The New York Times has finally gotten around to paying attention to the international network of racist "researchers" and publications led by Emil Kirkegaard in an article published January 24: Genetic Data From Over 20,000 U.S. Children Misused for ‘Race Science’:
Though Dr. Pesta later submitted updates on further research he wanted to do, none explicitly described the group’s true intentions, according to court records. The legal filings also show that another group member, Emil O.W. Kirkegaard, a right-wing blogger in Denmark, suggested Dr. Pesta submit misleading proposals to gain access to additional data sets “I reckon that if we mask the nature of the study with usual medical terms, one can ‘get away with’ a lot,” Mr. Kirkegaard wrote in an email. “Getting samples for analyses that one doesn’t publish (to preserve your reputation!) are still useful because they allow us to validate our beliefs privately.” In an interview, Dr. Pesta denied misleading the N.I.H. and defended his work. “I am not a eugenicist,” he said. Dr. Pesta’s collaborators had a history of scrounging for data to support their fringe theories and of using unreliable methodologies.
Bryan Pesta was mentioned in the report "
Race Science, Inc."
"Bryan Pesta, a former recipient of Pioneer money who is now part of HDF’s underground research team."
HDF is Human Diversity Foundation, since officially renamed Polygenic Scores LLC, owned by Kirkegaard.
I was disappointed that the NYTimes does not mention "Race Science, Inc.," published by the British organization Hope not Hate. That article gives a fuller understanding of how these racists work together. Kirkegaard is basically Pesta's employer, and I expect that obtaining data under false pretenses is part of the job of an underground research team member.
Kirkegaard has long been a fan of taking others' data without permission, another useful fact about Kirkegaard left out of the NYTimes article.
I do like the fact that the Times article points out that the "science" done by these race scientists is pure bullshit, like them inventing an ethnicity called "USA Black." One of Kirkegaard's other employees, the neo-Nazi Bo Winegard (also mentioned in the Race Science Inc. article), along with his twin brother Ben, explained their race theories a decade ago in the gutter racist publication Quillette in an article called "The Reality of Race and the Abhorrence or Racism."
...racial categories are like film categories (e.g., drama, horror, comedy). Film categories are certainly real in the sense that they offer predictive power. If one knows that A Nightmare on Elm Street is a horror film, one can be reasonably certain that it will be dark, scary, and violent. But film categories are not immutable essences that perfectly sort movies into distinct types. A genre-based satire like Scream, for example, does not snugly fit into any of the traditional film categories. It might be horror; it might be comedy; it might be some previously unknown combination of the two. Furthermore, there aren’t a fixed number of film categories. The amount and the granularity of film categories depend upon the interests of the people using them. Your friend might use four (horror, comedy, drama, and science fiction), whereas Netflix might use an apparently limitless and startlingly specific supply. (See Daniel Dennett’s book for a variety of points and related examples centering on the topic of species).
The same principles apply to racial categories. If one knows that Thomas is a Caucasian, one can be reasonably sure that Thomas has relatively light skin, and that he has recent ancestry in Europe.
The Winegards' use of "Caucasian," a scientifically obsolete term tells you exactly how scientific they are. But then, all of the Winegards' race science originates directly from the 18th century, which is when the term Caucasian was invented.
They explain in their article that their classification of human "races" is as scientific as film categories - that is, completely subjective, or as I pointed out when I wrote about the article, what some might call "postmodernist."
Steven Pinker is a big fan of that article.
So this is the type of dum-dum who is grabbing data without permission and trying to use it to justify their own racism.
The NYTimes article mentions a couple of other race science ghouls: John G. R. Fuerst - believed to be an anti-Semite, not a surprise considering his connection to Kirkegaard; and Jordan Lasker. The NYTimes article mentions in passing the controversy of its using hacked data by political operative Lasker (aka "Crémeiux") to attack Zohran Mamdani during his successful mayoral candidacy.
The Times article also mentions another member of the international Neo-Nazi and race pseudoscience league, Michael Woodley of Menie, but not by name:
The agency discourages “stigmatizing research” that could promote “negative stereotypes” or cause “social detriment.” That is, in part, a nod to eugenics, a discredited field of research asserting that certain races, usually white Europeans, are genetically superior. Such ideas — and the pseudoscientific studies that support them — have been used to justify violence, including by the gunman who killed 10 Black people at a supermarket in Buffalo in 2022.
The link for "pseudoscientific studies" goes to an archive of the NYTimes article called
A Racist Researcher, Exposed by a Mass Shooting which talks about how Woodley's racism was included in the manifesto of the gunman responsible for the
2022 slaughter in Buffalo. What the Times article doesn't mention is that
Woodley is a participant in annual meetings of the gutter racist organization the International Society for Intelligence Research (ISIR) and that several other frequent meeting participants were also cited by the mass-murderer. Kirkegaard has participated in ISIR meetings several times,
most recently in 2024.
The January 24th Times article refers to its article about Woodley, but doesn't mention Woodley
has a connection to Kirkegaard. You'd never know how large the Kirkegaard network is - or even that Kirkegaard is far more pernicious than just "a right-wing blogger in Denmark" if you only read the NYTimes.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the NYTimes,
David French has just published an op-ed that whitewashes Bari Weiss' anti-woke grifter university in Austin although French does have some criticisms. French discusses Steven Pinker's now-broken connection to University of Austin as if Pinker is the exemplar of sweet reason and "centrism" and so French does not mention
Pinker's connection to Kirkegaard.
A preliminary issue on single meaning and whether the publications were fact or opinion was tried before Julian Knowles J in 2019. He found the single meaning of each publication was not that Mr Kirkegaard had sexually abused children (as Mr Kirkegaard had pleaded). Instead, he agreed with Mr Smith that their meaning was that Mr Kirkegaard was a supporter of, or apologist for, child sexual abuse, which was a defamatory assertion of opinion rather than fact. As a result, he awarded Mr Smith half of his costs on the preliminary issue, some £13,500.
In light of these findings, given Mr Kirkegaard's previous statements on the subject, it was plain that his action would fail, and he discontinued shortly thereafter. The final cost order in Mr Smith's favour came to some £26,000 (and was endorsed with a penal notice).
It's hard to believe that someone who cares about his career so much, as Steven Pinker certainly seems to care, would ally with an organization run by a terrible person like Emil Kirkegaard. I guess because Pinker loves race pseudoscience so much,
he'll align with anybody else pushing it. Kirkegaard and his fellow hereditarians can be seen
chatting about promoting race science on Kirkegaard's chat board, wondering if they could get Pinker to help out by setting up "an academic group of anonymous scholars."
But you'd never find out about that via the New York Times.
