Researching Richard Lynn

Many scientists have criticised Lynn's work on racial and national differences in intelligence for lacking scientific rigour, misrepresenting data, and for promoting a racialist political agenda. A number of scholars and intellectuals have said that Lynn is associated with a network of academics and organisations that promote scientific racism. In the late 1970s, Lynn wrote that he found that East Asians have a higher average intelligence quotient (IQ) than Europeans and Europeans have a higher average IQ than sub-Saharan Africans. In 1990, he proposed that the Flynn effect – the gradual increase in IQ scores observed around the world since the 1930s – could possibly be explained by improved nutrition. In two books co-written with Tatu Vanhanen, Lynn and Vanhanen argued that differences in developmental indexes among various nations are partially caused by the average IQ of their citizens. Earl Hunt and Werner Wittmann (2008) questioned the validity of their research methods and the highly inconsistent quality of the available data points that Lynn and Vanhanen used in their analysis. Lynn has also argued that the high fertility rate among individuals of low IQ constitutes a major threat to Western civilisation, as he believes people with low IQ scores will eventually outnumber high-IQ individuals. He has argued in favour of political measures to prevent this, including anti-immigration and eugenics policies, provoking heavy criticism internationally. Lynn's work was among the main sources cited in the book The Bell Curve, and he was one of 52 scientists who signed an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal entitled "Mainstream Science on Intelligence", which endorsed a number of the views presented in the book.

Lynn sits on the editorial board of the journal Mankind Quarterly described by critics as a "cornerstone of the scientific racism establishment". He is also on the board of the Pioneer Fund, which funds Mankind Quarterly and has also been identified as a racist outfit. Two of his recent books are on dysgenics and eugenics. He was on the editorial board of the journal Personality and Individual Differences until 2019.