Michael A. Woodley of Menie

Michael in 2016

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Tony Abbott Peter King Michael Coombs Taki Ben Stein v - t - e

“”Also, @campusreform readers should check out coauthor Michael A Woodley of Menie, a minor Scottish aristocrat alt-right flake who dabbles in Rushton-esque theories of race and intelligence. His Ph.D., by the way, is on the ecology of a plant, Arabidopsis thaliana. Nice company!

—Gerard Harbison

Michael Anthony Woodley of Menie, Younger aka Technical Heretic (1984–) is an ecologist and cryptozoology pseudoscientist who proposed the 'super-otter' theory of sea serpents as literal giant otters. He holds several other pseudoscientific and fringe-science views including the spiteful mutant hypothesis and belief in paranormal such as spiritual mediumship. He is most controversial for his writings on race and intelligence, eugenics and was formerly (until 2020) associated with the far-right Unz Foundation. He attended the London Conference on Intelligence and formerly sat on the Editorial Board of the journal Intelligence. He has reviewed two papers submitted to OpenPsych.

Despite his wealthy background (YouTube videos seem to show him living in a huge manor house), Woodley begs for donations from his meagre following.

In June 2022, it was revealed that white supremacist Payton S. Gendron, the perpetrator of the 2022 Buffalo shooting is fond of Menie's racist research and cited him in his 180-page terrorist manifesto. Woodley was subsequently suspended from Vrije Universiteit Brussel pending an investigation.

Woodley has received criticism for being an "Unz Foundation Junior Fellow" meaning some of his studies are "partially funded by a right-wing antisemitic organization." However, he would later distance himself from the Unz Foundation and has written he was personally unaware The Unz Review was being used to host Holocaust denial.

In 2019, Woodley appeared as a guest named Technical Heretic on Edward Dutton's The Jolly Heretic YouTube channel. As of 2024, Woodley is still publishing racist pseudoscience and collaborating with individuals from the far-right.

Background

Aristocrat Michael Woodley in his manor house.

Michael Anthony Woodley (who often uses the title "of Menie", a Scottish barony in Balmedie), Yr., was born in Guilford, England on 16 May 1984. His father, of the same name, is the (28th) Feudal Baron of Menie and his mother is named Caroline, née Cuthbertson. Despite the prestigious title, neither Michael Woodley, Jr. nor his father descends from aristocracy or Scottish landed gentry. Woodley's father, Michael, a Surrey-based film and television aviation consultant acquired the title of a baron ("of Menie") in 1995. He made his wealth through running Aviation Filming which has worked on James Bond movies (in film credits and his company website, he instead uses the name "Mike Woodley").

In 2009, Donald Trump purchased the Menie Estate in Baldmedie, adjacent to where Woodley's father owns several acres of land; the Woodleys supported Trump building a golf course, spa, hotel, and holiday homes despite local opposition to building development.

The first Woodley to hold the title of Baron of Menie is Dr. Woodley’s father, who I suspect bought it. His title is recognised by the Lyon Court and is therefore unimpeachable as such, but it is no sign in itself of noble origins and has nothing whatever to do with the title of “baron” within the peerage system of the United Kingdom. Woodley senior seems to have made his money as an “aviation consultant” for the film industry, including one or two of the Bond films, which is amusing given the supposedly Bond-like qualities of his son.

The "man in the Mao suit"

Woodley was known as the "man in the Mao suit" when studying at Columbia University in 2006-2007 for wearing a Chinese tunic suit.

According to a former student who remembers seeing Woodley on Columbia University's campus, he dressed eccentrically and described himself as a "transhumanist".

Credentials

Woodley received a Bsc in Environmental Biology at Columbia University in 2007; in 2011 he completed a Ph.D. in Ecology at the University of London (Royal Holloway). His thesis looked at the life history ecology of the thale cress Arabidopsis thaliana. In 2015, he was a recipient of an Association for Psychological Science Rising Star designation for producing the best-supported model of the Flynn Effect. Since 2018 he has sat on the editorial board of the journal Intelligence. He worked at Technische Universität Chemnitz from 2015 to 2016.

