This is the second of three guest posts by Professor Jonathan Kaplan of Oregon State University (see Part One here). Professor Kaplan is a noted philosopher of biology who has published extensively on biological race and IQ among other topics.
Part II. A paper about policy that doesn’t engage with policy
Cofnas’s recent piece,1 published in journal Philosophical Psychology, is problematic for a different reason than Winegard, Winegard, and Anomaly – it simply fails to do what it claims. The very title of the paper “Research on group differences in intelligence: A defense of free inquiry,” points towards its absurdity. As many people immediately pointed out, research on group differences in intelligence has been pursued and published regularly, and there are no limits on “free inquiry” around it.2 At least, no more so than there are limits on “inquiry” surrounding climate change skepticism or claims about the dangers of routine childhood vaccinations. In each case, what there is, instead, is a broad consensus among experts who actually engage with research of the relevant kind that the claims being made are too often wildly ill-supported (often already having been shown to be wrong), and the implications drawn by supporters on the basis of these ill-supported claims are often far too strong. When researchers argue that reasonable people of goodwill should not pursue bad research that purports to support certain kinds of conclusions about group differences in intelligence, or certain kinds of conclusions about anthropogenic climate change, or certain kinds of conclusions about the safety of vaccine, they are not arguing against “free inquiry,” but rather in favor of not pursuing grossly irresponsible research.