Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Woke? An Admittedly Slapdash Comment on Clark et al (2024)

A friend sent me a copy of Clark et al (2024, 10.1177/17456916241252085) saying they thought it was interesting. One of the authors' central conclusions is that psychology professors in the US who believe in controversial statements (e.g., that racial differences in IQ are driven by genetic factors) are more likely to "self-censor" those beliefs. I took one look at the article and thought, "That can't be right. It can't be that simple." And over the next couple weeks, on and off, I reanalyzed their data. This comment is the result of those reanalyses. In short, a straightforward positive relationship between belief in controversial ideas and self-censorship is not actually supported by their data. The story is more complicated and is incompatible with the idea of pervasive and systematic bias against "taboo" discussions in psychology.