He was specifically told he was rejected for doing forbidden research. Sure he might have been rejected anyway even if he had been researching something else, but let's not overlook the reasons he was given.
Although I found his paper interesting, he handwaved Confucianism away as the explanation for East Asian personality traits.
No matter the origins of Confucianism, it was the Chinese state religion for almost two thousand years and heavily influenced Korea, Japan, Vietnam etc.
"The secret to my radiation-proof space suit was interspersing microscopic mercury-selenium pellets in the fabric of the suit with quantum properties that match the wavelength of ionizing radiation at a ~"
"Oh, you're using mercury. In fabric. That goes on human skin. Okay, now we really need to see a prototype. And your health trials."
There may be some specific ways in which Lamarckian genetics is correct, but given that trusting too much in it has already resulted in one crippling famine, it's fair to hit claims founded on it with a larger skepticism bat than theories based on Mendelian inheritance.
Or, that's what he told us. Also, I've done my PhD and I don't think I've ever seen a graduate program telling a candidate why they were rejected. It is always the standard "There are more qualified candidates than we can accommodate and we could not accept everyone, I hope you understand."
...which makes me a little bit suspicious about the whole tale.
The leading journal Nature Human Behaviour recently made this practice official in an editorial effectively announcing that it will not publish studies that show the wrong kind of differences between human groups. [..] the National Institutes of Health now withholds access to an important database if it thinks a scientist’s research may wander into forbidden territory - https://www.city-journal.org/article/dont-even-go-there
If you still suspect he's lying, his statements are corroborated [2] by Stuart J. Ritchie (has served as a lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King's College London) [3], who directly cites a rule:
Please note that these summary data should not be used for research into the genetics of intelligence, education, social outcomes such as income, or potentially sensitive behavioral traits such as alcohol or drug addictions.
And an e-mail from NIAGADS:
…the association of genetic data with any of these parameters can be stigmatizing to the individuals or groups of individuals in a particular study. Any type of stigmatization that could be associated with genetic data is contrary to NIH policy.
He links to the page containing the rule [4], but unfortunately the page has since changed ("This dataset is temporarily unavailable"), and archive.org doesn't have an old version. So it could be that two Ph.D.'s working in the field are both lying - as you observe, sources that report things you don't like are untrustworthy.
[1] https://cla.umn.edu/about/directory/profile/leex2293
[2] https://www.sciencefictions.org/p/nih-genetics
https://www.nature.com/nathumbehav/editorial-policies/ethics...
This is quite a long piece of text so I won't quote it - just read it. It does support the premise of that City Journal article in that NHB will not publish research which they deem to trespass on 'forbidden territory' regardless of the scientific validity of such research.
