Various conservatives are celebrating the publication of a new issue of the Journal of Controversial Ideas, or Peter Singer’s slush pile of pseudoscientific justifications for bigotry. The ideas aren’t so much controversial as they are bad. For instance, here’s one charming example from 2024, Intelligence and Immigration, by Christopher Heath Wellman. You could tell from the title alone that this was a trash fire of burning bigotry, but here, taste the abstract.
The relative intelligence of prospective migrants likely does little to move the needle on the central issue in the ethics of immigration, namely, whether states are morally entitled to forcibly exclude outsiders. Even so, I argue that varying levels of intelligence may be relevant to a number of theoretically interesting and practically pressing issues. In particular, such variations may in some cases (1) affect the number of refugees a country is obligated to accept, (2) be relevant to the advisability of encouraging refugees to resettle rather than attempting to help them where they are, and (3) have implications for relational egalitarians who are especially concerned with inequalities among fellow citizens.
The body text is even worse; it’s a meandering opinion piece with no evidence presented, and I was shocked that it didn’t even bother to cite Rushton, the source of all of its biases. I mention this to prepare you — there is little quality control in this “journal” which is prepared to publish the most egregious nonsense. If you desperately want an article defending blackface, they’ve got it. To be fair, they sometimes also publish criticisms of the garbage they put on their pages. For instance, there is an article titled Deflating Byrne’s “Are Women Adult Human Females?” that logically skewers the whole definitional approach to excluding trans women from the category of “woman”.
But what caught my eye in this journal was an article titled On the Intellectual Freedom and Responsibility of Scientists in the Time of “Consequences Culture” by Lee Jussim and others, including Luana Maroja and Jerry Coyne…names of reactionary culture warriors I’ve seen many times before, usually in the context of yelling about racism and misogyny, which they practice ably. I read it, and dismissed it out of hand, because it’s nothing but a slippery slope argument, which most of us know is a fallacy.
It practically telegraphs its intent in the abstract.
The 20th century witnessed unimaginable atrocities perpetrated in the name of ideologies that stifled dissent in favour of political narratives, with numerous examples of resulting long-term societal harm.
It’s not a good sign when it warns of past unimaginable atrocities
as its premise. Don’t worry: it will fail to deliver any examples of similar atrocities in the contemporary world. In fact, it’s going to ignore actual atrocities to instead whine about small slights to scientists, blaming it all on those parts of contemporary society that are under genuine assault from the establishment.
Despite clear historical precedents, calls to deal with dissent through censorship have risen dramatically. Most alarmingly, politically motivated censorship has risen in the academic community, where pluralism is most needed to seek truth and generate knowledge. Recent calls for censorship have come under the name of “consequences culture”, a culture structured around the inclusion of those sharing a particular narrative while imposing adverse consequences on those who dissent. Here, we place “consequences culture” in the historical context of totalitarian societies, focusing on the fate suffered by academics in those societies. We support our arguments with extensive references, many of which are not widely known in the West. We invite the broader scientific community to consider yet again what are timeless subjects: the importance of freely exchanging views and ideas; the freedom to do so without fear of intimidation; the folly of undermining such exchanges with distortions; and the peril of attempting to eliminate exchanges by purging published documents from the official record. We conclude with suggestions on where to go from here.
I don’t know, I was looking forward with a little glee to the descriptions of the adverse consequences
imposed on the kinds of assholes who compare their plight to the Holocaust, but it fails to deliver. The inciting incident for all this anxiety was one specific paper.
In 2020, Tomáš Hudlický submitted an essay to Angewandte Chemie (Hudlický, 2020) reviewing the evolution of organic synthesis since Seebach’s prior reflection on the field three decades before (Seebach, 1990). The essay, which included a discussion on the organic synthesis community, was peer-reviewed, accepted by the journal, and a pre-publication version was uploaded to the journal server. Among several topics Hudlický addressed, he argued that in some cases, institutional policies mandating “equality in terms of absolute numbers of people in specific subgroups is counter-productive if it results in discrimination against the most meritorious candidates” (Hudlický, 2020). Then, in an unprecedented action, the published article vanished from the journal’s server, with the DOI returning a 404 error (Howes, 2020). The withdrawal notice would appear some days later declaring that “the opinions expressed in this essay do not reflect our values of fairness, trustworthiness and social awareness” (Withdrawal, 2020).1 Unofficial copies can be found online, and further information can be found in Howes (2020) and Sydnes (2021).
Wait…the problem is the removal of a paper on organic synthesis, which wandered into a discourse on why maybe we’ve got too many chemists in certain subgroups who are less meritorious? Yes, remove such papers; they shouldn’t have passed peer and editorial review. I think even the authors of this terrible article that it would be misleading to lard a technical paper in chemistry with advocacy for social engineering, except that they’ll only do it when they agree with the social engineering part. A scientific review should be to the point, and not scurry off into topics on which the author is not at all qualified.
