that the University of Ghent have now lifted his suspension, thanking the US government for supporting him (with threats of retaliation). The Ambassador says that Cofnas will be able to complete his one year appointment to March 2027.

There's this cute doublespeak race realists do where, on one hand, universities must be the most ELITE MERITOCRACY (so no Blacks!). But when their favourite phrenologist gets suspended for being bad at their job, suddenly it's all "universities should be an adult kindergarten for free expression"

The focus regarding the Cofnas affair should honestly shift to the fact that the US ambassador dares to intervene. That's simply outrageous, keep the words "academic freedom" out of your mouth if you don't see that.

If you just happened to pick this week to start yelling about the importance of academic freedom, I sure hope you did more than watch silently for the past 18 months as the Trump administration assaulted everything from mRNA vaccine research to gender studies to the very idea of having universities.

“if we don’t stand up for the free speech of racists, it puts everyone’s free speech in danger.” - guy who only ever talks about free speech when it’s racism

basically the whole war on science crew signed the cofnas support letter. always the same group of bigoted pricks

In the UK, there has been an almost universal memory-holeing of how Toby Young was personally invited to a secret, exclusive eugenics conference full of white supremacists spreading racist pseudo-science, then he disappeared, and reappared, founded the FSU and then became a life peer

look at how seamlessly they transitioned from “we must evaluate Arday’s life and work no matter the motives of his critics” to the opposite position: defending Cofnas because of his critics’ motivations, no matter the quality of his work

Nathan Cofnas was hired by my colleague Bouke De Vries, who attended the 2024 London Conference on Intelligence alongside Edward Dutton and Emil Kirkegaard. With more than 400 colleagues, I signed an open email to the rector to argue why we think this is problematic. www.vrt.be/vrtnws/en/20...

Appointment of controversial “race researcher” questioned by 300 staff and students at Ghent University | VRT NWS: news

300 staff and students are asking Ghent University to reconsider the appointment of a controversial American researcher. ‘The man spreads racist ideas, which is contrary to Ghent University's code of ...

vrt.be

To say Cofnas was "sacked" at Cambridge over-simplifies. He was *employed* by Uni on a 3 year appointment, at philoaophy dept, with suppprt from Leverhulme. He completed those 3 years & left at end. But he was removed from an unpaid College Research Associste link with Emmanuel College during it

"The College would not associate itself with an astronomer who believed that the sun orbited the earth, or a medic who believed scrofula could be cured by the touch of a king. The claim black people are only fit to be sports stars and entertainers has no more validity that these beliefs’ - a student

It should be obvious to any thinking person that Cofnas was hired because he's a racist, not despite being a racist. www.thecanary.co/skwawkbox/20...

EXCLUSIVE: "shoddy" Cofnas was unfit for his Uni job say colleagues - months before Arday attack

Uni academics said in leaked emails that even Cofnas's presence detracts from their work, because they had to counter the 'flood of shit'

thecanary.co

In the wake of Arday's death, Nathan Cofnas (who led the X mob against him) states his motivation. Beyond whistleblowing, he states that after a 'revolution' removes professors like Arday, it will open opportunities for him to become 'head of the department of eugenics and race science at Harvard'.

My article "Unknown Title" has so profoundly impressed a publishing house that they're inviting me to write a book on tensor methods 🤩

An excellent, bone-chilling story about a cadre of online racists who stole genetic data from studies on children so they could make specious arguments for the innate inferiority of non-white people, it's embrace by Elon Musk/twitter & how the Trump administration might make it easier to do again.

Genetic Data From Over 20,000 U.S. Children Misused for ‘Race Science’

nytimes.com

Incredibly important story that everyone should read. These are not disorganized lone actors, but well-funded and powerful networks to be treated as serious threats. They are using our work to push a eugenicist and racist agenda that is scientifically invalid and morally reprehensible.

Genetic Data From Over 20,000 U.S. Children Misused for ‘Race Science’

nytimes.com

Great piece in the NYtimes with quotes from @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social and @sashagusevposts.bsky.social. The misuse of NIH datasets with sensitive personal information for racist aims should be concerning for anybody interested in scientific integrity. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/24/u...

Genetic Data From Over 20,000 U.S. Children Misused for ‘Race Science’

nytimes.com

Here's a new manuscript I wrote about unrooted f4-ratio estimation. The fact that an unrooted version of the method works is not novel, but I propose it's not widely known and I present some applications that will hopefully be found interesting. www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...

Notes on f4-ratio estimation

The f4-ratio estimation is a popular technique for estimating gene flow proportion as a ratio between two f4 -statistics. We point out the underappreciated fact that the root is not important in f4 -r...

biorxiv.org

I wrote about the bizarre case of Herasight, the embryo selection company going all in on eugenics.

Embryo selection company Herasight goes all in on eugenics

...

open.substack.com

All right, so Graham Hancock is on Colossal's cultural advisory board. What a serious company, what a serious country, what a serious timeline!

GMWatch@gmwatch.bsky.social · 10mo ago

Faking it without making it: The de-extinction disinfo campaign manager’s history of hype. How Colossal Biosciences’ CEO Ben Lamm keeps the hype cycle going. gmwatch.org/en/106-news/...

Remember when it was imperative that we take Haidt seriously?

was idly curious if you could get a 2d6 probability curve as a single die and the answer is: yes, it's a "hendecahedron" that looks like this, and they work when 3D printed hbaktash.github.io/projects/put...

Retraction Watch has covered the problem of the “national IQ” database. Should be noted I’m far from alone in working to remove these publications. The spreadsheet of pubs which use NIQ - linked to in the article - was started by @kohngregory.bsky.social; a project also worked on by Cathryn Townsend

Dalmeet Singh Chawla@dalmeet.bsky.social · 11mo ago

. @rebeccasear.bsky.social is on a mission to get all studies using a database linking #IQ and race retracted. I spoke to her for @retractionwatch.com to find out more: retractionwatch.com/2025/11/25/m...

The probability that a schizophrenic's polygenic score for schizophrenia is in the highest percentile is about 1.1%. The probability that Hitler's (not even schizophrenic) polygenic scores for schizophrenia, autism and bipolar are in the highest percentile each is about 0.0%.

The entire "free speech on campus" moral panic was manufactured to blackmail us into making space in intellectual life for bigots and charlatans who couldn't get there on their own merits. Its a DEI scheme for fascism. Congratulations to everyone who took it at face value.

Charlotte Lydia Riley@lottelydia.bsky.social · 12mo ago

“Following his lecture, Yarvin will debate the legendary British historian David Starkey on history and the future of conservatism.” Everything about this is so cursed. Masks off at the University of Oxford.

I use Google Scholar to fetch BibTeX form citation information of articles and books, but it's not really great that capital letters in titles are not protected with curly braces, and LaTeX then renders something like genus names or "D-statistic" lower case. Come on 😤