A recent article by Chris Rufo and Hannah Grossman of the Manhattan Institute offers an unflattering profile of Dr. Jennifer Manly, a neuropsychologist and Columbia professor. Manly is an agitator within the pro-Hamas campus movement. Her activism spills into her research, much of it based on “the so-called social determinants of health thesis, which posits that racism, sexism, and homophobia can cause brain disease in ‘Black and Latinx communities.’”

Rufo and Grossman note that critics have described the thesis as “pseudo-science.” Manly and her defenders would surely disagree, pointing to her impressive collection of scholarly publications and citations. However, peer review in medical journals is often just as much a screen for ideology as it is one for rigor. A careful examination of a study that Manly recently co-authored makes for a useful illustration of just how faulty this line of research is, and why it is incumbent upon the NIH to stop funding it.

The study, “’Rest of the folks are tired and weary’: The impact of historical lynchings on biological and cognitive health for older adults racialized as Black,” was published in the journal Social Science & Medicine by ten authors, with Manly’s name appearing last.

As the title suggests, the study examines the effect of lynchings on health outcomes. It claims to find that residing in states that historically had more lynchings of black victims causes black subjects to experience a greater increase in a measure of inflammation and a greater decline in cognitive function. The theory it offers to account for these findings is that experiencing lynchings activates a “stress response in early childhood” that contributes to adverse health outcomes later in life.