Race, Sensationalism, Stereotyping, and Freedom of Speech

My initial reaction to the controversy stirred by Kanazawa’s censored blog posting was annoyance at Satoshi Kanazawa, and embarrassment that the issue triggered a new wave of anti-evolution stereotypes.

But after reading the various reactions, over-reactions, and corrections, I believe there is much to learn from this episode. For me, the incident triggered a few thoughts about freedom of speech, "pseudoscience," sensationalism, stereotyping, and the ease with which otherwise well-intentioned people can adopt a lynch-mob mentality.

1. Be thankful for freedom of speech, but watch your mouth in public. For those who haven’t been watching the show, Kanazawa published a blog post with a sensationalist claim about racial differences in attractiveness. After a wave of complaints, the Psychology Today editors removed the post. In the spirit of open interchange of ideas, however, other Psychology Today commentators have criticized Kanazawa’s conclusions, and also provided links to the original argument (see Kaufman & Wicherts or Foy, cited below, for example). That’s nice, because you can’t come to a conclusion if you don’t hear both sides of the argument.

My personal opinion is that Kanazawa was wrong, both in what he said, and in how he said it.* He likes to stir up controversy, and he has been well-rewarded for coming up with sensational headlines (I’ll discuss that issue below). Other commentators on this topic have had intelligent things to say about the fact that internet blogs are not subject to peer review, which has its good and bad consequences. There are those who believe that the Psychology Today editorial staff should take on the job of peer review. If they did, however, we’d see a lot fewer ideas and they’d be a lot slower in coming to our attention. For example, the various counter-arguments to Kanazawa’s blog would still be out for review, and it might be six months before any of us learned about the alternative interpretations of the exact same data.

How committed are you to freedom of speech? The question doesn’t really matter until someone says something with which you disagree. At the same time, if you write a blog post, or even a comment on a blog post, before you hit the “return” key, you should ask yourself whether you’d say the same thing in a room full of real people, including your friends and colleagues.

2. Beware the term “pseudoscience.” Several of the commentaries on Kanazawa’s post freely throw around the term “pseudoscience.” Unfortunately, that is a somewhat abused term, and it is often used as a pseudo-argument. Science is not about presenting only completed and final ideas. Science involves a dynamic process in which open-minded people generate hypotheses, subject those ideas to empirical test, and other open-minded people try to think up alternative interpretions, and then generate new data to test the alternatives. Kaufman and Wichert’s blog re-analyzing Kanazawa’s data is a good example.

Here’s an example of pseudoscience: “Dr. J.K. Jones, head of neurology at Harvard Medical Center, has argued that the theory of X has been debunked, because many of the studies supporting that theory were conducted on undergraduate subjects, none involved actual neurological measures, and most of the conclusions were based on statistics that were not state-of-the-art.” Pseudoscience emhasizes an expert’s position or method over a careful analysis of his or her logic. Pseudoscience is raising a host of technical objections that are irrelevant to the central argument. Pseudoscience buys into the false dichotomy between hard and soft sciences, based on who has more expensive machines.

Real science, on the other hand, is not about final conclusions, it is an ongoing conversation, characterized by open-minded consideration of evidence, and attempts to critically evaluate that evidence, and to develop alternative hypotheses. Consequently, real science is beautifully self-correcting, and made up of a brilliant array of different methods, different opinions, and different ways of thinking about the natural world.

3. Why sensationalism is such a sensation. I just published a book I could have called "A Researcher's Journey into Evolution, Cognitive Science, and Complexity" but instead I titled it: "Sex, Murder, and the Meaning of Life"). Readers are informationally overloaded, there are text messages twittering in on their iphones, emails to be answered, headlines to read from The New York Times, and if the headlines are interesting, articles to quickly skim before getting back to one’s emails. Internet bloggers compete for people’s attention in this informationally overloaded environment. Bloggers are attracted to what I believe are now called “screaming headlines.” One way to create a screaming headline is to say something controversial and unexpected. Kanazawa is very talented at this, and has been a very popular blogger. He also self-consciously tries to get people’s goat. In this case, I suspect he succeeded beyond his hopes, and I’ll refer back to my earlier point (watch what you say in public).

4. Be careful of your own stereotypes. I discussed this in an earlier blog posting, but some of the commentary includes a lot of false stereotypes about evolutionary psychologists as a group, who are typically not interested in racial differences, except to the extent that those differences create stereotyping and discrimination. There are now hundreds and hundreds of behavioral scientists who are using evolutionary models, men and women from all racial and ethnic groups in countries all around the world, united mostly by a commitment to scientific ideas, and tending to be more revolutionary than reactionary (see The evolutionary psychology of racism and stereotyping).

Race and Ethnicity Essential Reads

How Black Men Became Invisible Sexual Harassment Survivors

The Impact of Race and Ethnicity on Orgasm

5. Watch out for lynch-mob mentality. Several of the commentators on the various blogs have insulted Kanazawa in very nasty ways, including references to his race and attractiveness. That doesn’t seem like a great way to win an argument for tolerance. There are also those expressing outrage at Psychology Today, but before joining an angry mob, they ought to first look at the diversity of opinions – on this very topic --- already expressed on the Psychology Today website.

NOTE: I can sympathize with some of the commentators who argued that I don't come down hard enough on Kanazawa's original argument. In my other post (below) I point out the reasons (scientific and political) why I am not a fan of evolutionary models of race differences. But some of the same scientific and liberal political biases lead me to be uncomfortable with selective censorship, and simply opposed to using racism and irrational argumentation when attacking other people's arguments (even those with which you disagree).

Doug Kenrick is author of Sex, Murder, and the Meaning of Life: A psychologist investigates how evolution, cognition, and complexity are revolutionizing our understanding of human nature

Related posts

George Michelsen Foy. On Kanazawa, it’s time for a little perspective, and some history.

Scott Barry Kaufman & Jelte Wicherts. Black women are not (rated) less attractive! Our independent analysis of the Add Health Dataset.

Douglas Kenrick The evolutionary psychology of racism and stereotyping.

Douglas Kenrick Why objections to irrationality and simple-mindedness shouldn't be same.

*I originally said Kanazawa "misspoke." As I discuss in a later post, I did not intend to defend what Kanazawa said, and I did not secretly agree with it.