Retraction of Clark et al. (2020) and Editorial by Editor-in-Chief Patricia Bauer

In June 2020, Cory J. Clark, Bo M. Winegard, Jordan Beardslee, Roy F. Baumeister, and Azim F. Shariff formally requested to retract their January 2020 Psychological Science article, “Declines in Religiosity Predict Increases in Violent Crime—but Not Among Countries With Relatively High Average IQ,” after readers raised concerns about the contents of the article and underlying data. Editor-in-Chief Patricia Bauer honored this request and a Retraction Notice has been issued by the journal.

In addition to issuing the Retraction Notice, Bauer has also authored an editorial, “A Call for Greater Sensitivity in the Wake of a Publication Controversy,” which describes the process of review of this article and outlines ways that Psychological Science will make the editorial process more sensitive to the broader impacts of the research the journal publishes in the future.