A Call for Greater Sensitivity in the Wake of a Publication Controversy

Issue 2 of Volume 31 of Psychological Science (2020) included the article “Declines in Religiosity Predict Increases in Violent Crime—but Not Among Countries With Relatively High Average IQ,” authored by Cory J. Clark, Bo M. Winegard, Jordan Beardslee, Roy F. Baumeister, and Azim F. Shariff (pp. 170–183). The abstract of the article summed up its message: “lower rates of religiosity were more strongly associated with higher homicide rates in countries with lower average IQ. These findings raise questions about how secularization might differentially affect groups of different mean cognitive ability” (p. 170). The authors’ conclusion was based on analysis of relations among national levels of religiosity, rates of violence, and IQ. In discussing their findings and their implications, the authors made a number of statements that have been interpreted as politically charged and that some members of the academic community interpreted as racist. Other members of the community questioned not only the claimed implications but also the empirical foundation on which they were based. Still others questioned how the manuscript came to be published in Psychological Science.

Following a great deal of public, and no doubt private, debate, the authors of the article requested that it be retracted. As Editor in Chief of Psychological Science, I honored the authors’ request and have formally retracted the article (https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797620941437). Under most circumstances, formal retraction would bring the episode to a close. But we are living under anything but normal circumstances. We are living under high global anxiety associated with a pandemic that has infected 8.5 million people and caused the death of almost half a million people worldwide (The Wall Street Journal, 2020). Across the globe, there is enormous political strife. There are economic downturns that bring the threat of recession and even depression, and with them, rising inequality. And there is a constant current of racial and ethnic conflict that in the best of times is just under the surface and in times of stress, crests with intensity. This is the context in which Psychological Science published an article that concluded that “secularization might differentially affect groups of different mean cognitive ability.”

My purpose with this editorial is to describe the process of review of this article in Psychological Science and to reflect on our editorial responsibility when we evaluate any work, but especially work that has broad societal implications, and on whether we met our responsibility in the case of this now-retracted article. I also reflect on ways that we can make the editorial process more sensitive to the broader impacts of the research we consider for publication in Psychological Science without introducing undue wariness about publishing work on important topics. In considering my comments, it is important that readers keep in mind that the Association for Psychological Science (APS) is committed to academic freedom and does not interfere with the editorial handling of or express opinions about the scientific papers it publishes and that the statements of any author published in any APS journal are not necessarily the views of APS.

The now-retracted article underwent a comprehensive review process. The Action Editor (Jamin Halberstadt) recruited four scholars with relevant expertise to review the submission; one of the reviewers was a noted statistical expert. Another one of the reviewers had been recommended by the submitting authors. Permitting recommendations (as well as oppositions) is standard operating procedure at the journal. All four scholars provided thoughtful, detailed, and generally positive reviews of the submission. On the basis of these reviews and his own independent evaluation of the manuscript, the Action Editor invited a revision. The authors responded to the comments, critiques, and suggestions of the reviewers and made a number of substantial revisions to the manuscript. On receipt of the first revision, the Action Editor recruited the same four reviewers, who once again provided substantive reviews and recommendations for further improvement. The authors then undertook another round of substantial revision of the manuscript and resubmitted it. The submission then underwent a third round of revision in response to comments and suggestions from the Action Editor and then Editor in Chief, Steve Lindsay. In short, the manuscript received a thorough review from two members of the Psychological Science editorial team and four independent reviewers. I conducted an after-the-fact review of the process and am wholly satisfied that it conformed to the policies and procedures established for review of submissions to the journal.

In the public discourse that surrounded the now-retracted publication of Clark et al. (2020), some members of the academic community highlighted weaknesses in the empirical foundation on which the authors’ conclusions were based. The concerns were amplified by the potential for the conclusions to imply racial differences in IQ that may contribute to differences in the relation between religiosity and moral behavior, as indexed by violence. There were three primary measures in the study, all at the national level: religiosity, violence, and IQ. I am not aware of issues with the country-level measure of religiosity. In the course of review, concerns were raised regarding use of country-level homicide rates as the proxy for moral and immoral behavior. Concerns were also raised about the measures of national IQ used in the research; the measures tend to trend lower in non-Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (non-WEIRD) countries. Ultimately, it was these concerns that led Clark et al. to request that their article be retracted. Yet throughout the process of review and response to review (and in the now-retracted article itself), the authors defended the measures.

