Academics are trying to get my paper retracted — and some of them haven’t even read it
‘You’re about to learn why people generally avoid fucking with me.’ Thus spake Nietzsche scholar and Macquarie University philosophy professor Mark Alfano in a tweet directed at me.I’ll start from the beginning. In late December I published a paper in the academic journal Philosophical Psychology defending the study of race differences in intelligence. This topic arouses strong emotions. But I am a philosopher, and the job of philosophers is to confront issues dispassionately, guided only by reason and evidence. This activity may lead us to question orthodoxies and challenge taboos, but that is what philosophy is all about. Or at least it’s supposed to be.
