James Thompson

James Thompson is a HBD pseudoscientist[2] who holds sexist and racist opinions.

James Thompson
Frogs, clowns and swastikas
Alt-right
Chuds
Rebuilding the Reich, one meme at a time
Buzzwords and dogwhistles
v - t - e
"Scientific Racism" is an oxymoron. The truth cannot be racist, and lies cannot be science.
—James Thompson[1]

Thompson has a PhD in Psychology,[3] and his papers published in the journal Intelligence have caused some controversy. He was a senior honorary lecturer in psychology at University College London, but was stripped of this academic title [4] over the fact he has made sexist statements on social media and controversially hosted the London Conference on Intelligence, that has been described as a "eugenics conference".[5][6][7]

He is a regular columnist on the alt-right website The Unz Review,[8] and his politics are far-right, e.g. on Twitter he follows white nationalists: Richard Spencer (who follows him back), Virginia Dare, American Renaissance, Brett Stevens, the Traditional Britain Group and Jared Taylor.[9] Thompson is member of the HBD community on Twitter, and regularly retweets Hbdchick, Emil Kirkegaard, Steve Sailer and Gregory Cochran. He also sits on the Academic Advisory Council of the Ulster Institute for Social Research and is associated with its white supremacist pseudo-journal Mankind Quarterly. Thompson erroneously argues because females have on average smaller brains than males, they have lower IQs; on this topic he supports the pseudoscientific research of Richard Lynn.[10] He also identifies as a proponent of hereditarianism and is a racialist.[11]

London Conference on Intelligence

In 2015-2016 Thompson hosted the London Conference on Intelligence, that attracted neo-Nazis, white supremacists, Holocaust deniers and child-rape apologist Emil Kirkegaard. At the conference(s), Thompson introduced the far-right speakers with a 10 minute "Welcome and Introduction" and closing speech "Communicating our work to the public".[12]

Mainstream interviews

Thompson has not mentioned any of his extreme views on race and sex in mainstream interviews:

Two videos that feature Thompson are easily found. One, from 2010, is on the UCLTV channel. And in March 2011, a BBC World News video featured Thompson. But both of these videos are about his views on disaster psychology (Chilean miners, and Japanese earthquake, respectively). Neither gives any hint of his extremist political views. To discover them you'd have to delve into his twitter account (@JamesPsychol) or his writings on the unz site. It's not surprising that they were missed.[13]

Social media

He has been condemned for various sexist and racist posts on Twitter and elsewhere. Often these take the form of just asking questions, but sometimes it goes beyond that in offensiveness:

  • "Men’s brains abigger than women’s, even when controlled for bigger body size, should have higher intelligence, though evidence conflicting"[6] (His enormous brain doesn't stop him messing up tweets though.)
  • "The lower intelligence group orients Left bc it is populated disproportionately by Leftist beneficiaries (economic and racial minorities)"[6] (This is not merely borderline-incoherent but scientifically nonsense; the relationship between politics and intelligence is contested but there's certainly some evidence that conservatives are stupider, and it's an issue that could be approached through science, which is what Thompson is supposed to be doing, not through bullshit proof-by-assertion.[14])
gollark: osmarkscalculator™ doesn't know it.
gollark: Really? Oops.
gollark: Sufficiently general pattern matching is rather hard, so it cannot differentiate palaiologes.
gollark: osmarkscalculator™ can't really do those.
gollark: The derivative of LyricLy with respect to x is W(gcd(x, 4)), using my new continuous gcd function.

See also

References

  1. Twitter. 28 Feb 2018.
  2. "UCL professor David Colquhoun expressed disbelief that the university would host such “pseudoscience” and stated that the organiser, Professor James Thompson, “clearly doesn’t understand genetics” (source).
  3. ResearchGate.
  4. Students call for James Thompson to lose professorship over eugenics conference. Morning Star.
  5. Here Are Five Shocking Sexist & Racist Tweets By UCL Professor Who Hosted Eugenics Conference. The Cheese Grater. 10 Jan 2018.
  6. ‘Shame on UCL’: Protestors demand answers over secret eugenics conference, Lucy Bacon, The Tab, 15 Jan 2018
  7. James Thompson. The Unz Review.
  8. Exposed: London Eugenics Conferences neo Nazi links. London Student.
  9. Women's Brains. The Unz Review. Apr 24 2017.
  10. Genetics of Racial Differences, see also Loci and Genetic Groups and More Markers, More Differentiation.
  11. London Conference on Intelligence 2016 (Abstracts)
  12. Eugenics, UCL and freedom of speech. DC's Improbable Science. 14 Jan 2018.
  13. Intelligence And Politics Have a Complex Relationship, Scott A McGreal, Psychology Today
This article is issued from Rationalwiki. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.