Mankind Quarterly - Criticism

Criticism

Many of those who constitute the publication's contributors, Board of Directors, and publishers are connected to the academic hereditarian tradition. The journal has been criticized by some as being political and strongly right-leaning. The publisher counters that much of Anthropology is 'politicised' in the opposite way and that those who count amongst the most vocal critics of the journal often identify with the Radical tradition in Anthropology.

During the "Bell Curve wars" of the 1990s, the journal received attention when opponents of The Bell Curve publicized the fact that some of the works cited by Bell Curve authors Herrnstein and Murray had first been published in Mankind Quarterly. In the New York Review of Books, Charles Lane referred to The Bell Curve's "tainted sources," noting that seventeen researchers cited in the book's bibliography had contributed articles to, and ten of these seventeen had also been editors of, Mankind Quarterly, "a notorious journal of 'racial history' founded, and funded, by men who believe in the genetic superiority of the white race." The journal stands by its tradition of publishing hereditarian perspective articles to this day, stating that "...this science has stood the test of time, and MQ is still prepared to publish controversial findings and theories". Pearson received over a million dollars in grants from the Pioneer Fund in the eighties and the nineties.