Does my finding that the review process for this now-retracted article conformed to the policies and procedures established for review in the journal, and that the authors defended the measures on which they relied, mean that the process of review was without fault? No, that is not what I am saying. As social scientists, we have a responsibility to be sensitive to the political, social, and cultural issues raised by our work. We have a responsibility to clearly distinguish between the measures we use and the theoretical constructs those measures are intended to assess. To paraphrase Steve Lindsay, we have a responsibility to be appropriately modest in asserting our claims, clear in articulating the limits on the generalizability of our findings, and circumspect in our conclusions and their possible implications (S. Lindsay, personal communication, June 15, 2020). We must be especially sensitive when the topics with which we are dealing are associated with a history of injustice and when the message of our work could be inflammatory or incendiary.

In the case of the now-retracted article, some readers may debate whether the authors themselves were sufficiently sensitive to these issues. It is not my place to voice a perspective on that concern. It is my place to take a stand on whether in our handling of the manuscript, Psychological Science was sufficiently sensitive. I have concluded that we were not. We failed to recognize that the message of this article could be interpreted to have racial overtones and thus could be highly controversial. We therefore failed to act to mitigate the potential harm to which the message could contribute. We failed to provide a more direct, deliberate, and explicit alternative perspective on the data and the conclusions of the article. We should not and will not shy away from publishing articles on sensitive political, social, and cultural issues. But what we must and will do is exercise greater care in our handling of all submissions, including those on sensitive topics.

I am taking several affirmative steps to bring greater sensitivity to our editorial process. Going forward, I am instituting a new policy for Psychological Science. In the case of potentially controversial articles such as the now-retracted article by Clark and colleagues, we will arrange for an invited “Further Reflections” article (or articles) that will be published along with the target article. Authors of “Further Reflections” articles will endeavor to place potentially controversial work in broader context. They might highlight strengths and limitations in the measurement of key constructs in the work, evaluate the analytic approach, provide complementary and potentially challenging alternative interpretations, and so forth. The intention is to explicitly recognize that on many topics with which we deal in psychological science, there are concerns apart from the reliability and robustness of our findings—we need to do a better job of evaluating the validity of our work and of anticipating its implications beyond our own laboratories.

We cannot know whether the approach of copublication of a “Further Reflections” article would have positively impacted the discourse surrounding Clark and colleagues’ article. What is clear, though, is that throughout the editorial process, we might have made different decisions and taken more constructive action had we been better informed about the issues. So that we might be better educated in the future, I have invited two “Data Brief” articles on topics central to the now-retracted article, namely, homicide rates as a proxy for violence (which in turn was used as a proxy for morality) and national IQ measures. I have asked the authors of these articles to place these types of measures in broader context, to discuss their utility and their limitations, and to evaluate the integrity of cross-national comparisons more broadly. I am hopeful that through these articles, the academic community will become better educated and thus more sensitive.

Going forward, the editorial team of Psychological Science will be devoting greater effort to evaluating the validity as well as the reliability and robustness of the measures used in the research we consider for publication, regardless of the topic. And because words matter, we also will be paying closer attention that in the articles we select for publication, there is a clear distinction between measures and theoretical constructs, that claims do not outreach data, that limits on generalizability are recognized, and that conclusions and their possible implications are conveyed in a socially sensitive and scientifically responsible manner. These actions will make both our journal and our science more socially responsible.

I close with an apology to the field and the broader society for any harm to which we contributed by publishing research without sufficient sensitivity. In the present case, I vigorously defend the editorial process to which the article in question was subjected. I also reaffirm our commitment to publishing the highest quality science we can and to not refraining from publishing articles on sensitive political, social, and cultural issues. I further commit to acting in better accord with our obligation to consider the societal impact of the work that we publish.