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Scholars deride move as censorship, threat to academic discourse
A New Zealand psychology journal recently retracted a paper questioning claims about science being a tool of “white power,” stating that it was “inconsistent” with the publication’s “values,” according to a former journal editor.
Now, the editors of the Journal of the New Zealand College of Clinical Psychologists are facing criticism from scholars across the globe.
Dr. Kumari Valentine, a psychologist and former editor of the journal, raised concerns about the retraction in an article Saturday on the substack Psychology at the Crossroads.
“My concern is not simply about the removal of one article. It is about whether our response to disagreement is engagement or exclusion,” Valentine wrote, later adding, “A profession confident in its values should also be confident in its capacity for open inquiry.”
Valentine said the college sent an email to members last week notifying them of the retraction.
“The reason given for the removal was not research fraud, plagiarism, ethical misconduct, or factual error. Rather, the NZCCP Council determined that retaining the article was inconsistent with the values of the College and could perpetuate harm to Māori,” an indigenous tribe in New Zealand, Valentine wrote.
The article, “He Wero Ano: Don’t Just Tell Me, Show Me How Science and Psychology Are Racist in New Zealand,” no longer appears on the journal website.
Published in 2025, author Arna Mitchell critiqued what she described as “broad,” unsubstantiated claims of systemic racism in “psychology across all levels of the discipline,” including that “science itself is a social construct of white Europeans” and “white power.”
More specifically, the article, a screenshot of which author and evolutionary psychologist Steve Stewart-Williams shared on X, critiques efforts to include Māori “ways of knowing” into psychology training.
Mitchell, a Māori woman herself, disagreed that tribal “ways of knowing should be given equal weight to scientific ways of knowing in the training and practice of psychologists in New Zealand.”
The article received pushback soon after being published. In December, four scholars wrote a response, a copy of which appears at Research Gate, arguing that Mitchell’s definitions of “psychology” and “science” were too “narrow.”
“Her argument was based on the view that Kaupapa Maori psychology consists merely of tales, stories, and spiritual or belief-based interventions that have yet to be justified as ‘science,’” they wrote.
Valentine, a former editor of the journal, said critiques are a normal part of academic discourse, but the retraction is unprecedented.
“Removal of an article is typically because of scientific misconduct or similar issues … Instead, the rationale is that the article was inconsistent with organisational values and could cause harm,” she wrote.
Other scholars, including an American professor of philosophy, also criticized the journal’s editors, accusing them of allowing their political views to override scholarly debate.
Another psychology professor, Dr. Camilo Ortiz at Long Island University slammed the move as censorship.
“You’re not a scientist if you censor data because it conflicts with your ‘organizational values,'” he wrote on X.
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