Nota bene: the article was retracted a whopping 2 days after “serious concerns were raised”, and week after Bazzi’s helpful tweet.

At Springer (which we should remember is a ruthless rent-extraction scam perpetrated on the academy… trust me, I’ve published with them, and it was embarrassingly bad, even though the journal involved was in my estimation good), the journal Society is described as publishing “new ideas and research findings drawn from all the social sciences, and presented in a readable and useful manner. It is aimed at decision makers and others concerned with trends in modern society.” That is, it is carefully _not_ defining itself as a research journal in disciplinary terms, but rather a vessel for communicating research to ‘decision makers’, whoever that might be.

This makes their willingness to publish this piece even more shocking and embarrassing, IMHO.

I think it is possible (though maybe wrong) to argue that certain cultural and social traits were part of why some societies (eg the Dutch) transitioned into the “modern economy” earlier than others. But trying to build this argument into some kind of inherited basis for inequality would be beyond laughable if the consequences weren’t so serious.

Thanks for the African information, too.

I’m curious what you think about retraction in this case. My own instinct is that journal-initiated retraction is completely inappropriate in the social sciences as a remedy for (merely) tendentious, contentious, poorly-reasoned, incomplete, or similarly-deficient work. (To be clear, I take no position on Mead’s work. I haven’t read it, and I don’t plan to.)