Thanks for writing this Jim. I dared to defend you and that put me on his list. And boy did he come after me. He contacted HR at my university to say that I verbally attacked him on Twitter and should be fired for physically threatening an "old man." When they asked for proof, his screen shots showed nothing of the sort. They contacted me to tell me about it and to avoid him as he is costing the university money to investigate his nonsense.
He really, really despised well-being science and then tried to peddle self-published books on the topic.
My first interaction with him at dinner in New Orleans with Bonanno, McNally, Frueh, and a few others was a delight. He had such a great mind. As you said - what a waste of great critical thinking to aim it toward harming people than producing good work.
Right? And you probably know how he went after Eiko Fried. I really did want to emphasize that he changed my way of thinking on many fronts. He was *important,* but taught too many of the wrong lessons.
Eiko and I traded war stories. Here's a lesson: don't be the guy or gal the media goes to for stories to be the person who will always say on cue that someone's research sucks.
Thanks for this piece, Jim. I, too, have been one of Coyne's targets. Just in case anyone might be interested, I'll share my story, noting for the record that I previously had had a cordial relationship with Jim for any number of years and greatly appreciated his incisive mind. Coyne and I were both members of the Society for the Science of Clinical Psychology (SSCP) and on its listserv, a site of vigorous debate. Not surprisingly, Coyne took the debate to a new level, such that he was clearly in violation of the listserv's posting policies. However, the Society had no formal means to do anything about such behavior other than remind people of the policy to which Coyne, again not surprisingly, did not take kindly. So, when I happened to be elected President, I decided to take action and proposed a process for removing recurrent violators. After much spirited debate on the listserv about where to draw the line between freedom of speech and unacceptable behavior, through which my initial proposal was considerably revised, tightened up, and greatly improved, by adding multiple chances for people to improve their behavior, and a rather legalistic process for ultimately removing a member from the listserv, the membership voted on implementing it, and it passed by a wide margin. Then came the process.... I've already gone on too long, so I'll spare everyone the details, but I carefully documented every step along the way, through which I was repeatedly attacked and vilified by Coyne, yet again unsurprisingly. The document ultimately came to 27 pages and Coyne was removed from the listserv, after which he used multiple opportunities to continue to excoriate me for his removal. Fast forward a decade or so, and Coyne asked to be reinstated to the SSCP listserv. Fortunately, there was enough institutional memory that the then-SSCP Board contacted me about what had occurred previously and I'll just say that I was really glad to have compiled and saved that document.
I remember this happening, though I think I was finishing up graduate school at the time. You were right to push him out. I, among others, had stopped interacting with SSCPnet because of him. And it isn’t like the listserv was all peace and love all the time, even without him. Sorry in any case for the struggle. I’ve tried to understand Coyne from a psychological perspective at times, and I think he was high in the often forgotten trait of sadism. I just wish people hadn’t tolerated him for so long as just sort of quirky. Even my old mentor Lee Sechrest gave him too much of a pass.
As frustrating and incredibly time-consuming as it was at the time, it was worth it. Also, in reading your comment "I just wish people hadn’t tolerated him for so long as just sort of quirky," the parallels to a currently dominant figure in U.S. politics came to mind: One who gets "too much of a pass" for things that anyone else would be skewered for. I just hope it doesn't ultimately get to where Coyne ended up because of the immense difference in the amount of power and influence compared to Coyne's....
I'm so glad to hear Jim's dead. Like many on here, he and I had a very nice professional relationship. In those early years, I moderated a debate between Coyne and SAMHSA's suicide prevention chief Richard McKeon. Richard pulled me aside before the debate and made me promise I'd shut it down if Coyne became aggressive or started personal attacks. I was really surprised. I would soon learn why Richard was so concerned.
After Jim got into a Twitter fight with some people I knew in suicide prevention, he went after me and my colleagues hardcore. He even went so far as to find my parent's phone number (hadn't lived with them since I was 18) and left unhinged voicemails. My mom, who was in her late 70s at the time) was freaked out. When he left the first round of messages (several in an hour), she tried to reach me. When I didn't respond, she called him back and talked him down. I never blocked him or unfollowed him on Twitter because it would have deleted the paper trail of his accusations and threats in my DMs.
Everything you wrote in your blog I learned to be true. Thank you.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart. November 10th is a new annual holiday for me. This lunatic stalked me for years after I reported him to the police for stalking female students.
A colleague sent this to me, because he harassed both of us at Temple University for years. Neither of us in the psychology field. Both seemingly random choices, loosely tied to some one else who was his initial target. I was mentioned in a few blog posts, and named as part of a vague conspiracy at Temple to do I don't know what, exactly. His death brings me peace, to be honest. Thank you for writing something so eloquent, with such true insights, because I certainly couldn't do it.
