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Cory Clark vs. transgender people

Cory Clark is an American psychologist and anti-transgender activist. Clark is Director of Academic Engagement for anti-trans organization Heterodox Academy.

Background

Cory Jane Clark was born in November of 1986 and grew up in Bath, Ohio. Clark earned a doctorate from University of California, Irvine, then worked as a Postdoctoral Scholar at University at Buffalo and Florida State University. After teaching as an Assistant Professor at Durham University in the United Kingdom, Clark was appointed as a Visiting Scholar in The Wharton School and School of Arts and Sciences at University of Pennsylvania.

Clark is the Director of the Adversarial Collaboration Project.

Clark is in a relationship with Bo Michael Winegard (born January 1980).

Retracted paper

In January 2020, Clark was lead author on a paper published in Psychological Science that claimed “lower rates of religiosity were more strongly associated with higher homicide rates in countries with lower average IQ.” The paper’s coauthors were Bo Winegard, Jordan Beardslee, Roy F. Baumeister, and Azim F. Shariff.

Response among psychologists was overwhelmingly negative. Clark requested a retraction, posting on Twitter: “My co-authors and I have made a decision on our recent Psych Science publication. See our statement below. Though we may discuss this further on other platforms, for reasons many of you will understand, we will not be discussing this on Twitter.” The statement read:

“Over the past weeks, we have heard considerable concern and scrutiny over our recent article on religion, violence, and IQ in Psychological Science. In particular, papers by Karis et al. (2015; pointed out by Fearon and Eisner) and by Dickins et al. (2017; pointed out by Sear) have prompted us to spend much of the last week digging deeper into the research behind our measures—a level of vetting we should have done before submitting the paper. As a result, we no longer have confidence in our findings. Because of imputation for many countries, the homicide data have limitations that call our conclusions into question. The IQ data, however, have much more serious issues. The persistence of these highly questionable data sources in the psychological literature has convinced us that research with certain kinds of flaws should be pulled from the record as its existence steers us further from the truth rather than closer to it. We now believe our paper falls into that category and are retracting it immediately.”

Editor in Chief Patricia J. Bauer issued two apologies, and the previous editor Steve Lindsey also issued an apology.

Podcast

From 2018 to 2022, Clark hosted 32 episodes of a podcast with Bo Winegard called Antisocial Psychologists. Guests and guest hosts included Gregg Caruso, Diego Reinero, Calvin Lai, Benjamin Winegard, Diana Fleischman, and Lee Jussim.

In 2021, Clark published six posts on a Psychology Today blog titled The Antisocial Psychologist.

Anti-trans activism

In 2023, Clark was one of ten founders of anti-trans “journal” Open Inquiry in the Behavioral Sciences.

Clark is a contributor to anti-trans publication Queer Majority.

In 2023, Clark was lead author on a paper titled “Prosocial motives underlie scientific censorship by scientists: A perspective and research agenda.” Many coauthors are key figures in anti-transgender activism.

In 2025, Clark participated in a conference called Censorship in the Sciences: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Clark chaired a presentation by anti-trans activist Jesse Singal titled “How ‘Soft’ Censorship In Media And Academia Helped Make The U.S.A. Youth-Gender-Medicine Outlier.”

References

Krylov, Anna (January 9, 2025). Schedule for Censorship in the Sciences: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. (PDF) https://drive.google.com/file/d/19YCeirdwU-izcY86aaNQ_4hm8znTaMML/view [archive]

Alonso, Johanna (November 29, 2023). Worries of Harm Lead to Scientific Censorship. Inside Higher Ed https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty-issues/books-publishing/2023/11/29/new-paper-says-scientists-censor-research-reduce

Bauer PJ (June 26, 2020). Retraction of “Declines in Religiosity Predict Increases in Violent Crime—but Not Among Countries With Relatively High Average IQ.” Psychological Science https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797620941437

Gelman, Andrew (June 22, 2020). Retraction of racial essentialist article that appeared in Psychological Science. Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2020/06/22/retraction-of-racial-essentialist-article-that-appeared-in-psychological-science/

Gelman, Andrew (May 31, 2020). Association for Psychological Science takes a hard stand against criminal justice reform. Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science

Lindsay, Steve (June 22, 2020). Apology RE Clark et al. https://onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca/lindsaylab/2020/06/26/apology-re-clark-et-al/ original url: https://web.uvic.ca/~dslind/sites/default/files/Lindsay%20Statement%20RE%20Cark%20et%20alia%2022%20June.pdf

Bauer PJ (2020). A Call for Greater Sensitivity in the Wake of a Publication Controversy. Psychological Science https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797620941482 alt url: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0956797620941482 prepress pdf pdf: https://www.psychologicalscience.org/redesign/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Bauer_Editorial_Clark.pdf

Marcus, Adam (J). Authors of article on IQ, religiosity and crime retract it to do “a level of vetting we should have done before submitting.” Retraction Watch https://retractionwatch.com/2020/06/18/authors-of-article-on-iq-religiosity-and-crime-retract-it-to-do-a-level-of-vetting-we-should-have-done-before-submitting/

Selected writing by Clark

Clark, Cory (November 16, 2023). Success! Men now face more hiring discrimination than women. Queer Majority https://www.queermajority.com/essays-all/success-men-now-face-more-hiring-discrimination

Jussim, Lee; Clark, Cory (August 22, 2023). The Journal of Open Inquiry in the Behavioral Sciences. Unsafe Science https://unsafescience.substack.com/p/the-journal-of-open-inquiry-in-the

Clark, Cory (April 28, 2021). The Gender Gap in Censorship Support. The AntiSocial Psychologist https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-antisocial-psychologist/202104/the-gender-gap-in-censorship-support

Clark, Cory (June 17, 2020). “My co-authors and I have made a decision on our recent Psych Science publication.[…]” Twitter / ImHardory https://twitter.com/ImHardcory/status/1273432516729372672 [archive]

Clark CJ, Winegard BM, Beardslee J, Baumeister RF, Shariff AF (2020). RETRACTED: Declines in religiosity predict increases in violent crime—but not among countries with relatively high average IQ. Psychological Science, 31, 170–183. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797619897915

Clark, Cory; Winegard, Bo; Shariff, Azim (November 28, 2019,). Thou shall not kill: An analysis of religion, violence, and IQ. Boston Globe https://www.bostonglobe.com/2019/11/28/opinion/thou-shall-not-kill-an-analysis-religion-violence-iq/

Media

The Dissenter (August 23, 2019). #220 Cory Clark & Bo Winegard: The Biggest Issues in Psychology. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfkvDOZBqZk

Resources

Cory Jane Clark (coryjclark.com)

X/Twitter (x.com)

LinkedIn (linkedin.com)

Instagram (instagram.com)

Psychology Today (psychologytoday.com)

University of Pennsylvania Arts & Sciences (upenn.edu)

YouTube (youtube.com)