One of Anthony Pelosi’s most ambitious projects was on the back burner for more than 2 decades. In the early 1990s, Pelosi, a psychiatrist at Priory Hospital Glasgow, published two extensive critiques of the work of Hans Eysenck, a giant of 20th century psychology. Eysenck’s papers contained questionable data and results so dramatic they beggared belief, Pelosi concluded. His critiques, and those by several others, were widely discussed in the field, but never led to formal investigations. Buried by the demands of clinical practice, research, and a young family, Pelosi never found the time to continue his effort. No one, he says, “picked up the baton.”

More than a quarter-century later, Eysenck, who was celebrated for his theories of personality and individual differences, is finally falling from his pedestal. Last week, the International Journal of Social Psychiatry and the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine issued expressions of concern for seven of his papers. Other journals have issued 64 such statements, as well as 14 retractions, over the past 6 months.
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The renewed scrutiny comes in the wake of an inquiry by King’s College London (KCL), where Eysenck was a psychology professor from 1955 to 1983 at what was then the Institute of Psychiatry. But Pelosi and others argue KCL failed to include many of Eysenck’s other papers that also deserve a more thorough investigation in light of his lasting influence on the literature.
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