I only "danced" with Conyne for 5 mins or so, compared to others but could see his rabid need to compartmentalise everyone into buckets of "Good " and "Bad".
Sadly, this still appears to be a dynamic that continues amongst Social Psychologists today.
How ironic that they cannot see that which is most prevalent in themselves!!
i didn't get the serious treatment. merely the "society lost the money spent on your studies" or similar. all for politely replying to one of his very politically motivated tirades.
it's sad when his behaviour was copied by others. bad for truth finding
Thank you for writing this, Jim. This is up there with your best essays, right beside Negative Psychology, which I loved at the time and still love. I hope this essay gets wide circulation as a cautionary tale. I still see jackasses acting this way online even in the so-called good place.
Thanks man. Funny, I just spent the morning reading your essay on whether Jews are white and it floored me. I can't believe I'd never thought about it in terms of caste before but that makes perfect sense. Anyhow, thanks for the kind words!
Coyne was one of the top examples, along with some illustrious company like Mencius Moldbug, that convinced me that open online blogging was simply too structurally rewarding of bloviating aggression to be worth engaging in until a cultural backlash gained momentum. I hope I'm right that that time has now come.
Jim couldn’t stand bad research because it harmed clients terribly and similarly harmed whole populations where public health strategies were based on junk. He was a justice warrior who cared deeply for people but had deep contempt for those who perpetuated BS.
What we should be doing is humbly recognising the depth and breadth of truly bad research that has so thoroughly polluted the entire field, including calling out the many gurus whose status is rabidly but undeservedly respected.
Jim’s irreverence and vitriole was an attempt to see real progress sooner rather than in 50 years’ time, which it seems is how long it takes for the inertia of popular BS to finally be pushed back, when people finally take their blinkers off and do the studies necessary to demonstrate the null hypothesis.
RIP Jim, deeply appreciated and missed by all who value robust science and also found in him a kind heart and deep love of humanity.
Christine, I have to think you’re not fully aware of Coyne’s abuses or else you wouldn’t extol him as a “justice warrior.” He inflicted terrible injustices on many people — and *not* for the good of science.
After you read the whole thing, it’s understandable if you delete your comment here out of embarrassment. Jim Coyne may have produced good science at one time, but his relentless harassment and bullying of others was anything but noble.
Stacey I am very aware. Like all of us he had his flaws and he was absolutely the master of creatively cutting insults. He fought hard and courageously, railing against sloppy and fraudulent science and had the receipts. The treatment he got in return was far worse than anything he flung. The mass cyber bullying, abuse and repetition of appalling lies from rabid followers of false gurus was astonishing, and in the end he was cutting off and denigrating those who took their side or even seemed to take their side. We need more Jim Coynes if we’re ever to clean up the abject mess that comprises modern psychology. Polite, collegial discourse should of course be the norm, but we need the warriors too, to even begin to make progress. I treasured and respected Jim and I and very many others deeply regret his loss from our lives, personally and professionally. So I am not embarrassed and I will not be taking down my post.
Christine, nobody here is complaining about Coyne impolitely calling out bad science. If only! We are talking about what the author of the original post rightly calls sadism. Just read Jonathan Singer’s comment here about Coyne tracking down his parents’ home number and leaving angry messages for them. I’m sorry, WHAT? How do you justify that?
Just stop. He put women’s lives in danger. People he didn’t even know. Also FYI - multiple people who were at Penn when he was there believed he was a child predator AND people have shared that as recent as 2022 he was active on dating sites looking for relationships with women who had children.
Nope. My own sibling was one of them and I was harassed and stalked for 2 years. I never met this loser. I’ll stop here. Believe what you want to believe but calling me a liar is unacceptable. I lived it, and my employer had to get the police involved to protect me and my child. So go have a nice life Christine.
I’m so sorry you went through that! His actions were vile. I witnessed his harassment of people who didn’t even know him but, much to their misfortune, got on his radar (and not because they’d done anything wrong or bad in research, by the way). In addition, he constantly framed himself as the victim of “cry bullies” without any insight or awareness about his own antisocial behaviors. He was nobody’s victim. He was a perpetrator. Sigh.
Thanks for writing this Jim. I dared to defend you and that put me on his list. And boy did he come after me. He contacted HR at my university to say that I verbally attacked him on Twitter and should be fired for physically threatening an "old man." When they asked for proof, his screen shots showed nothing of the sort. They contacted me to tell me about it and to avoid him as he is costing the university money to investigate his nonsense.
