Richard Lynn

From RationalWiki
Jump to: navigation, search
Richard Lynn in 2008
The colorful pseudoscience
Icon race.svg
Hating thy neighbour
Divide and conquer

Richard Lynn (1930–) is a white supremacist British psychologist, eugenicist, and self-described "race realist" who formerly taught at the University of Ulster. A former editor-in-chief of the prominent racist pseudojournal Mankind Quarterly, Lynn has been claiming that genetics is responsible for racial inequality and international wealth inequality for decades. Unlike many other researchers with provocative conclusions about race, Lynn is willing to advocate for high-IQ, "genetically superior" societies closing their borders to keep the low-IQ inferior people out.[1] He is probably best known for his work with Tatu Vanhanen,Wikipedia's W.svg a political scientist, estimating the average IQ scores of different countries.[2] This work has led him to the conclusion that Sub-Saharan African countries have average IQ scores of below 70, an estimate that has been heavily criticized because of his unsystematic methodology.[3] His work on alleged race differences in intelligence gained prominence when it was cited in the Bell Curve.[4]

Other shoddy "research" he's published that has been shot down by other researchers include the following:

  • A study claiming to show that men are smarter than women — which was slammed by Nature as "simple, utter hogwash"[5]
  • Claiming that psychopathic personality is more common among blacks than whites.[6][7]
  • A study claiming to validate stereotypes about Asians having shorter dicks than whites, and blacks longer dicks than whites. Seriously. Unsurprisingly, this "study" was based on two highly questionable sources, including a submission-based website that cited multiple nonexistent sources, and misrepresented other sources that actually exist.[8]


  1. SPLC profile
  2. The estimates are here, FWIW
  3. Controversial study of African IQ levels is 'deeply flawed'
  4. Neo-Nazis!
  5. Who has the bigger brain?
  6. Personality, Intelligence And "Race Realism", Psychology Today
  7. Are there racial and ethnic differences in psychopathic personality? A critique of Lynn's (2002) racial and ethnic differences in psychopathic personality, Marvin Zuckerman, October 2003, Personality and Individual Differences, pp. 1463-9, doi:10.1016/S0191-8869(02)00362-8
  8. The Pseudoscience of Race Differences in Penis Size