King’s lecturer sparks racism row

KCL’s feminist intersectional society has condemned a lecturer at King’s College London after he released a series of tweets which were described as “racist and incredibly insulting remarks directed at the Somali community”.

Dr. Adam Perkins, a lecturer in the Neurobiology of Personality took to Twitter last week to share his thoughts on immigration. In one tweet Perkins shares, “Danish data suggesting that welfare benefits taste sweeter to some cultures than others” with a screenshot of a table of an unrelated statistic from danmarksstatistik.dk. The table in fact shows a population breakdown of unemployment.

In another tweet he defends Trump’s Muslim Ban saying it “makes sense in human capital terms: people from the banned nations tend to be over-represented in crime and unemployement [sic] stats”. His tweet includes a screenshot from what appears to be a scientific paper from Open Differential Psychology. Though the screenshot aims at giving the tweet scientific credibility, once again there is no proper referencing.

Since the tweets were published KCL's intersectional feminist society have asked for an apology.

“Academics must understand that they are utterly responsible to [sic] whatever they post on their social media channels just as they are for the words they say in a classroom, and such reckless tweeting, clearly made by this lecturer is a prime example that some may be unaware, or indeed neglect their duties of responsibility when expressing one’s views.

“[We] would appreciate that ALL lecturers understood that whatever their comments, they will be held responsible for their remarks given their position of authority and trust.

“We demand that Dr. Adam Perkins immediately apologises sincerely to the Somali community at King’s for which he has caused immense distress, and that he apologises for his offensive remarks about Somalis”

Since then, they have approached the KCLSU and have written an open letter to the Principle. However perhaps they should be asking for more than just an apology. Searching for Open Differential Psychology, a rudimentary open access journal, brings up a total of 31 papers published since its creation in 2014. Moreover the paper from which the graph has been lifted is published by Emil O. W. Kirkegaard, who also happens to be the journal’s editor and author of almost half of the journal’s papers.

Not only that, but Kirkegaard is a self-proclaimed “Polymath scientist, maybe”. As he discloses in his personal website he boasts “an irrelevant degree that allowed me [sic] to live off a student grant.”

Kirkegaard also has an entry dedicated to his work on RationalWiki, a resource dedicated to critically reviewing pseudoscience, accusing him of conducting racist and paedophilia-apologist pseudoscience.

Besides the questions these recent tweets raise about the scientific credibility of Dr. Perkins, his political agenda, and his suitability to teach young people at one of the country’s leading universities, they also raise concerns on the rest of his social media activity.

His activity is sprinkled with many uncited graphs and figures. But due to their concealment in a flurry of unrelated material ranging from BBC News posts to Nirvana video clips, and posts from reputable scientific sources such as Nature and Springer, it is hard to pick out the pseudoscience that would otherwise damage his scientific authority.

Perkins has over a thousand followers on twitter, with many of his tweets being liked and shared hundreds if not thousands of times. His tweet defending Trump’s Muslim Ban has been shared 1300 times and liked almost 2000 times.

After approaching KCL for comment, a spokesperson told felix that “King’s is aware of recent posts on social media by Dr Adam Perkins which have offended some members of our community. We value and uphold the principle of academic freedom, however we are equally committed to welcoming a diverse and inclusive staff and student population. The Executive Dean of Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience has spoken to Dr Perkins who has apologised wholeheartedly for any offence caused.”

It is unclear where Perkins' apology can be found; certainly not on twitter. As of yet we have not received a reply from Perkins.