Hans Eysenck: controversialist or worse?

Hans Eysenck, who died in 1997, is described in the Dictionary of National Biography as having an “international prominence and impact … unmatched among post-Second World War British psychologists.”1 He’s usually called “controversial” in that he denied the link between smoking and cancer, had strong links with the tobacco industry, thought race was related to intelligence, opposed comprehensive schools, nursed an intense hostility towards psychoanalysis, supported astrology and parapsychology, and declared the entire discipline of economics as worthless. Now David F Marks, the editor of the Journal of Health Psychology, has called for a formal investigation of some of Eysenck’s work and the retraction or correction of 61 publications.2

The Journal of Health Psychology also published a paper by the psychiatrist Anthony J Pelosi describing how serious criticisms of Eysenck’s work date back …