Suspension from Vrije Universiteit Brussel

Woodley was a Lifetime Fellow at Center Leo Apostel, a research center at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Belgium from 2013 until June 2022. He was suspended pending an investigation by the Scientific Integrity Commission after it was discovered his 2010 controversial study on race (see below) had been cited by white supremacist Payton S. Gendron in his terrorist manifesto. Specifically, Gendron on page 17 of his manifesto had relied on a table made by Woodley arguing there is enough genetic diversity between human populations to recognise subspecies (races) when compared to jaguars, leopards, chimpanzees pumas and elk. Gendron, however, posted a simplified form of Woodley's table (citing his study underneath). Woodley's controversial views on race are disputed by most population geneticists.

Pseudoscience

Cryptozoology

Woodley began his career (2008-2012) publishing a book, articles and conference talks at The Centre for Fortean Zoology on cryptozoology:

• Woodley, M. A. (2008). "Classificational typologies and marine cryptids: A contemporary review of Heuvelmans' model" (Abstract). The Centre for Fortean Zoology 9th Annual Weird Weekend.
• Woodley, M. A. (2008). In the Wake of Bernard Heuvelmans: An Introduction to the History and Future of Sea Serpent Classification. Centre for Fortean Zoology Press.
• Woodley, M. A., Naish, D., and Shanahan, H. P. (2008). "How many extant pinniped species remain to be described?". Historical Biology, 20(4), 225-235.
• Woodley, M. A. (2008). "Towards a possible caudata identity for the Mongolian death worm: Introducing the 'plausibility method' for identity theory formation amongst lesser known cryptids" in: The Centre for Fortean Zoology 2008 Yearbook, Jonathan Downes (ed.), 39-47. Centre for Fortean Zoology Press.
• Woodley, M. A. (2009) "A proposed system of taxonomy for cryptozoology" (Abstract). The Centre for Fortean Zoology 10th Annual Weird Weekend.
• Woodley, M. A. (2009). "Human diversity and hominology" in: The Centre for Fortean Zoology 2009 Yearbook, Jonathan Downes (ed.), 39-59. Centre for Fortean Zoology Press.
• Woodley, M. A. (2011). "Introducing aequivotaxa: A new classificatory system for cryptozoology". Kraken: Archives of Cryptozoology. 3: 63-85.
• Woodley, M. A., Naish, D., and McCormick, C. A. (2011). "A baby sea-serpent no more: Reinterpreting Hagelund's juvenile 'Cadborosaur' report". Journal of Scientific Exploration 25(3): 495-512.
• Woodley, M. A., McCormick, C., and Naish, D. (2012). "Response to Bousfield and LeBlond: Shooting Pipefish in a Barrel; or, 'Sauropterygian Mega-Serpents' and Occam's Razor". Journal of Scientific Exploration, 26(1): 143-147.

Drawing of many-humped sea serpent and super-otter by Michael Woodley (2008) in France (2019).

Few of Woodley's cryptozoology writings have been taken serious by scientists with exception of a co-authored sceptical paper. In 2011, Woodley, along with Cameron McCormick, and palaeontologist Darren Naish argued against William Hagelund's claim of capturing a baby sea serpent. Hagelund, a fisherman, in his 1987 memoir claimed to have briefly captured a small sea serpent near De Courcy island in 1968. The unsubstantiated claim (no physical evidence or photos exist) was defended by the oceanographer Paul LeBlond in the 1990s who argued Hagelund had captured a baby Cadborosaurus (often nicknamed "Caddy"). LeBlond thought this cryptid has reptilian traits. Hagelund's claimed discovery was challenged by Woodley and his co-authors via comparison of the physical characteristics recorded by Hagelund with those of 14 known animals. It was concluded that the description of the sea serpent provided by Hagelund in his memoir most closely resembles that of an ordinary pipefish, not a reptile.

