The Norwegian Hjernevask (Brainwash) series (2010)

The best human biodiversity documentary series definitely deserves a watch still after 12 years

Back in 2010, Norwegian comedian Harald Eia made a rather extraordinary science documentary series called Hjernevask, or Brainwash in English. The series consists of Harald himself talking to various gender studies type pseudoscientists. These predictably make absurd claims about sex differences, heritability in general, and the usual stuff we know from Angela Saini, Cordelia Fine, and so on. Their claims are then contrasted with evidence cited by various human biodiversity proponents, including evolutionary psychologists, behavioral geneticists, and race scientists. The list of interviewees is impressive:

• Richard Lippa, evolutionary psychologist, most known for his study Sex Differences in Personality Traits and Gender-Related Occupational Preferences across 53 Nations: Testing Evolutionary and Social-Environmental Theories.

• Steven Pinker, the famous polymath

• Simon Baron-Cohen, autism and sex difference researcher

• Anne Campbell (died 2017), evolutionary psychologist

• David M. Buss, evolutionary psychologist, famous for writing the most popular textbook of the field

• Robert Plomin, behavioral geneticist

• Charles Murray, political scientist, famous for The Bell Curve and other excellent summaries

• Richard Lynn, grand old man of race science

• Judith Rich Harris (died 2018), evolutionary psychologist, famous for The Nurture Assumption

• Gregory Cochran, physicist and race scientist, known for his Ashkenazi intelligence model, The 10000 year explosion book, his entertaining blog, and also misuse of research money

• Richard Nisbett even makes an appearance, basically just to deny the stuff Charles Murray and Richard Lynn said, and promote cultural differences take

• And more less famous people

This is probably the best documentary ever made on human biodiversity topics. The director has been basically silent since publishing this, so I guess he got a lot of hate from this work, and has determined to put it behind him. Still, others can enjoy it. Here's the complete set of videos with English subtitles.

Embedding videos on Substack does not currently work, click here for the Wordpress version of this post, OR click the links below. You can also download the original non-harcoded subtitles files at Internet Archive.

1 of 7 - The Gender Equality Paradox

https://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-content/uploads/Hjernevask-Brainwash-1-of-7-The-Gender-Equality-Paradox.mp4

2 of 7 - The Parental Effect

https://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-content/uploads/Hjernevask-Brainwash-2-of-7-The-Parental-Effect.mp4

3 of 7 - Gay/Straight

https://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-content/uploads/Hjernevask-Brainwash-3-of-7-Gay-Straight.mp4

4 of 7 - Violence

https://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-content/uploads/Hjernevask-Brainwash-4-of-7-Violence.mp4

5 of 7 - Sex

https://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-content/uploads/Hjernevask-Brainwash-5-of-7-Sex.mp4

6 of 7 - Race

https://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-content/uploads/Hjernevask-Brainwash-6-of-7-Race.mp4

7 of 7 - Nature or Nurture

https://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-content/uploads/Hjernevask-Brainwash-7-of-7-Nature-or-Nurture.mp4