He really, really despised well-being science and then tried to peddle self-published books on the topic.
My first interaction with him at dinner in New Orleans with Bonanno, McNally, Frueh, and a few others was a delight. He had such a great mind. As you said - what a waste of great critical thinking to aim it toward harming people than producing good work.
Right? And you probably know how he went after Eiko Fried. I really did want to emphasize that he changed my way of thinking on many fronts. He was *important,* but taught too many of the wrong lessons.
Eiko and I traded war stories. Here's a lesson: don't be the guy or gal the media goes to for stories to be the person who will always say on cue that someone's research sucks.
Truth!
The looney tune man claimed I put dog shit in his car and swotted his house.
Hope he was buried in his summer clothes.
Thanks for this piece, Jim. I, too, have been one of Coyne's targets. Just in case anyone might be interested, I'll share my story, noting for the record that I previously had had a cordial relationship with Jim for any number of years and greatly appreciated his incisive mind. Coyne and I were both members of the Society for the Science of Clinical Psychology (SSCP) and on its listserv, a site of vigorous debate. Not surprisingly, Coyne took the debate to a new level, such that he was clearly in violation of the listserv's posting policies. However, the Society had no formal means to do anything about such behavior other than remind people of the policy to which Coyne, again not surprisingly, did not take kindly. So, when I happened to be elected President, I decided to take action and proposed a process for removing recurrent violators. After much spirited debate on the listserv about where to draw the line between freedom of speech and unacceptable behavior, through which my initial proposal was considerably revised, tightened up, and greatly improved, by adding multiple chances for people to improve their behavior, and a rather legalistic process for ultimately removing a member from the listserv, the membership voted on implementing it, and it passed by a wide margin. Then came the process.... I've already gone on too long, so I'll spare everyone the details, but I carefully documented every step along the way, through which I was repeatedly attacked and vilified by Coyne, yet again unsurprisingly. The document ultimately came to 27 pages and Coyne was removed from the listserv, after which he used multiple opportunities to continue to excoriate me for his removal. Fast forward a decade or so, and Coyne asked to be reinstated to the SSCP listserv. Fortunately, there was enough institutional memory that the then-SSCP Board contacted me about what had occurred previously and I'll just say that I was really glad to have compiled and saved that document.
I remember this happening, though I think I was finishing up graduate school at the time. You were right to push him out. I, among others, had stopped interacting with SSCPnet because of him. And it isn’t like the listserv was all peace and love all the time, even without him. Sorry in any case for the struggle. I’ve tried to understand Coyne from a psychological perspective at times, and I think he was high in the often forgotten trait of sadism. I just wish people hadn’t tolerated him for so long as just sort of quirky. Even my old mentor Lee Sechrest gave him too much of a pass.
As frustrating and incredibly time-consuming as it was at the time, it was worth it. Also, in reading your comment "I just wish people hadn’t tolerated him for so long as just sort of quirky," the parallels to a currently dominant figure in U.S. politics came to mind: One who gets "too much of a pass" for things that anyone else would be skewered for. I just hope it doesn't ultimately get to where Coyne ended up because of the immense difference in the amount of power and influence compared to Coyne's....
I was a fairly small fish on the Coyne target list, but even that was a quite horrific experience. I appreciated reading this. Thank you.
I'm so glad to hear Jim's dead. Like many on here, he and I had a very nice professional relationship. In those early years, I moderated a debate between Coyne and SAMHSA's suicide prevention chief Richard McKeon. Richard pulled me aside before the debate and made me promise I'd shut it down if Coyne became aggressive or started personal attacks. I was really surprised. I would soon learn why Richard was so concerned.
After Jim got into a Twitter fight with some people I knew in suicide prevention, he went after me and my colleagues hardcore. He even went so far as to find my parent's phone number (hadn't lived with them since I was 18) and left unhinged voicemails. My mom, who was in her late 70s at the time) was freaked out. When he left the first round of messages (several in an hour), she tried to reach me. When I didn't respond, she called him back and talked him down. I never blocked him or unfollowed him on Twitter because it would have deleted the paper trail of his accusations and threats in my DMs.
Everything you wrote in your blog I learned to be true. Thank you.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart. November 10th is a new annual holiday for me. This lunatic stalked me for years after I reported him to the police for stalking female students.
Oh God I'm so sorry. He was never held sufficiently accountable for shit like that.
A colleague sent this to me, because he harassed both of us at Temple University for years. Neither of us in the psychology field. Both seemingly random choices, loosely tied to some one else who was his initial target. I was mentioned in a few blog posts, and named as part of a vague conspiracy at Temple to do I don't know what, exactly. His death brings me peace, to be honest. Thank you for writing something so eloquent, with such true insights, because I certainly couldn't do it.