Jussim’s paper dwells on this incident with several paragraphs of breast-beating, and references to the KGB, ostracizing Sakharov, Lysenkoism, and the authoritarian territory of collective denunciations
. I kept waiting for the grisly adverse consequences
to Hudlický that they promised me, but they didn’t describe any. He had a paper removed from a journal. That was it. He wasn’t banished to a concentration camp in the Everglades, his family wasn’t bombed, he wasn’t even tortured. He wrote a flawed paper, the editors removed it, done.
Surely, they must have many more examples of tormented scientists to discuss. They do, sorta.
Hudlický’s is not the only case of “consequences culture”. This phenomenon is becoming pervasive in modern Western societies. Numerous academics across various fields in the USA (Abbot, 2021; Hooven, 2023; Lyons, 2022), Canada (CBC News, 2022; Howard-Hassmann, 2022), Germany (Sibarium, 2022), the UK (Adams, 2021; Gibbons, 2021), and New Zealand (Clements et al., 2021; Coyne, 2021a; Leahy, 2021) have been subjected to mistreatment after running afoul of activism of one kind or another. Between 2014 and 2023, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), logged more than 1,700 attempts to deplatform or discipline faculty for speech that should have been protected by academic freedom (FIRE, n.d.-a, n.d.-b), with incidents occurring at an increasing rate (Flaherty, 2021). Several other online databases have also been compiled (Acevedo, 2023; Cancel Culture Database, 2025). Looking into these cases, one finds that in many instances, the views expressed were neither extreme (Danagoulian, 2021; Howard-Hassmann, 2022), nor factually incorrect. In fact, some simply challenged questionable science or policy, or defended science from an assault by pseudoscience (Coyne, 2021a). For example, a medical student was expelled and forced to “seek psychological services” for challenging the validity of microaggressions (Cantu & Jussim, 2021; Hudson, 2021). Indeed, the problem is not limited to academia: those same regressive authoritarian tendencies are evident in other strata of Western society (Applebaum, 2021; Tabarovsky, 2020), as are attempts to deny their existence or minimise their dangers (Young, 2021).
Interesting that they cite FIRE, a far-right, Islamophobic organization that explicitly claims that far-right, Islamophobic professors must be defended, but doesn’t mention TPUSA, which maintains a Professor Watchlist and calls for the firing of liberal professors. Most of the sources mentioned are about aggrieved conservative professors claiming that they were denounced for declaiming their bigoted views, but there’s a notable lack of examples of mistreatment
. The one specific example given is a medical student being advised to seek psychological services, which is not the public whipping and flaying I was hoping for. Darn.
They then declare that science hasn’t been as repressive as those liberals claim, so we get a bizarre section that they purport shows the dishonesty of the people who disagree with them.
Just as Herbert et al. selectively dismiss some lived experiences, they overlook historical facts that complicate their narrative. They claim, for instance, that the “gentlemen of the Royal Society” of London 150 years ago “could not imagine that Asians, African-Americans, Jews, Arabs, women, or LGBTQIA+ individuals would find a place among them” (Herbert et al., 2022), despite there being clear, albeit rare, examples that they did imagine such individuals. They elected Arab and Jewish members as far back as 1682 (Turkmani, 2011) and 1727 (Samuda, n.d.; Vieira, 2014), respectively, had at least one member who in 1781 admitted to being gay (Namier & Brooke, 1964; Onslow, n.d.), and elected Ardaseer Cursetjee, a marine engineer from Bombay, as a fellow in 1841 (Cursetjee, n.d.). The Royal Society counted pioneering women such as Margaret Cavendish among its speakers (1667; Wilkins, 2014) and Caroline Herschel (1750–1848) among the authors of its Philosophical Transactions (Herschel, 1787, 1794, 1796; Royal Society, 2017). A Jamaican mathematician, Francis Williams, was admitted to the meetings of the Royal Society, and, highlighting the importance of dissenting voices in attempting to overturn the status quo, he was proposed as a fellow of the Royal Society in 1721 – against a majority that rejected him on the basis of race (“on account of his complection [sic]”; Carretta, 2003; Williams, 1997).
Awesome. Some non-white, non-male people got into the Royal Society despite a majority rejecting them on the basis of race. That is not the win that Jussim thinks it is. It’s saying that it was easier for a mediocre white man to get into the Society than for an exceptional black man to do so. Maybe we should reject all barriers to entry that privilege white men, as DEI principles propose? How many great women and non-European people were deprived of opportunities historically?
