Michael Woodley

Michael Anthony Woodley of Menie, Younger (born 16 May 1984) is a British ecologist and intelligence researcher. Woodley has published a book and papers on cryptozoology but has since dropped cryptozoological research. As of 2019, Woodley was a junior fellow with the far-right Unz Foundation.
He received his PhD from Royal Holloway, University of London in 2011, with a dissertation on the life history ecology of Arabidopsis thaliana. Since then, he has focused his research on the evolution of human intelligence and life history traits. From 2015 to 2017, he was scientist in residence at Chemnitz University of Technology.
Research
Intelligence
Woodley is primarily known for his research on secular trends in human intelligence. He first gained widespread attention in 2013, when he authored a study reporting that average had decreased by about 1.16 intelligence quotient (IQ) points per decade, possibly due to dysgenic selection, since the Victorian era. This was based on a meta-analysis of studies measuring simple visual reaction time, starting in the late 19th century.
Woodley authored a 2014 study arguing that the Flynn effect is, in part, a result of people becoming better at using simple rules for identifying solutions to IQ test items, rather than a true increase in . In 2016, he authored a study which found a negative relationship between a population's level of a polygenic score linked to educational attainment and fertility rates. A study he authored in 2017 reported that polygenic scores linked to both educational attainment and are more common among Europeans now than was the case earlier in the Holocene epoch, three to five thousand years ago. In 2018, he joined the editorial board of the journal . Woodley's 2018 book At Our Wits' End, coauthored with Edward Dutton, arguing that there is a decline in "g.h. ".
Cryptozoology
In his 2008 book In the Wake of Bernard Heuvelmans, Woodley proposed that the "many-humped" sea monsters documented by Bernard Heuvelmans might be supersized otters. His eccentric claims were criticized by the ecologist Robert L. France who stated they were one of the "most blatant displays of cryptozoological fancy" and a "ridiculous bit of science fiction".
In 2011 Woodley, along with Cameron McCormick, and Darren Naish argued against William Hagelund's claim of capturing a baby "Cadborosaurus" sea serpent. Hagelund's discovery was challenged by Woodley and his co-authors via comparison of the characteristics recorded by Hagelund with those of known animals. It was concluded that the description of the sea serpent provided by Hagelund closely resembles that of an ordinary pipefish instead of a mystery monster or a reptile.
On 12 July 2011, the Zoological Society of London hosted the presentation "Cryptozoology: science or pseudoscience?". Woodley was a speaker alongside palaeontologist Darren Naish and Charles Paxton, a research fellow at University of St Andrews.
In a 2014 interview with the magazine Maisonneuve Woodley stated that he had dropped cryptozoological research on the basis that "ssentially cryptozoology is not science". Woodley further noted that "here is an irony, an irreducible pluralism, between these objectives of cryptozoology: to obtain some kind of mainstream credibility on the one hand, whilst on the other hand there's this large following who are non-technical in orientation and who don't really want their mysteries to be taken away from them."
Eugenics
Woodley was affiliated with the far-right Unz Foundation. As of November 2019, Woodley described himself as an "Unz Foundation Junior Fellow".<ref name="jackson" />
Books
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