[1] Rushton's work has been heavily criticized by the scientific community for the questionable quality of its research,[2] with many academics arguing that it was conducted under a racist agenda.
[3] From 2002 until his death, he served as the head of the Pioneer Fund, an organization founded in 1937 to promote eugenics,[4][5] which has been described as racist and white supremacist in nature,[6][7][8] and as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
"[1][13] As of 2021, Rushton has had six research publications retracted for being scientifically flawed, unethical, and not replicable, and for advancing a racist agenda despite contradictory evidence.
Rushton describes "ethnic conflict and rivalry" as "one of the great themes of historical and contemporary society", and suggests that this may have its roots in the evolutionary impact on individuals from groups "giving preferential treatment to genetically similar others".
Hallpike said Rushton's theory failed to take into account that many other traits, ranging from age, sex, social and political group membership, are observably more important in predicting altruistic behavior between non-kin than genetic similarity.
[32] John Hartung criticized Rushton for failing to conduct an adequate control group study and for ignoring contradictory evidence.
[36][non-primary source needed] Rushton spent much of his career arguing that average IQ differences between racial groups are due to genetic causes, a view that was controversial at the time and is now broadly rejected by the scientific consensus.
[39][40] In a 2020 statement, his former department at the University of Western Ontario stated: "Rushton's works linking race and intelligence are based on an incorrect assumption that fuels systemic racism, the notion that racialized groups are concordant with patterns of human ancestry and genetic population structure.
"[1] Furthermore, they stated that Rushton's work on the topic is "characterized by a complete misunderstanding of population genetic measures, including fundamental misconceptions about the nature of heritability.
Other scholars have argued against Rushton's hypothesis on the basis that the concept of race is not supported by genetic evidence about the diversity of human populations, and that his research was based on folk taxonomies.
[46] Psychologist David P. Barash observed that r- and K-selection may have some validity when considering the so-called demographic transition, whereby economic development characteristically leads to reduced family size and other K traits.
"But this is a pan-human phenomenon, a flexible, adaptive response to changed environmental conditions ... Rushton wields r- and K-selection as a Procrustean bed, doing what he can to make the available data fit ... Bad science and virulent racial prejudice drip like pus from nearly every page of this despicable book.
It was organized by Michael H. Hart for the stated purpose of "addressing the need" to defend "America's Judeo-Christian heritage and European identity" from immigrants, Muslims, and African Americans.
[49] Rushton prompted controversy for years, attracting coverage from the press as well as comments and criticism by scientists of his books and journal articles.
[51] In a 1991 work, the Harvard biologist E. O. Wilson (one of the two co-founders of the r/K selection theory which Rushton uses) was quoted as having said about him:[52] I think Phil is an honest and capable researcher.
He concludes that "Perhaps there will ultimately be some serious contribution from the traditional smoke-and-mirrors social science treatment of IQ, but for now Rushton's framework is essentially the only game in town.
[61] Others, such as the criminologist Shaun L. Gabbidon, think that Rushton has developed one of the more controversial biosocial theories related to race and crime; he says that it has been criticized for failing to explain all of the data and for its potential to support racist ideologies.
[63] On 22 June 2020, the Department of Psychology at the University of Western Ontario issued a statement regarding their former faculty member, which read in part:[1] Despite its deeply flawed assumptions and methodologies, Rushton's work and other so-called "race science" (currently under the pseudonym of "race realism") continues to be misused by white supremacists and promoted by eugenic organizations.
Scientists have an obligation to society to speak loudly and actively in opposition of such abuse.Also in 2020, Andrew Winston summarized Rushton's scholarly reception as follows: "Rushton's work was heavily criticized by psychologists, evolutionary biologists, anthropologists, and geneticists for severe scientific inadequacies, fundamental errors, inappropriate conceptualization of race, inappropriate statistical comparisons, misuse of sources, and serious logical errors and flaws.
"[64] In 1989, geneticist and media personality David Suzuki criticized Rushton's racial theories in a live televised debate at the University of Western Ontario.
At the same occasion, Rushton rejected believing in racial superiority, saying "we've got to realize that each of these populations is perfectly, beautifully adapted to their own ancestral environments".
[69] Critical psychologist Thomas Teo argued that Rushton's "substantial success and influence in the discipline" and use of "accepted usage of empirical mainstream methods" pointed to broader problems in academic psychology.
"[71] According to Charles Lane, in 1988, Rushton conducted a survey at the Eaton Centre mall in Toronto, where he paid 50 whites, 50 blacks, and 50 Asians to answer questions about their sexual habits.
Virtually all the stock manipulators, unethical derivatives traders and shady money managers on Wall Street, whose actions have brought the economy to its knees of late — and who it might be worth noting are pretty much all white men — would likely do well on the Stanford-Binet or Wonderlich Industrial Aptitude Test.
Perpetuating catastrophe is not the stated aim of Rushton's book, but current promoters of racist agendas will almost certainly regard it as a welcome weapon to apply for their noxious purposes.
[84] William H. Tucker, a professor of psychology and expert on the history of scientific racism, observed in 2002: Rushton has not only contributed to American Renaissance publications and graced their conferences with his presence but also offered praise and support for the "scholarly" work on racial differences of Henry Garrett, who spent the last two decades of his life opposing the extension of the Constitution to blacks on the basis that the "normal" black resembled a European after frontal lobotomy.
Informed of Garrett's assertion that blacks were not entitled to equality because their "ancestors were ... savages in an African jungle," Rushton dismissed the observation as quoted "selectively from Garrett's writing", finding nothing opprobrious in such sentiments because the leader of the scientific opposition to civil rights had made other statements about black inferiority that were, according to Rushton, "quite objective in tone and backed by standard social science evidence."
[86] In 2005, Lisa Suzuki and Joshua Aronson of New York University wrote an article for Psychology, Public Policy, and Law noting that Rushton ignored evidence that failed to support his position that IQ test score gaps represent a genetic racial hierarchy.
[88] In a paper for the International Journal of Selection and Assessment in 2006, Steven Cronshaw and colleagues wrote that psychologists need to critically examine the science used by Rushton in his "race-realist" research.
[90] Scott McGreal (2012) in Psychology Today criticized the science of Rushton's "Race Differences in Sexual Behavior: Testing an Evolutionary Hypothesis".