OpenPsych

OpenPsych is an online collection of three open access journals covering behavioral genetics, psychology, and quantitative research in sociology. The journals were started in 2014 by a group of researchers who had difficulty publishing their hereditarian research in mainstream peer-reviewed scientific journals.[1] The website describes them as open peer reviewed journals, but the qualifications and biases of the reviewers have been disputed. Many articles on OpenPsych are about race science, and the site has been described as a "pseudoscience factory-farm"[2] and "academically dodgy".[3]

OpenPsych
Founded2014
FounderEmil Kirkegaard, Davide Piffer
Publication typesAcademic journals
Official websiteopenpsych.net

Journal contents and quality

OpenPsych consists of three journals — Open Differential Psychology, Open Behavioral Genetics, and Open Quantitative Sociology & Political Science — set up by Emil Kirkegaard and Davide Piffer in 2014.[4] Journal contents are free to access and there is no cost associated with submission. The founders of the website believed that their articles were being regularly rejected by mainstream scientific publishers because of bias against their contentious submissions. Many of the articles are about race realism, a form of scientific racism, and purport a biological basis for differences between races, ethnicities, and immigrant groups in measures such as crime and IQ.[1]

The quality of peer review at OpenPsych has been disputed. Reviewers do not need advanced academic qualifications,[5] nor need to specialise in what they review. For example, Kirkegaard reviews paper submissions to two of the journals, but has only a BA in linguistics, claiming he is entirely "self-taught".[6] Most of the reviewers are also authors of articles in the same group of journals. Of the thirteen known members of the review board in 2020, two were anonymous and eight seemed to have doctorates.[1] Members of the review teams include Gerhard Meisenberg, Heiner Rindermann, Peter Frost, John Fuerst, Kenya Kura, Bryan J. Pesta, Noah Carl and Meng Hu.

The journals act as a research network for alt-right and White nationalist causes, following in the footsteps of the Pioneer Fund and Mankind Quarterly.[1] Several members of its editorial board hold far-right political views and have attended the controversial London Conference on Intelligence.[7][8] The Southern Poverty Law Center, in an article discussing proponents of scientific racism including Emil Kirkegaard, describes OpenPsych as a "pseudojournal".[9] Kirkegaard is regarded by the Centre for Analysis of Radical Right to be a "figure on the radical right fringe".[10]

Controversies

OKCupid

In May 2016, Kirkegaard with Julius Daugbjerg Bjerrekær published a paper in Open Differential Psychology that includes the data of nearly 70,000 OkCupid (a dating website) users, such as their intimate sexual details.[11] The publication was widely criticised at the time and been described as "without a doubt one of the most grossly unprofessional, unethical and reprehensible data releases."[12] Although Kirkegaard claims the data is public, this is disputed by others who point out the data is restricted to logged-in users only:

Moreover, it remains unclear whether the OkCupid profiles scraped by Kirkegaard’s team really were publicly accessible. Their paper reveals that initially they designed a bot to scrape profile data, but that this first method was dropped because it was “a decidedly non-random approach to find users to scrape because it selected users that were suggested to the profile the bot was using.” This implies that the researchers created an OkCupid profile from which to access the data and run the scraping bot. Since OkCupid users have the option to restrict the visibility of their profiles to logged-in users only, it is likely the researchers collected—and subsequently released—profiles that were intended to not be publicly viewable. The final methodology used to access the data is not fully explained in the article, and the question of whether the researchers respected the privacy intentions of 70,000 people who used OkCupid remains unanswered.[13]

Kirkegaard uploaded the OkCupid data to the Open Science Framework, but this was later removed after OkCupid filed a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) complaint.[14]

Noah Carl

In April 2019, Noah Carl who reviews submissions for Open Quantitative Sociology & Political Science was dismissed as a research fellow at St Edmund's College, Cambridge University because of his controversial association with OpenPsych, that included collaborating with a number of individuals who are known to hold racist and far-right political views:

Dr. Carl has published papers in the OpenPsych journals (which I believe embrace three titles) edited by individuals with known racist views, and sometimes in collaboration with them or acting as a reviewer. In particular they refer to Emil Kirkegaard, a highly controversial figure alleged to be from the far right.[15]

References
  1. Panofsky, Aaron; Dasgupta, Kushan; Iturriaga, Nicole (2020-09-28). "How White nationalists mobilize genetics: From genetic ancestry and human biodiversity to counterscience and metapolitics". American Journal of Physical Anthropology: ajpa.24150. doi:10.1002/ajpa.24150. ISSN 0002-9483.
  2. van der Merwe, Ben (2018-12-20). "No, objecting to Cambridge's appointment of a eugenicist is not about free speech". New Statesman. GlobalData. Retrieved 2019-07-10.
  3. Tettenborn, Andrew (2019-05-09). "The lynch mobbing of Noah Carl". Spiked. Retrieved 2019-07-10.
  4. "About OpenPsych". OpenPsych. Retrieved 2019-07-10.
  5. Bradbury, Rosie; Chye, Chye (2018-12-07). "Hundreds of academics oppose research fellow's eugenics work on discredited "race sciences"". Varsity. Retrieved 2019-07-10.
  6. van der Merwe, Ben (2018-12-07). "Former Nuffield fellow denounced for "racist pseudoscience"". Cherwell. Retrieved 2019-07-10.
  7. van der Merwe, Ben (2018-01-10). "Exposed: London's eugenics conference and its neo-Nazi links". London Student. Retrieved 2019-07-10.
  8. van der Merwe, Ben (2018-02-19). "It might be a pseudo science, but students take the threat of eugenics seriously". New Statesman. Retrieved 2019-07-10.
  9. Ward, Justin (2018-03-12). "Wikipedia wars: inside the fight against far-right editors, vandals and sock puppets". Southern Poverty Law Center. Retrieved 2019-07-10.
  10. Barnes, David (2018-06-25). "Eugenics: White Nationalists Continue To Turn To The False Theory Of Genetic Supremacy". Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right. Retrieved 2019-07-10.
  11. OpenPsych: The OKCupid dataset: A very large public dataset of dating site users
  12. Besnick, Brain. (12 May 2018). Researchers just released profile data on 70,000 OkCupid users without permission. Vox.
  13. Zimmer, Michael. (14 May 2016). Study Reveals the Perils of Big-Data Science. Wired.
  14. Chang, Lulu. (15 May 2016). Update: OKCupid succeeds in removing 70,000 users’ leaked data from public view. Digital Trends.
  15. St. Edmund’s College in the University of Cambridge EXTERNAL INVESTIGATION INTO THE APPOINTMENT OF THE TOBY JACKMAN NEWTON TRUST RESEARCH FELLOW , Independent Report to the Governing Body Sir Patrick Elias, External Investigator 30 April 2019.
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