I’m so sorry he targeted you. His death brought me peace, too.
Watching Coyne target and doxx minoritized women and put them in mortal danger was mind boggling. He doesn’t even deserve the grace of “complicated”.
Testing
I only "danced" with Conyne for 5 mins or so, compared to others but could see his rabid need to compartmentalise everyone into buckets of "Good " and "Bad".
Sadly, this still appears to be a dynamic that continues amongst Social Psychologists today.
How ironic that they cannot see that which is most prevalent in themselves!!
so sad and so true.
i didn't get the serious treatment. merely the "society lost the money spent on your studies" or similar. all for politely replying to one of his very politically motivated tirades.
it's sad when his behaviour was copied by others. bad for truth finding
Thank you for writing this, Jim. This is up there with your best essays, right beside Negative Psychology, which I loved at the time and still love. I hope this essay gets wide circulation as a cautionary tale. I still see jackasses acting this way online even in the so-called good place.
Thanks man. Funny, I just spent the morning reading your essay on whether Jews are white and it floored me. I can't believe I'd never thought about it in terms of caste before but that makes perfect sense. Anyhow, thanks for the kind words!
Thank you for writing this—I can relate.
Coyne was one of the top examples, along with some illustrious company like Mencius Moldbug, that convinced me that open online blogging was simply too structurally rewarding of bloviating aggression to be worth engaging in until a cultural backlash gained momentum. I hope I'm right that that time has now come.
Jim couldn’t stand bad research because it harmed clients terribly and similarly harmed whole populations where public health strategies were based on junk. He was a justice warrior who cared deeply for people but had deep contempt for those who perpetuated BS.
What we should be doing is humbly recognising the depth and breadth of truly bad research that has so thoroughly polluted the entire field, including calling out the many gurus whose status is rabidly but undeservedly respected.
Jim’s irreverence and vitriole was an attempt to see real progress sooner rather than in 50 years’ time, which it seems is how long it takes for the inertia of popular BS to finally be pushed back, when people finally take their blinkers off and do the studies necessary to demonstrate the null hypothesis.
RIP Jim, deeply appreciated and missed by all who value robust science and also found in him a kind heart and deep love of humanity.
Christine, I have to think you’re not fully aware of Coyne’s abuses or else you wouldn’t extol him as a “justice warrior.” He inflicted terrible injustices on many people — and *not* for the good of science.
Are you aware of the bullying described in this post: https://eiko-fried.com/james-coyne-sued-me-for-cyberbullying/
After you read the whole thing, it’s understandable if you delete your comment here out of embarrassment. Jim Coyne may have produced good science at one time, but his relentless harassment and bullying of others was anything but noble.
Stacey I am very aware. Like all of us he had his flaws and he was absolutely the master of creatively cutting insults. He fought hard and courageously, railing against sloppy and fraudulent science and had the receipts. The treatment he got in return was far worse than anything he flung. The mass cyber bullying, abuse and repetition of appalling lies from rabid followers of false gurus was astonishing, and in the end he was cutting off and denigrating those who took their side or even seemed to take their side. We need more Jim Coynes if we’re ever to clean up the abject mess that comprises modern psychology. Polite, collegial discourse should of course be the norm, but we need the warriors too, to even begin to make progress. I treasured and respected Jim and I and very many others deeply regret his loss from our lives, personally and professionally. So I am not embarrassed and I will not be taking down my post.
Christine, nobody here is complaining about Coyne impolitely calling out bad science. If only! We are talking about what the author of the original post rightly calls sadism. Just read Jonathan Singer’s comment here about Coyne tracking down his parents’ home number and leaving angry messages for them. I’m sorry, WHAT? How do you justify that?
Just stop. He put women’s lives in danger. People he didn’t even know. Also FYI - multiple people who were at Penn when he was there believed he was a child predator AND people have shared that as recent as 2022 he was active on dating sites looking for relationships with women who had children.
A good example of some of the sicker lies and accusations.
Nope. My own sibling was one of them and I was harassed and stalked for 2 years. I never met this loser. I’ll stop here. Believe what you want to believe but calling me a liar is unacceptable. I lived it, and my employer had to get the police involved to protect me and my child. So go have a nice life Christine.
I’m so sorry you went through that! His actions were vile. I witnessed his harassment of people who didn’t even know him but, much to their misfortune, got on his radar (and not because they’d done anything wrong or bad in research, by the way). In addition, he constantly framed himself as the victim of “cry bullies” without any insight or awareness about his own antisocial behaviors. He was nobody’s victim. He was a perpetrator. Sigh.