'Super-otter' theory

Environmental scientist Robert France has criticised Woodley’s 2008 book on sea serpent classification mainly for its far-fetched 'super-otter' theory:

Woodley's objective is to re-evaluate and modernize Heuvelman's existing categories. Along the way he engages in one of the most blatant displays of cryptozoological fancy in terms of interpreting the ephemerality of sightings of several imagined typologies of sea serpents, not due to sequential faddism and expectation patterns among observers, but in consequence of ecological competition imagined to exist between the two types of 'sea serpents'. After this ridiculous bit of science fiction, Woodley reaches the conclusion that 'It is obvious that Heuvelman's categories are incomplete as they stand, and are therefore not truly representative of the full potential diversity of marine cryptid forms'. Among the changed recommended is to retain the Latin names for both the many-humped sea serpent and super-otter but to switch their identity from archaeocetes (extinct whales or sirenians) to being members of the lutrinae (otters).

In 2022, France criticised Woodley's book again describing it as an example of "embarrassing forays into cryptozoological fantasy". Woodley's (2008) super-otter theory is based on interpreting eyewitness accounts of sea serpents with many humps as literal giant otters whose long tail "undulations propagate giving rise to the many humps witnesses describe." Like Bernard Heuvelmans, Woodley has argued that reports of long-necked sea serpents and merhorses could be explained by long-necked seals. Sharon Hill, author of Doubtful News has negatively reviewed Woodley's book:

Unfortunately, this book is terrible throughout. It is horribly formatted, there are egregious typos and errors, the arguments are illogical, there are unprofessional references to Wikipedia inserted throughout, and where citations are required, there are none. This is a regrettable attempt at cryptozoology where the author pretends to sound sciencey but sounds ridiculous instead. It can look impressive to outsiders but it's painful to read. For example, there are graphed data sets used for conclusions consisting of less than 10 sightings. Don’t ever do this; it’s deceptive and any scientist should know better. The overblown premise – to reclassify sea serpents - is unsupported and uncritical speculation bolstered only by unreliable and sparse data (old eyewitness accounts). I wonder if the author wishes this book would disappear because he has gone on to do more professional work. We all look back on our early stuff with some regrets.

In a 2008 interview with Nick Redfern, Woodley described himself as a "neo-Heuvelmansian" and said the purpose of his book was to improve Bernard Heuvelmans' sea serpent classification.

Dr. Naish who co-authored three papers on cryptozoology with Woodley (including the 2011 sceptical paper on a baby sea serpent) has more recently described Woodley as having "indeed promoted some unusual ideas that cannot be correct, these including that the ‘super otter’ and ‘many-humped’ sea monsters of Heuvelmans (1968) might actually be literal super-sized otters."

Mongolian death worm

Woodley published a paper in The Centre for Fortean Zoology 2008 Yearbook arguing the Mongolian death worm is an unidentified legless salamander species "which breeds in the moister, southerly regions of the Mongolian desert and migrates north." Needless to say, Woodley's speculative idea is not supported by any physical evidence and is not taken serious by scientists.

Distancing himself from cryptozoology

In a 2014 interview with the magazine Maisonneuve, Woodley stated that he had dropped cryptozoological research on the basis that "Essentially cryptozoology is not science". Woodley further noted:

There is an irony, an irreducible pluralism, between these objectives of cryptozoology: to obtain some kind of mainstream credibility on the one hand, whilst on the other hand there's this large following who are non-technical in orientation and who don't really want their mysteries to be taken away from them."

Although the magazine claims "To Woodley, the point [of cryptozoology] was to do good science. He thought that was what cryptozoologists would want, too, but not everyone shared his ambitions", this is disputed by scientists (such as Robert France) who have criticised Woodley's sea serpent classification (including super-otter theory) and idea about the Mongolian death worm as crankery or pseudoscience.

