Journal Of Controversial Ideas

The JCI logo: yes, it's mostly whitespace

Someone is wrong on The Internet

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The Journal of Controversial Ideas (JCI) can perhaps be uncharitably summarized as "4chan: the academic journal", in light of its use of pseudonyms and its willingness to publish, shall we say, a wide range of positions.^[2] Although, its publications cite valid (or valid-looking) sources more often than 4chan, and its contents are more frequently written by people with some kind of credentials. As the name would suggest, its quirk is that it publishes papers that are anticipated to be controversial. Sometimes these ideas are controversial for very good reasons. Journal of Controversial Ideas has published a paper defending non-offending pedophilia; it has also published a paper claiming bestiality is "Morally Permissible".^[3][4] Recently it has published pseudoscience on the intelligence of refugees in Germany.^[5]

Why?[edit]

The basis for the journal seems to have stemmed from death threats two of its founders received for their publications. One argued in favor of "after-birth abortion"; the other argued for euthanizing severely-ill infants.^[6] According to Vox, actually all three of the journal's founders/editors (Francesca Minerva, Jeff McMahan, and Peter Singer^[7]) are "notorious for defending the morality of infanticide in some circumstances".^[8] One founder cited backlash to pro-colonialism and pro-"transracialism" articles as supporting the need for the journal.^[8]

Content[edit]

According to one of the journal's founders (McMahan), speaking prior to the journal's launch, they would theoretically even publish a pro-eugenics article, as long as it was well-reasoned.^[8][9] It isn't at all clear what this standard even means — many controversial ideas contradict each other, can they all be well-reasoned? Concerning the journal's peer-review process, another founder (Singer) stated: "We send articles submitted to us out for peer review, and if the reviewers consider that the article contains controversial ideas that are defended by argument of a sufficiently high standard to warrant publication, we publish the article."^[10] Is it possible for committee approval to square the circle?

Initially, it might have been assumed that this journal was just going to end up as a de facto vehicle for papers written against "wokeness", or else from a discriminatory viewpoint.^[6] By its third volume, it proved this wrong: yes, it would publish (many) papers such as that, but it would also publish a paper defending bestiality (termed "zoophilia") as "morally defensible".^[11] That paper also stated that bestiality was a sexual orientation "along with e.g. necrophilia or pedophilia".^[11] One of the journal's editors, Peter Singer, simply complimented this article as "thought-provoking."^{[note 1][12]} Singer himself had argued similar positions as far back as 2001: then, in Prospect, he stated that sex with animals was not necessarily cruel and that sex with dogs in particular is "occasionally mutually satisfying" for some people (and, well, some dogs).^[13]

Some other early papers (i.e. within the journal's first three volumes): one argues there is a religious/moral dilemma in Christian anti-abortion positions,^[14] a couple argue that blackface should be acceptable,^[15][16] at least thirteen separate articles have transgender people and/or the definition of man/woman as a major focus,^[17] multiple papers are clearly about the fact that the word "nigger" is taboo (although they're both slightly cagey about this; one of them even bizarrely substitutes it with the word "joker" throughout the paper^{[note 2]}),^[18][19] one compares vaccine mandates to sexual harassment,^[20] one compares anti-racialism to young Earth creationism,^[21][1] and one written by a pedophile argues that non-offending pedophiles should be better-respected (this paper also defines pedophilia as a sexual orientation).^[22]

Well, then, you can't say the journal is necessarily fostering accuracy (for instance, necrophilia is most certainly a paraphilic disorder rather than a sexual orientation^{[note 3]}), but at least its position is somewhat consistent: "if you shock, we will stock". There does seem to be somewhat of a bias in its stock towards discriminatory ideas, but this could be explained if people holding those ideas tended to be the sort to submit papers in the first place. Though, the journal rejected a submitted manuscript in 2022 arguing for misanthropic anti-natalism^[23] — join the club, buddy.^[1]

Rather unhelpfully, the journal's digital object identifiers were listed completely out of appropriate order by volume three, issue two.

Race and intelligence pseudoscience[edit]

The journal has a history of publishing discredited hereditarian and race and intelligence pseudoscience.^[24] Their paper was criticized for critical flaws and lack of scientific rigor:

[The authors] purport to give evidence regarding the determinants of intelligence test scores among refugees who have immigrated to Germany from different countries of origin, and they speculate these intelligence test score differences have negative implications for future economic development in Germany. We describe critical flaws in their measurement, statistical analysis, and interpretation of individual- and country-level differences among the immigrant participants, particularly regarding the authors’ specious reference to “evolutionary ancestry.” We contrast their pseudoscientific approach with valid scientific methods. Human intelligence and human evolution are controversial areas of scientific inquiry that require the highest levels of scientific rigor and editorial discretion, which are absent here.^[5]

Only a month previously, Rindermann had a paper retracted in another journal.^[25] Journal of Controversial Ideas is basically a bottom of the barrel cesspool for pseudoscientists that is operating as a last place resort where they can publish their data as no other journal will publish their nonsense.

See also[edit]

• Balance fallacy
• Manufactroversy
• Teach the controversy

External links[edit]

• The journal itself

Notes[edit]

References[edit]