The article concludes with a bit of pablum, rather than workable suggestions on where to go from here
.
We have two choices. For scientists, those choices are simple. The first is whether to do honest science to the best of our abilities and help others to do the same, or to make science subservient to ideological goals which permit falsehoods as long as they serve the agenda. The second choice is whether to speak up when one sees a falsehood, because, as the epigraph to this article states, “Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid”. The idea, that voicing one’s views merits punishment is untenable, and needs to be scrapped. Similarly, the politicisation of science needs to stop.
Yes! Do honest science and help others! I can agree with that, although they go on to suggest that everyone else is pursuing ideological goals
, unlike them, and are lying to serve the agenda
. The problem is that Jussim et al. do have ideological goals that oppose our ability to serve others — they want science to support a conservative agenda. To that end, they are complaining about liberals, women, gay and trans people, Muslims, and anyone to the left of Charlie Kirk, and ignoring the active politicization and repression of science in America today.
It’s kind of a weird choice to get irate at gay women protesting about the discrimination they face at the hands of established conservative professors at a time when Trump is shutting down science funding and appointing looney tunes kooks to run our scientific institutions. But you do you, Lee Jussim, Mikhail Shifman, Luana Maroja, Jerry Coyne, David Bertioli, Arieh Warshel, Gernot Frenking, and Barry L. Bentley. Since you’re so committed to free speech, I’m sure you won’t mind if I say you’re all entitled, privileged, whiny-ass-titty-babies who are simply aligning yourselves with a dominant repressive and authoritarian culture. Assholes.
I should mention that Tomáš Hudlický died in 2022. It was not at the hands of fanatical liberal mob; he died of natural causes while holding the position of Professor and Canada Research Chair in Organic Synthesis and Biocatalysis at Brock University, shortly after giving a lecture at a conference.
They lost me right there.
Peter Singer is a complete nutcase, loon, fake philosopher.
He has spent a lot of his academic life figuring out which humans can be killed and why by parents, doctors, and society in general.
The disabled and mentally challenged people of any age. He is big on infanticide and euthanasia of old people.
The last group that did this were the Nazis.
The first groups that they targeted weren’t the Jews.
They were the disabled and they emptied out their care homes and asylums by murdering hundreds of thousands of people. The estimates are around 300,000 disabled people killed.
Just say no to pointless mass murder and Peter Singer.
Well, as a disabled person (autism, ADHD), I’ll be keeping an eye on this Peter Singer character. It sucks how eugenics is enjoying a fashion rebirth among wingnuts.
@ ^ Recursive Rabbit : You think That sucks? Wait till you find out how outright open nazism is now comig back with the way the Trump kult is pushing that Overton window here.
Ouch.
My typing & mind just hurt itself.
Fucks sake reality. Really?
This is how it is in 2025?
RationalWiki – Peter Singer
RationalWiki – Effective Altruism
@Stevor, Yes, I know. Eugenics is just the part of that enormous trash fire I’m highlighting at this moment.
The dude is 79. When is he following through on his ethical precepts?
Singer is the same age as Il Duce? So we can expect both of them to join Khomeini and Reagan soon.
[meta]
Reading the comments, one would imagine this is a post about Peter Singer.
(I grant he’s the only big name mentioned)
“For instance, here’s one charming example from 2024, Intelligence and Immigration, by Christopher Heath Wellman.”
Who? ;) At least I’ve heard of Singer. Animal rights activist. Utilitarian.
I use a wheelchair and/or forearm crutches to get around.
Even here in California, I’ve been noticing that I’m treated with less respect by some people lately.
The analytic approach to ethics produces monsters. Exhibit A: this Singer character
Why do they always assume the slippery slope will lead to sex crimes of some sort. And why do they always sound so excited about it?
felixd: “The analytic approach to ethics produces monsters. Exhibit A: this Singer character”
He’s not monstrous; your exhibit fails utterly.
Also, [analytic ethics] ≠ [utilitarianism].
(Surely only monsters advocate for animal rights!)
“Some people’s idea of free speech is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone says anything back, that is an outrage” – Winston Churchill.
A few thoughts on this sad article. First of all, I don’t fathom how Dr. Singer’s name could have appeared anywhere near this, because I would have thought him well beyond many a content that has appeared on the site.
As to cancel culture, I do remember several academics being disadvantaged due to opposition to conservatism, as well as the massacre in the Gaza strip. I wonder what would happen if I submitted an article in this regard to the journal, and honestly, I do feel somewhat inclined to try.
As for the ideas presented in the journal, I do believe that the authors at times do fail to appreciate cultures that appear alien to them. They fail to see their humanity, their valuable contributions and their unparalleled potency in some areas.