Paranormal

In 2020, Woodley co-authored a crackpot paper in a pseudoscientific journal claiming spiritualist mediums can "retrieve information about deceased persons through unknown means".

Racialism and far-right views

Alt-right connections

Michael Woodley and Stephan Molyneux

In 2016, Woodley appeared on Stefan Molyneux's YouTube channel as a guest to discuss "Why Civilizations Rise and Fall". It is a popular video with the alt-right. For example, it is found promoted on VDARE and Conservative websites.

Woodley posts on the alt-right website The Unz Review with James Thompson who praises his research on race and intelligence; he is quoted by Thompson as arguing "replacement immigration" to Denmark is reducing the national IQ.

White nationalist Kevin MacDonald is a fan of Woodley's controversial writings on race.

In 2010, Woodley published a paper arguing human races are biological as opposed to social constructs - "Is Homo sapiens polytypic? Human taxonomic diversity and its implications" - in the fringe-medical journal, Medical Hypotheses. This journal is most controversial for publishing papers that support HIV/AIDS denialism.

The paper has been criticized in detail on a blog that points out Woodley just repeats discredited pseudoscientific racialist arguments and cherry-picks sources to support his own argument, while ignoring most of the scientific literature that debunks race. Not surprisingly, the only websites to support the conclusions of this paper are white nationalist ones, including the race realist and white nationalist "The Alternative Hypothesis." The paper on Google Scholar has been cited 17 times, but 6 citations are by OpenPsych e.g. John Fuerst, Emil Kirkegaard and Heiner Rindermann.

Eugenics and dysgenics

Pseudoscientific "expert" cosplaying as an academic.

In 2018, Michael A. Woodley with Edward Dutton published At Our Wits' End: Why We're Becoming Less Intelligent and What it Means for the Future that argues human intelligence has gone into rapid decline since the Industrial Revolution. This sort of pseudoscientific work on dysgenics is popular among the alt-right's HBD community; for example, the book is promoted on The Unz Review. Woodley and Dutton partly blame the alleged lowering of IQ onto Third World immigrants and women's rights, e.g. smarter females having no or fewer children to pursue careers when, in their opinion, they should stay at home.

In a 2015 paper, he drew on the ideas of Victorian eugenicist Francis Galton, arguing that "selection favoring lower IQ" was responsible for a fall in g (general intelligence) since the mid 19th century. This was based on an analysis of the use of difficult words in texts from 1850 to 2005 (word difficulty based on the performance of white men in more recent vocabulary tests). He claimed to use a lot of statistical magic to correct for some of the obvious biases, i.e. changing literacy rates (which reached the modern-day peaks of c. 99% around 1900 and therefore won't be significant over much of the period), and wordage and familiarity. But there are many other biases not corrected for, such as the selection of texts (from Google's corpus as used by N-Gram searches) and changes in literary style even within texts intended for the same audience and purpose. Other factors relating to the complexity of texts are not considered (e.g. complexity of ideas, use of abbreviations, allusion, use of foreign languages, references to different domains of knowledge...); performance in vocabulary tests does have a strong correlation with g (general intelligence) so it might be a reasonable measure if you could ensure you were using the same samples across time (which Menie clearly isn't), word difficulty is constant across time (dubious - especially when words are used in vastly different contexts now to the 19th century), and if you had evidence that word use in texts correlates with performance in vocabulary tests (Menie assumes this is obviously true because no writer ever uses a word they're not sure of the meaning of, but he doesn't try to prove it).

