This one is from a while back, 2017, but since we are bringing some sunlight to these academic censors, let’s get this one out in the open too. This paper is actually still not published, since we decided to re-do some of the stats. Actually this paper is quite politically correct in the sense that it doesn’t talk at all about causes, just measurement invariance, something that is mainstream to publish in many journals, including this one. As one can read between the lines, the actual editorial scientific complaints are quite nonsensical (e.g. unbalanced sample sizes, intro stats-tier error) and the real rejection reason gets mentioned at the end. This same journal was willing to publish quite similar research when the findings were more politically correct and we had some Arab coauthors (girls outperform boys).
From: Jutta Stahl <em@editorialmanager.com>
Date: Sun, Dec 10, 2017 at 2:37 PM
Subject: Journal of Individual Differences MS-686; Editorial letter
To: Meng HuRef.: MS-686
Testing Spearman’s hypothesis in the case of the Hispanic-White difference using MGCFA – Results from the Woodcock-Johnson R and III standardization data
Journal of Individual DifferencesDear Dr. Hu,
Thank you very much for submitting your manuscript to the Journal of Individual Differences.
After reading the manuscript I decided to reject the manuscript without a further review process for the following reasons:
a) In its present version, the argumentation of the manuscript is very difficult to follow. It starts with the readability of the abstract and goes on across the manuscript. There seems to be too many (implicit)assumptions in the manuscript which were neither mentioned nor clarified. Further, you used too many abbreviations (several are not introduced), which makes it even more difficult to follow (although I am use to reading mathematical papers). The writing style is quite compact and thus, not very well.
b) Most importantly, it is not clear what is the aim of the manuscript (i.e., the research question). Do you want to promote the method by showing its benefits? In its present version, it is not clear whether the paper aimed to test a hypothesis that Hispanic people are less intelligent than “white” people (whatever “white” means) – or that the used intelligence measures are not culture fair? Or any other hidden aim that is not obvious after reading?
c) The sample is not adequate. Although it is very large, the data were assessed from 1976 to 1999. Why you used such ancient sample? For many research questions (see above, these are not clear yet), no implications can be made from the data.
d) Furthermore, the ratio of “white” to Hispanic people is quite bad (~3000 to ~300).
e) The description of the statistics etc. is not very detailed.
Since there are so many important points missing, I decide to reject the manuscript without involving reviewers.
The manuscript needs a fundamental revision, if you decide to re-submit.Finally, please let me explicitly express that I will not be editor of a manuscript aiming to investigate any questions in support of racist considerations. I hope this is not the aim of your work but as mentioned above it is not clear in the present version. I find it fair to explicitly mention this point for your further considerations.
Thank you for giving us the opportunity to consider your work.
Yours sincerely,
Jutta Stahl
Action Editor
Journal of Individual Differences
