Elizabeth Haigh
Journalist
Bio:
Elizabeth Haigh is a reporter at the Daily Mail Online. She wrote an erroneous report about the work of philosopher Nathan Cofnas at the University of Cambridge.
Background:
Miss Haigh mislead the public by sensationalising the work of Cambridge philosopher Nathan Cofnas, who had written about the mainstream scientific consensus on racial differences in intelligence (the equivalent of declaring that, on average, men have more upper-body strength than women).
Haigh’s hit piece tried to convince readers that Cofnas’ writing was fringe by (1) citing known activist academics and (2) claiming Cofnas ‘paper was widely debunked by various scientists’, despite not saying who these ‘various scientists’ are. Miss Haigh reported on the ‘backlash’ and ‘controversy’ amongst Cambridge students, presumably the same student activists who wrote the original story up in their student newspaper, Varsity, that Elizabeth used to work for (see below).
Varsity published the hit piece on Nathan Cofnas a day before Miss Haigh reported the story in the Daily Mail.
The Daily Mail started to moderate the comments on Miss Haigh’s article after it emerged their readers fully supported Cofnas’ right to research.
