Beginning in 2021, a social science team interviewed 41 scholars knowledgeable about psychology as a field about what topics/conclusions were taboo for research. They were able to compile a long list, which they published, including

1. “The tendency to engage in sexually coercive behavior likely evolved because it conferred some evolutionary advantages on men who engaged in such behavior.”

4. “Biological sex is binary for the vast majority of people.”

7. “Men and women have different psychological characteristics because of evolution.”

9. “Transgender identity is sometimes the product of social influence.”

Clark, C. J., (2024). Taboos and Self-Censorship Among U.S. Psychology Professors. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/17456916241252085 The paper is open access.

So these common-sense opinions, stated in print, might get a psychologist cancelled.

Note that anyone who doubts the Darwinian account of evolution could just substitute another origin explanation at 1 and 7 and the claim would still amount to saying “That’s just the way it is.”

The researchers sent the list around to over 4600 psychology faculty at top universities and got a 10% return rate. Here’s where it gets interesting: They found that “Professors strongly disagreed on the truth status of 10 candidate taboo conclusions: For each conclusion, some professors reported 100% certainty in its veracity and others 100% certainty in its falsehood” (Abstract).

Maybe that’s why those are taboo topics. Many colleagues may not even be rational on these subjects. After all, how many of us are 100% confident about more than a very few things.

Almost all professors surveyed reported fear of social sanctions for offering evidence-based beliefs

Significantly, “Professors more confident in the truth of the taboo conclusions reported more self-censorship, a pattern that could bias perceived scientific consensus regarding the inaccuracy of controversial conclusions. Almost all professors worried about social sanctions if they were to express their own empirical beliefs.”

In short, if you are a psychology prof who accepts the conventional classification of humans as primate mammals — and therefore of either male or female biology — you may avoid publishing research that points to that conclusion. You simply must avoid triggering a colleague who is 100% sure that biological classification is an oppressive falsehood.

Who’s backing all this?

Tenured professors reported as much self-censorship and as much fear of consequences as untenured professors, including fear of getting fired. Most professors opposed suppressing scholarship and punishing peers on the basis of moral concerns about research conclusions and reported contempt for peers who petition to retract papers on moral grounds. Younger, more left-leaning, and female faculty were generally more opposed to controversial scholarship.

Clark et al. (2024), Taboos and Self-Censorship

So let’s see: Most professors oppose the Woke bullies and many feel contempt for the Cancel letters. But where is the evidence that the non-Cancel profs are doing anything about it?

In an article at RealClearScience, editor Ross Pomeroy tries to put a good face on the Clark team’s findings,

Despite the lack of consensus on the taboo topics, the psychologists surveyed generally agreed that scholars should be completely free to pursue research questions without fear of institutional punishment and that scientific truth should take precedence over social-equity goals.

Ross Pomeroy, “Ten Taboo Topics Dividing Psychologists,”,” RealClearScience, June 8, 2024

Sounds good but let’s hear some numbers:

A slim majority of professors (52.3%) reported that scholars should be completely free to pursue research questions without fear of institutional punishment for their conclusions. By contrast,1.6% said scholars should not have this freedom, and 46.0% said it’s complicated. Respectively, these values were 60.5%, 2.5%, and 37.0% among men and 39.8%, 0.6%, and 59.6% among women…

A slim majority of professors (56.5%) reported that scientists should prioritize truth when truth and social-equity goals come into conflict. By contrast, 3.1% prioritized social equity over truth, and 40.5% said it’s complicated. Respectively, these values for men were 66.4%, 1.3%, and 32.4%, and for women, 43.0%, 4.8%, and 52.1% (χ2 = 23.37, p < .001).

Clark et al. (2024)., Taboos and Self-Censorship

There is nothing reassuring about these numbers. “It’s complicated” is a roundabout confession of cowardice in the face of mobs threatened by findings they aim to stifle.

If the psychology profs who are concerned about where their discipline is headed ever decide to just push back against the “younger, more left-leaning, and female faculty” who populate the Cancel mob, they might begin by pointing this out: Scholarship that advances science is often controversial. Galileo was (famously) a zero, not a hero, in his day. There were once a book called One Hundred Authors Against Einstein (1931), which sounds pretty impressive — the same way one hundred signatures on a Cancel letter against a prof sounds scary. Until you stop and remember that, as Einstein said at the time, a single author would have been enough — if he could really show that Einstein was wrong.

But the science world that the hard core Cancel profs envision is probably not focused on new achievements anyway. Its focus is protecting a set of core beliefs from challenge by new evidence. They daren’t look more deeply and no one else will be allowed to either. Sooner or later, if psychology is to thrive as a discipline, Cancel Culture mobs must be confronted.

You may also wish to read: The Cancel culture mob comes for the evolutionary biologists. Darwinian evolutionary biologists used to enjoy a sort of privileged status in biology as guardians of a widely held public truth about how human beings came to exist. Science is as dependent on the concept of public truth as the great religions are. Thus, when private truth rapidly gains power, it is just as vulnerable.