Sexism

Woodley co-wrote a paper at the London Conference on Intelligence with Meisenberg that was overtly sexist, arguing: "Neither economic development nor the progress of female emancipation or empowerment have been successful at virilizing female achievement levels"

London Conference on Intelligence

See the main article on this topic: London Conference on Intelligence

2015

The more g-loaded, the more heritable, evolvable, and phenotypically variable: Homology with humans in chimpanzee cognitive abilities

Speaker: Heitor B. F. Fernandes

Co-authors: Michael A. Woodley of Menie, William D. Hopkins

Expanding on a recent study that identified a heritable general intelligence factor (g) among individual chimpanzees from a battery of cognitive tasks, we hypothesized that the more g-loaded cognitive abilities would also be more heritable in addition to presenting greater additive genetic in variance and interindividual phenotypic variability. This pattern was confirmed with multiple analytical approaches, and is comparable to that found in humans, indicating fundamental homology. Finally, tool use presented the highest heritability, the largest amount of additive genetic variance and phenotypic variance, consistent with previous findings indicating that it is associated with high interspecies variance and has evolved rapidly in comparative primate studies.

Relative Frequencies of Ngram-Tracked Historical (AD 1850-2000) Anglophone Usage of Darwin's (1871) Group-Selected "Altruistic Words" Versus Wordsum "Easy Words" and "Hard Words"

Speaker: Aurelio José Figueredo

Co-authors: Heitor B. F. Fernandes, Michael A. Woodley of Menie, Guy Madison

Following predictions originally made by Darwin (1871), Woodley & Figueredo (2013) proposed a multilevel selection model in which “eminence”, being a relatively rare combination of high g and altruism, was selected for in the process of inter-group competition and selected against in the concurrent process of in inter-individual competition. There should be associations at the aggregate level between higher levels of cognitive ability and behavioural dispositions that are “altruistic”. No such relation is evident at the individual level, as reflected by the small correlations between g and K, with the latter indicating a “slower” and generally more prosocial life history strategy. Further, the multilevel selection model implies that any temporal trends over historical time showing aggregate changes in cognitive ability should predict the temporal trajectories of any historical trends manifested in aggregate group-selected altruism. To test these predictions, we used Google Ngram to track the relative frequencies of word-usage from 1850-2000 in the Anglophone literature of a sampling of 10 words used by Darwin (1871) to describe altruistic dispositions as lexical indicators of that tendency. An unconditional growth curve multilevel regression model showed that the use of these words declined significantly over the specified historical period, even when controlling for word age, changing literacy rates, and the cognitive load of each individual word. We then constructed two separate unit-weighted factor scales from the subsets of Wordsum items identified as “hard” ̶ theoretically indicating heritable general mental ability (g.h) ̶ and “easy” ̶ theoretically indicating environmentally-influenced specialized mental abilities (s.e) ̶ that in previous work, were observed to be trending historically in opposite directions since AD 1850, consistent with predictions from the co-occurence model. Unconditional growth curve multilevel regression models also confirmed that these two factor scales collectively increased or decreased significantly over the specified time period exactly as had their individual components. Next, a conditional growth curve multilevel regression model showed that the use of “altruistic” words was significantly disfavoured by higher levels of s.e, which had been increasing over time, but significantly favoured by higher levels of g.h, which had been decreasing over time. The use of “altruistic” words was significantly disfavoured by the item difficulty of each word, and this effect had statistically significant and contrary interactions with s.e and g.h. Even when statistically controlled for these effects, the residual temporal trajectory of the use of “altruistic” words was still significantly negative, indicating that these predictors only account for half of the systematic variance of the observed declines in aggregate altruistic dispositions over time. These findings support the predictions of the multilevel selection model in documenting specific temporal associations between the general and specialized components of human mental ability consistent with multi-level selection.

