Earlier: Chinese IQ Is Real, But So Is Their Thousand-Year Tradition Of Exam Cheating

The dissident quantitative genetic analyst Emil Kirkegaard posted to his website Just Emil Kirkegaard Things what I think is his most consequential paper yet:

Together with Sebastian Jensen, I have a new paper out:

• Jensen, S., & Kirkegaard, E. O. W. (2023). Honesty, Intelligence, and Race. OpenPsych, 1(1). https://doi.org/10.26775/OP.2023.07.17

[New paper out: Honesty, Intelligence, and Race, July 22, 2023]

OpenPsych is a website established by Kirkegaard and a colleague in 2014 to carry academic-quality papers which the usual professional vehicles refused to carry for political reasons. As Wikipedia sniffily notes, this caused huge tantrums amongst the orthodox gatekeepers.

Kirkegaard and Jensen set out to investigate if there is a relationship between race and honesty.

This is a very difficult thing to measure. But solving measurement problems like this is the heart of this type of social science. Difficulty is no legitimate reason not to try.

Kirkegaard opens:

Research shows that honesty correlates positively with intelligence. Similarly, there are racial differences in honesty, with Europeans being more honest than various other ethnic groups. It is currently unknown to what degree race differences in intelligence can explain the differences in honesty.

(I must say that, when introduced to the obverse of this—that criminality correlated with low intelligence—when I read The Bell Curve during the mid ‘90s Interglacial, I was surprised. All the scammers and muggers threatening me and mine on Manhattan streets seemed alert, quick-witted, and bold. But this is what the numbers seem to show.)

Kirkegaard and Jensen conclude, after careful deliberation:

Most people of all races are pretty honest, but there is a far-left tail of very dishonest people, and this tail is a lot larger for Blacks than for Whites and Hispanics. This is where we expect to find most of the career criminals, serial welfare fraudsters etc.

For experienced VDARE.com readers, of course, this is barely a damp squib, let alone a bombshell.

Here is the bombshell: the chart above the headline of this article, also reproduced below:

A 2019 study had informants pretend to have found a wallet and hand it in to receptionists in hotels to see how many were returned. 

Looking at the national rankings above, we saw that the more intelligent countries are more honest in general, with China being a notable and large negative outlier (presumably related to communism). Similarly, we know from decades of research that criminality correlates negatively with intelligence, so we would also expect that honesty correlates positively with intelligence. Indeed, this is what we find.

Maybe, but this Chinese development is devastating. I cannot believe that Kirkegaard is serious about the effect of Communism. Several countries much higher up the list experienced Communist rule for as long or much longer.

The Chinese are in fact behaving like a totally different species.

China evolved in almost total isolation from the West for thousands of years, never producing a political system more sophisticated than a despotism. It did, however, produce a culture of amoral familism in which honest dealings with outsiders had no part.

Anyone who listens to American businessmen trying to deal in China is swamped by stories of broken promises, shoddy and deficient products, and copyright and industrial intelligence theft. I discussed an assessment of this huge threat recently in Gatestone Says ”Hundreds” Of U.S. Politicians Purchased. How Can Mitch McConnell NOT Be One?

If Kirkegaard has really uncovered such a massive systemic taint in the Chinese, then the whole U.S. relationship with China needs to be carefully reconsidered.

No doubt major research outfits are flooding him with funding offers.

Emil Kirkegaard is a first-class bomb thrower. By this I mean he has a propensity to formulate hypotheses which are highly disruptive to the current PC/Woke Dictatorship.

He has paid a price for this. A classic case of this was related last year for us by Edward Dutton: Independent Scholar Kirkegaard Cancelled: Another Step Into The New Dark Age. An Ethiopian “scholar” Adbel Abdellaoui (has Ethiopia ever produced any scholarship?), who for some reason had been appointed keynote speaker, was able to veto Kirkegaard’s presentation, essentially because he was offended.

Dutton is right about the inevitable consequence of this:

By the 18th century, independent scholars did the most important research and science… the “uncredentialed” independent scientist is rising again.

Subscribing to Emil Kirkegaard’s Substack service would be an excellent way to support this process.

Email Patrick Cleburne.