[1] Please don’t represent Singer’s views as eugenicist. His position is drawn from his blinkered, absolutist take on utilitarianism, not from any fetish to improve the genetic stock of humanity. I’m not saying this to defend Singer. I think I’ve made my contempt for his philosophy clear here in the past.
[2] That section from Jussim et al. about admitting minorities to the Royal Society is creationist-level quote mining. Here’s the original from Herbert et al. (2022):
Which Jussim et al report as:
Notice the giveaway sign of trimming parts of the text not for concision but to change the meaning. The truncated quote drops the crucial “many” qualifier, which then allows the authors to claim a handful of “clear, albeit rare” counter-examples in rebuttal.
Now, a handful of counter-examples would be a perfect rejoinder if Herbert et al. had claimed that none of those minority groups had ever been considered for joining the RS. But Herbert et al. did not claim that.
Worse, some of the so-called counter-examples actually support Herbert et al’s point. Here’s Jussim et al. puffing up the RS treatment of Cavendish and Caroline Herschel (sister of William):
Being invited to speak to the Royal Society and being published in a Society journal is not the same as being elected a Fellow. Furthermore, Cavendish was not invited to speak to the RS, she was only invited to attend (although as an admirably potent personality, she certainly spoke up while she was there!). Worse, they ignore the fact that Herschel’s star catalogue, the first paper by a woman in the Philosophical Transcripts of the Royal Society, was published under her brother’s name.
The authors should know this. One of their supporting references is to a Guardian article called The Royal Society’s lost women scientists which, as the name suggests, covers the often fractious relationship of women scientists to the Royal Society.
Specifically, this is what the Guardian article has to say about Cavendish’s appearance at the Royal Society:
Given their source, I am struggling to read Jussim et al’s implication that Cavendish was invited as a speaker as anything other than a gross distortion for polemical purposes.
Now for Jussim et al’s final “counter-example”:
Which seems to me to be an example of exactly what Herbert et al. were describing, and could only be presented as a counter-example after misrepresenting the original quote.
Unimaginable consequences!!
Journal of Controversial Ideas, eh? Perhaps I should submit my essay “Skid Row’s ‘Slave to the Grind’ And How It Paved The Way For The Mainstream Acceptance of Nirvana”.
@17 I wanna read that!
Ah, the old “If (X) group is allowed to marry, then they’s gonna be marryin’ cats ‘n dawgs!!”
Yeah, no. Animals CANNOT CONSENT. This would only happen if non-human animals were granted full-on personhood, which isn’t going to happen. There was a case in Europe, if I recall correctly, that was trying to extend personhood to primates in order to spare them from scientific research, but it didn’t gain a lot of traction.
That’s on top of the legal status of pets being considered property, so there’s literally no way in hell this would happen.
I learned this back in high school; I was looking into possibly willing my estate to any future pets, and discovered that it’s a lot of legal work. (Yeah, even at sixteen years old, I figured I wasn’t having kids…)
@Autobot Silverwynde #19:
Legal personhood is somewhat orthogonal to capacity to consent. And grounding ethical arguments in laws at the moment is unstable.
Wikipedia – Environmental Personhood
Wikipedia – Great Ape Personhood
More to the point, even today we have arranged marriages including child brides, so… consent is not exactly necessary.
“That’s on top of the legal status of pets being considered property, so there’s literally no way in hell this would happen.”
Well… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human%E2%80%93animal_marriage#Cases
The inciting incident for all this anxiety was one specific paper… “In 2020, Tomáš Hudlický submitted an essay…”
Um, no, all that “anxiety” was all over right-wing sites long before 2020.
@ devnll and probably others the question of why the assumption is that these things will lead to sex crimes is, I think, as usual, I think, because this is what the people making those arguments would do if they could.
It’s nothing new. Back in 1999 when the civil union debate was on in Vermont, we heard the same old stuff. It would be the end of sacred marriage, gays would be free to say it’s OK to be gay, polyamory is next, little old ladies will marry their cats, and the sheep are getting nervous. Maybe it’s just because it was Vermont, but I was a bit surprised how many people joined the slippery slope argument wearing skis!
John Morales’s link on zoophilic marriage is sort of interesting but I do not see in any relevance to civil institutions. At least not so far. Of course in our current political climate, where supposedly serious legislators are taking up chemtrails and Sharia law, maybe some slopes are slipperier than we thought.
Slippery slope arguments fail often for a lot of reasons.
One main one is that much of our lives are spent on multiple slippery slopes looking at 50 shades of gray every where.
They are part of our lives, common, and unavoidable.
Slippery slopes might be conceivable or possible, but that doesn’t make them inevitable. In most cases, as the OP cartoon points, out, they aren’t that slippery and we can stop wherever we decide to stop.