By their words ye shall know them: Evidence of genetic selection against general intelligence and concurrent environmental enrichment in vocabulary usage since the mid 19th century

Speaker: Gerhard Meisenberg

Co-authors: Michael A. Woodley of Menie, Heitor B. F. Fernandes

It has been theorized that declines in general intelligence (g) due to negative selection and the Flynn effect co-occur, with the effects of the latter being concentrated on lessheritable non-g sources of intelligence variance. Evidence for this comes from the observation that 19th Century populations were more intellectually productive, and also exhibited faster reaction times than modern ones, suggesting higher g. This cooccurrence model is tested via examination of historical changes in the utilization frequencies of words from the highly g-loaded WORDSUM test across 5.9 million texts spanning 1850 to 2005. Consistent with predictions, words with higher difficulties (δ parameters from Item Response Theory) and stronger negative correlations between pass rates and fertility declined in use over time whereas less difficult and less strongly selected words, increased in use over time, consistent with a Flynn effect stemming in part from the vocabulary enriching effects of increases in population literacy. These findings persisted when explicitly controlled for word age, changing literacy rates and temporal autocorrelation. These trends constitute compelling evidence for the co-occurrence model.

Well, color me stupid! Secular declines and a Jensen effect on color acuity

Speaker: Michael A. Woodley of Menie

Co-author: Heitor B. F. Fernandes

Spearman's Other Hypothesis predicts that the common factor variance among sensory discrimination measures is identical to general intelligence. The cooccurrence model predicts that low-complexity physiological intelligence indicators reliably measure g across cohorts, and should therefore decline with time due to genetic selection and mutation accumulation. As strong relations exist between general sensory discrimination and g, it is predicted that such measures should show evidence of secular declines. This is tested using N-weighted temporal regression of square-root Total Error Scores (√TES), obtained from four Western normative samples collected in the 1980's, 90's and 2000's (combined 753) evaluated using the Farnsworth-Munsell 100-Hue color acuity test (g loading65). A significant temporal β value of .66 was found (controlling for national IQ), suggesting a decline in color acuity equating to a reduction in g of -4.5 points per decade. Analysis of the subset of the cohorts aged 20-29 years, in which color acuity is maximized, reveals a larger anti-Flynn effect (.89, 199, -8.7 points per decade). Also consistent with the Other Hypothesis is the finding that 100-Hue acuity-IQ correlations are associated with the Jensen effect. The aggregate vector correlation across two studies is .63 (932.5).

2016

Sex differences in PISA: Some counterintuitive results

Speaker: Gerhard Meisenberg

Co-author: Michael A. Woodley of Menie

Sex differences in school achievement and intelligence are often believed to depend on socioeconomic and cultural factors. Specifically, the expectation is that the extent to which female emancipation has been achieved in countries is reflected either in rising female relative to male achievement, or that the ability profile of females becomes more similar to that of males as females penetrate into previously maledominated social and economic niches. The present study examines these predictions by analyzing the results of the PISA (Program of International Student Assessment) tests of mathematics, science and reading, administered to 15-year-olds in a three-year cycle from 2000 to 2012. The study looked at three outcome measures: 1. Overall performance (math, science and reading averaged) of females relative to males. In the large majority of countries, females outperform males. 2. Gender-typicality of achievement profiles. Typically, males are somewhat better at math (1.5 points), females are far better at reading (5 points on the IQ scale), and sex differences in science are minimal. 3. Score variability assessed as the ♂/♀ variance ratio. Males are more variable than females in the large majority of countries. Of the three outcomes, the female advantage in overall achievement is greatest in the Muslim countries of North Africa and the Middle East as well as the ex-Communist countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, and virtually non-existent in Latin America. Other world regions fall in between. Its relationship to measures of social and economic development is near-zero. Although unrelated to composite measures of female empowerment, the female overperformance tends to be positively related to the endorsement of male dominance, according to the World Values Survey. The gender-typicality of achievement profiles varies little among world regions and is virtually unrelated to development indicators and measures of female empowerment or emancipation. It tends to be slightly lower in countries with profamily attitudes, and slightly greater in countries where people believe that both husband and wife should contribute to family income. The variance ratio is higher (more gender-dimorphic) in economically and socially more “advanced” countries, but does not vary systematically with measures of gender roles and gender-related attitudes. The results show that sex differences in school achievement are quite stable across countries. Neither economic development nor the progress of female emancipation or empowerment have been successful at virilizing female achievement levels or achievement profiles.

