I can't find a publicly available copy of the Nature Human Behavior editorial. If you can share it I'd be happy to read it and form an opinion on it. I personally won't take City Journal's opinions at face value.
I can't find it either. What I did find was that that article may have been published by City Journal, but was written by James Lee, of the University of Minnesota, with a Ph.D. in psychology from Harvard [1].
If you still suspect he's lying, his statements are corroborated [2] by Stuart J. Ritchie (has served as a lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King's College London) [3], who directly cites a rule:
Please note that these summary data should not be used for research into the genetics of intelligence, education, social outcomes such as income, or potentially sensitive behavioral traits such as alcohol or drug addictions.
And an e-mail from NIAGADS:
…the association of genetic data with any of these parameters can be stigmatizing to the individuals or groups of individuals in a particular study. Any type of stigmatization that could be associated with genetic data is contrary to NIH policy.
He links to the page containing the rule [4], but unfortunately the page has since changed ("This dataset is temporarily unavailable"), and archive.org doesn't have an old version. So it could be that two Ph.D.'s working in the field are both lying - as you observe, sources that report things you don't like are untrustworthy.
I found their policy after a very quick search on the 'net so I'll share it with those who for whatever reason can not or do not want to perform this search:
This is quite a long piece of text so I won't quote it - just read it. It does support the premise of that City Journal article in that NHB will not publish research which they deem to trespass on 'forbidden territory' regardless of the scientific validity of such research.
I found that page, but it is labelled as editorial guidelines and not an editorial article, which is what I was expecting to find from the previous description. From my reading then, what is being labelled here as "forbidden territory" is this:
"Non-maleficence and beneficence are two fundamental principles in research ethics requiring the maximization of benefits and minimization of potential harms. These principles form a core part of general frameworks for the ethical conduct of research across the sciences and humanities (for example, The World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki; The Belmont Report; the International Ethical Guidelines for Health-related Research Involving Humans; Ethics in Social Science and Humanities)."
Which I see as more along the lines of the Hippocratic Oath rather than totalitarian thought crime. If this self-described neophyte didn't understand the risks for harm created by his research, that's his fault and not that of the PhD programs.
> it is labelled as editorial guidelines and not an editorial article
Editorial Policies
As part of the Nature Portfolio, the Nature Research journals follow common policies as detailed in the Nature Portfolio journals’ authors and referees policy pages, and we request that our authors and referees abide by all of them. Nature Portfolio journals take publication conduct seriously. We reserve the right to decline publication of a paper even after it has been accepted if it becomes apparent that there are serious problems with the scientific content or violations of our publishing policies. Particularly, we want to draw your attention to the following policies and guidelines.
I'd say they're very clear on what these are and what the consequences of violating these guidelines are. They assume their readers and potential authors understand what they mean as well. I think they are correct in their assumption that those who are interested in this publication understand both the meaning as well as the reach of these guidelines.
It is also clear from these guidelines that the City Journal article as well as the self-described neophyte (your words) were right when they said research into these areas is shunned no matter the validity of such research, that as far as this publication is concerned this is 'forbidden territory'.
> ...didn't understand the risks for harm created by his research, that's his fault and not that of the PhD programs.
No, that is an incorrect characterisation of the circumstances. There is no harm created by this research per se, what harm there might be is in the eyes of the editors of NHB in that this research enters a territory that they deem to be off-limits because it might produce outcomes that undermine the basic tenets of their world view. In reality this research and any outcomes it produces can be used both for good as well as for bad purposes just like nearly all research. The editors at NHB would rather not have to contend with research which undermines their basic tenets of all humans being identical - the 'tabula rasa' or '0% nature, 100% nurture' - so they want to keep it out of their publication (which in itself is their right although it undermines their credibility) as well as out of academic discourse (which is where they are wrong).
I'm sorry, I don't see anywhere in either the editorial or the guidelines where they push nature completely out the window in favor of 100% nurture.
They do appear to be putting nature-based explanations under heightened scrutiny. Probably because attempts at those explanations in the past have proven not only wrong, but served as the foundation for extremely anti-human policy.
And if they don't want to be complicit in that, good on them. This isn't the only scientific field where that's the case. Go try to find the precise calculations necessary to get all of the chemistry and physics right to build a hydrogen bomb with a city-busting yield. Not a dirty bomb or enough tactical nuke to blow up a block or three, something more powerful than what was dropped in World War II. Let us know how that goes. Hint: What you will discover is that some constants used in the scientific community and published in widely circulated documents don't quite add up precisely right... And have different values if you can find documents from the United States and from the old Soviet Union.
And also, if you dig deeply enough in the States, eventually some very nice folks from the Department of Energy will show up and express some curiosity and excitement about your project, wondering how they can help. Because, the thing is, almost nobody is doing the kind of physics that requires those numbers to have extremely specific values, and the kind of equipment you have to buy or build to really investigate those numbers in detail is rare and unusual. Rare and unusual enough to show up on some very inexpensive tracking of who is purchasing it. So they just want to make sure that they help you get exactly. The. Right. Numbers.
