Emil O. W. Kirkegaard is a far-right racist Danish pseudoscientist who founded two "hereditarian" pseudojournals in 2014. His journals (including Open Behavioural Genetics) have attracted white nationalists and neo-Nazis to publish in the guise of "racial realism" or "human biodiversity" (HBD). Open Behavioral Genetics is a pseudo-journal like how creationists publish their own pseudo-science because proper science journals/formal peer-review will not publish them. Open Behavioural Genetics referees: Open Behavioral Genetics Reviewer count needed for publication = 3 Davide Piffer - Editor Peter Frost Chuck (John Fuerst) Heitor B.F. Fernandes GMeisenberg (Gerhard Meisenberg) Kenya Kura (prof. Kenya Kura) Meng Hu nooffensebut To begin with this list is not appropriate, since most (or all) on it are not qualified in the subjects of submitted papers e.g. John Fuerst's paper on race is biology. How many on this list are biologists? Professor Kenya Kura for example is an economist. This is like asking an astronomer to referee/review a paper on mammal zoology. Secondly, referees who take part in the peer-review process are also not meant to show bias, otherwise this would mean they are purposely reinforcing the conclusions of the paper - like how creationist pseudo-journals "review" their own papers submitted by creationists. The same thing is going on here - the referees/reviewers with Open Behavioural Genetics are all so called "hereditarians" or "race-realists". A former referee for the journal (Meng Hu) recognised the bias: Another thing-Open Behavioural Genetics does not even pass the formal peer-review process. The idea of "fast open access" peer-review is a complete sham. It means anyone (even a 10 year old) can join a forum, post a comment (as little as one word) and then claim this is counted as peer-review. The only person who published a formal review for Fuerst's paper was Kevin B. MacDonald, a retired psychologist (not a biologist). Furthermore, Mr. MacDonald is a white nationalist, anti-Semite who founded a the Neo-Nazi American Third Position party: John Fuerst who Open Behavioural Genetics publishes (Emil often writes papers with him) is also a white nationalist kook: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/John_Fuerst
John Fuerst. Google scholar. ALL of Fuerst's "science" published papers are in Emil's pseudo-journals, and Emil co-authored several of Fuerst's papers. Actual science journals won't publish his pseudo-science. Also what is funny, is the only references to these papers are from his own papers, published by Emil - the co-author of the same papers! This guy is a notorious charlatan.
Racists have been promoting the research of Davide Piffer recently. I always regarded his work as suspect considering he was published in Mankind Quarterly and appears to be associated with Richard Lynn. I'm still working on emailing geneticists to look at his research. But thanks for exposing the fact that these racists are trying to bypass peer-review with their own journals.
I'd say Piffer is very dodgy when it comes to science, but at least he has a background in science (M.Sc in Evolutionary Anthropology) and has published some papers in mainstream respected ejournals. Instead, Emil Kirkegaard is a university undergraduate who studies linguistics, and John Fuerst apparently has no credentials in science either. This shows in their work. Also both Emil and John Fuerst only publish in their own pseudo-journal (Open Behavioral Genetics) or other fringe journals, nothing respectable. Piffer is the editor of Emil's Open Behavioral Genetics, but he doesn't seem to be much involved on the open access forum or writing papers himself for the journal.
Emil who runs Open Psych admits he fails formal peer review. This is because mainstream science journals won't publish his pseudo-science so he posts some silly conspiracy theory about censorship: So the only formal peer-review he got was by K. MacDonald, the leader of an American Neo-Nazi party who is a well known anti-Semite. Really not biased eh?