Total fertility rates, Big G and the cognitive metagene: A cross-country moderation analysis

Speaker: Michael A. Woodley of Menie

Co-authors: Davide Piffer & Mateo A. Peñaherrera

Between countries, total fertility rate (TFR) and cognitive ability are negatively correlated, which suggests that the world’s IQ should be declining. Also, the population-level frequencies of several SNPs have been found to predict IQ between countries. Could latent variables among measures of ability and the SNPs moderate the association of these with TFR? Using a Big G factor constructed from five measures of cognitive ability, a large-magnitude Jensen effect is found on the TFRcognitive ability relationship. Using frequency data on seven SNPs, it is found that the strength of the loading of the common factor among the SNPs is a positive and large magnitude predictor of the magnitude of the TFR-SNP frequency relationship. These findings indicate polygenic selection against G. Finally, when controlled for both Human Development Index and national IQ, metagene frequency remained a modest magnitude and significant predictor of TFR in multiple-regression. This indicates that polygenic selection operates directly on the genetic variance associated with cognitive ability. Based on these results, it is estimated that differential fertility between countries should be reducing heritable G globally by .253 points per decade.

The Co-Occurrence Nexus Hypothesis

Speaker: A.J. Figueredo

Co-authors: Michael A. Woodley of Menie, Heitor B. F Fernandes, Mateo Peñaherrera Aguirre, Candace Jasmine Black

A co-selected suite of traits should be identifiable as a “Co-Occurrence Syndrome” or “Nexus” of temporally-covarying traits whose co-occurrence had previously been systematically favored by the predominance of group selection throughout the “Little Ice Age” (ca. AD 1350-1850), but have been systematically disfavored by the predominance of individual selection during the past 200 years of “Global Warming”. Fifteen hypothesized Nexus indicators (ranging from AD 1810-2010) were each individually standardized then entered as parallel measures into a Multi-Level Model (MLM), using SAS PROC MIXED, with unstructured (UN) residual covariances, random intercepts, and restricted maximum likelihood (REML) estimation. Three Level 2 Chronometric SubNexus Clusters, Somatic Modifications (s.m), Specialized Abilities – Environmental (s.e), and General Intelligence – Heritable (g.h), were used as a grouping factor for Level 1 Chronometric SubCluster Indicators (s.m: Male Fluctuating Asymmetry, Sinistrality prevalence, BMI, Height, and Brain Weight; s.e: GDP Per Capita, Concretization in Language Use, Forwards Digit Span, Psycholinguistic Easy Word Usage, and WORDSUM Easy Word Usage; g.h: Altruism Word Usage, Male SRT, Backwards Digit Span, WORDSUM Hard Word Usage, and Macro-Innovation Rate Per Capita). Nested model comparisons were performed between an three alternative MLM specifications: (1) an unconditional Nexus model, estimating a single intercept and a single logarithmic slope for all SubNexus Clusters and Indicators over time, as well as the same intercepts and logarithmic slopes for all SubCluster Indicators nested within each SubNexus Cluster; (2) a somewhat less restricted model estimating a separate intercept and a separate logarithmic slope for each SubNexus Cluster over time, but the same intercept and logarithmic slopes for all SubCluster Indicators nested within each SubNexus Cluster; and (3) an even less restricted models instead estimating a separate intercept and a separate logarithmic slope for each SubCluster Indicator over time within each SubNexus Cluster. The differences between hierarchically nested models were statistically significant due to the aggregate sample size, but the differences in squared multiple correlations were not very large in magnitude, indicating that most of the cross-temporal covariation was shared in common among the SubNexus Clusters (64.5%) in comparison with the proportions that were specific to each SubNexus Cluster (1.8%) and those that were specific to each SubCluster Indicator (5.9%). These patterns of cross-temporal covariation generally support the hierarchicallystructured Nexus Model of the “Co-Occurrence Syndrome” and suggest that selection may be acting jointly upon these observed historical trends in the theoretically expected directions.

