Steven Arthur Pinker (1954–), a Canadian linguist, psychologist, and notable atheist, has written both academic and popular books on his areas of special interest. In 2003 he became Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University.[1] He has become known for his advocacy of evolutionary psychology and of the computational theory of mind.[2]| RationalWiki
Mistaking the map for the territory is an informal fallacy that occurs when someone confuses the semantics of a term with what it represents. A similar term is "reification", where abstractions are taken to be a real thing.[1] Yet another similar term is the "fallacy of misplaced concreteness", which was coined by Alfred North Whitehead.[2] The name is a metaphorical representation of mistaking words and symbols for things that they could mean, rather than what they do mean or those things th...| RationalWiki
Richard Lynn (1930–2023)[2][3] was a British white supremacist psychologist, eugenicist,[4] conspiracy theorist, and self-described "race realist" who formerly taught at the University of Ulster. A former editor-in-chief of the prominent racist pseudojournal Mankind Quarterly and an interviewee of many fascist and neo-Nazi groups, Lynn had claimed for decades that genetics is responsible for racial inequality and international wealth inequality.| RationalWiki
Nutpicking is the fallacious tactic of picking out and showcasing the nuttiest member(s) of a group as the best representative(s) of that group — hence, "picking the nut".| RationalWiki
Charles Alan Murray (1943–) is a crank American political scientist and eugenics promoter with a long association with the conservative, libertarian think tank the American Enterprise Institute. He is best known for co-authoring The Bell Curve with Richard Herrnstein.[3]| RationalWiki
Steven Ernest Sailer (1958–) is a far-right[2][3] American journalist, blogger and global warming denier who is frequently described as a white supremacist[4] and transphobic.[5] Sailer popularized the phrase "human biodiversity" in the 1990s.[6][7][8] He has an MBA from UCLA with an emphasis on finance and marketing, after which he became a self-described "dilettante".[9] Sailer began his journalism career in the late 1990s, briefly working for the National Review and then for such outlets...| RationalWiki
Climate change, also known as anthropogenic (or human-caused) global warming,[note 2] is the rising average temperature of Earth's atmosphere and oceans and its related effects. Global-warming denialism refers to claims — mostly funded by the fossil-fuel industry passing through libertarian foundations ('charities') to cover their tracks[6][7][8] — that global warming:| RationalWiki
Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence is a paper published by "human biodiversity" proponent Gregory Cochran, anthropology student Jason Hardy and white nationalist Henry Harpending which "elaborates the hypothesis that the unique demography and sociology of Ashkenazim in medieval Europe selected for intelligence."[2] It appears to be an hereditarian attempt to find "scientific" evidence for racist beliefs about race and intelligence. The paper was published in 2006 in the Cambridge Unive...| RationalWiki
A straw man or Aunt Sally (mostly UK) is a logical fallacy or propaganda tactic in which someone misrepresents an opposing argument as a weaker version, sometimes intentionally, and rebuts said version — rather than their opponent's genuine argument. Intentional strawmanning is usually done with a certain goal in mind, including:| RationalWiki
Edward Osborne (E. O.) Wilson (June 10, 1929–December 26, 2021), was an American biologist, zoologist, naturalist, ecologist, and entomologist,[2] known for developing the field of sociobiology, the primary forerunner of evolutionary psychology. Wilson did not himself invent the term "sociobiology" as it had been introduced at least as early as 1940 by the English anthropologist and humorist, Ashley Montagu in his essay "The Socio-biology of Man" (Scientific Monthly, 50:483-490).[3][note 1]...| RationalWiki
Motte and bailey (MAB) is a combination of bait-and-switch and equivocation in which someone switches between a "motte" (an easy-to-defend and often common-sense statement, such as "culture shapes our experiences") and a "bailey" (a hard-to-defend and more controversial statement, such as "cultural knowledge is just as valid as scientific knowledge") in order to defend a viewpoint. Someone will argue the easy-to-defend position (motte) temporarily, to ward off critics, while the less-defensib...| RationalWiki
Newamul "Razib" Khan[1]:16 (1977–) is a Bangladeshi-American writer and an advocate of hereditarianism. Khan has bachelor's degrees in biology and biochemistry.[2] Prior to 2019, Khan was a coauthor on several peer-reviewed publications in animal genomics, primarily for cat genomics.[3]| RationalWiki