Nathan Cofnas

Nathan Cofnas is an American philosopher and PhD Candidate of Philosophy at Oxford University. He is known for controversies following his critique of Kevin B. MacDonald and his controversial paper titled "Research on group differences in intelligence: A defense of free inquiry".
Controversy following response to MacDonald
In March 2018, Cofnas published a critique of Kevin B. MacDonald's anti-semitic, white supremacist conspiracy theories in the journal Human Nature where he concluded that MacDonald relied "on systematically misrepresented sources and cherry-picked facts". The paper was popular, being downloaded more in a single month than the rest of the journal's articles typically get in a full year. Cofnas' article prompted a response defending MacDonald from Edward Dutton, a theologian and anthropologist affiliated with eugenicist Richard Lynn's Ulster Institute for Social Research (which also published Cofnas's 2012 book). Dutton's response was rejected by Human Nature, and was instead published by Evolutionary Psychological Science. The attention prompted by Cofnas's paper was itself commented on. Anthropologist Robert Boyd of the Arizona State described the topic itself as "totally toxic", Steven Pinker described MacDonald's and Dutton's arguments as "extraordinarily weak", while Aryeh Tuchman of the Anti-Defamation League said that the renewed attention falsely implied that MacDonald's antisemitic tropes have academic legitimacy.
A petition spearheaded by Mark Alfano, Associate Professor of philosophy at Macquarie University, argued that Cofnas’s paper “disingenuously argues that the best explanation of differences in IQ scores between racial and ethnic groups is genetics,” and asked the editors of Philosophical Psychology for an "apology, retraction, or resignation (or some combination of these three)". The controversy has led to the resignation of Philosophical Psychology editor Cees van Leeuwen.
Books
*Reptiles with a Conscience: The Coevolution of Religious and Moral Doctrine, London: Ulster Institute for Social Research 2012 (withdrawn)

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