"The truth about the London Conference on Intelligence!"

Dutton deletes comments such as this under the video that criticise Woodley's erroneous claims.

Woodley posted a video on Dutton's Youtube channel "The truth about the London Conference on Intelligence!" falsely claiming the LCI conferences were neither secretive, eugenics-based, nor attended by white supremacists. A rebuttal:

• While Woodley is correct that a very low percentage of talks at the LCI were about eugenics, virtually everyone who attended (even Toby Young, who wasn't a speaker) are known proponents of eugenics; at least all individuals who attended the LCI based on the 2015 and 2016 talk abstracts (including its organiser) are pro-eugenics. In other words, there was little to no media misrepresentation: the media knew two dozen or more eugenicists were meeting in a room and so some newspapers decided to describe the LCI gatherings as a "eugenics conference."
• The LCI was clearly secretive, i.e the university at which it took place was not informed in advance about the speakers and content of the conference(s); this is highly unusual. Had the university been shown in advance a list of talk abstracts and speaker list, they almost certainly wouldn't have given permission. So the organisers of the LCI were very deceptive and breached the universities room bookings process.
• A large portion of speakers at LCI either have published in Mankind Quarterly and/or are associated with the latter and sit on its editorial board; this was calculated to be 80% by the London Student. So this is where the media got their source to describe the conferences as "white supremacist." This can hardly be criticised since the MQ was founded by segregationists/anti-civil rights activists back in the 1960s and has always been overtly racist, with an ultra-racialist and hereditarianism POV - the latter especially increased under Roger Pearson as editor-in-chief (during The Bell Curve wars), Meisenberg and now Dutton, to the extent mainstream scientists dismiss MQ as a racist pseudojournal.
• There's also the fact that most, if not all, of the speakers at LCI are known to hold far-right political views.

Alleged recantation of racialist, hereditarian and eugenics views

In 2023, Woodley co-authored a paper saying his views on race had changed and he was now sceptical of hereditarianism about race and intelligence. Woodley also denied being a eugenicist.

Woodley's claim to have renounced his eugenicist and hereditarian views has been questioned by academics. The scholar John Jackson in a blog post points out that Woodley's denial of being a eugenicist is contradicted by statements he has made as recently as 2021. Woodley also defended eugenics in videos with Edward Dutton, however, these have since been deleted. Although Woodley has distanced himself from the far-right Unz Foundation, Jackson points out that Woodley continues to collaborate and associate with racist individuals as well as rely on their research ("cite as authorities Nazi sympathizers and other far-right activists.") Jackson points out that in 2017, Woodley had published a paper in a journal founded by and edited by the neo-Nazi and eugenicist Roger Pearson.

International Society for Intelligence Research 2023 Conference

Woodley participated in the 2023 conference of the International Society for Intelligence Research, giving a talk on "General Congnitive Ability is the major source of ability covariance across mammals, birds, and fish: Traditional and phylogenetic meta-analysis of 82 studies on 36 taxa."

Matthew Archer of the far-right magazine Aporia and white supremacist Edward Dutton attended ISIR 2023.

2024 activity

Despite claims to the contrary, Woodley has not given up his racist views and still associates with far-right extremists. As of 2024, he is still publishing papers defending hereditarianism. With Noah Carl he recently wrote a paper arguing there is a taboo against research on race and intelligence.^{Do You Believe That?} An article in The Guardian also documents his continued ties to the far-right.

See also

• John Fuerst
• Emily Willoughby, Board Member of International Society for Intelligence Research
• Davide Piffer
• Michael Coombs
• Robert Gayre, Baron of Lochore, chief of clan Gayre and Nigg, another racialist pseudoscientist with Scottish titles
• International Society for Intelligence Research