Revealed: rise of 'race science' network

An international network of "race science" activists seeking to influence public debate with discredited ideas on race and eugenics has been operating with secret funding from a multimillionaire US tech entrepreneur.

- David Pegg, Tom Burgis, Hannah Devlin, Jason Wilson

Undercover filming has revealed the existence of the organisation, formed two years ago as the Human Diversity Foundation (HDF). Its members have used podcasts, videos, an online magazine and research papers to seed "dangerous ideology" about the supposed genetic superiority of certain ethnic groups.

The anti-racism charity Hope Not Hate began investigating after encountering the group's English organiser, a former religious studies teacher, at a far-right conference. Undercover footage was shared with the Guardian, which conducted further research alongside Hope Not Hate and reporting partners in Germany.

HDF received more than $1m from Andrew Conru, a Seattle businessman who made his fortune from dating websites, the recordings reveal. After being approached by the Guardian, Conru pulled his support, saying the group appeared to have deviated from its original mission of "non-partisan academic research".

While it remains a fringe outfit, HDF is part of a movement to rehabilitate so-called race science as a topic of open debate. Labelled scientific racism by mainstream academics, it seeks to prove biological differences between races such as higher average IQ or a tendency to commit crime.

Its supporters claim inequality between groups is largely explained by genetics rather than external factors such as discrimination.

Dr Rebecca Sear, the director of the Centre for Culture and Evolution at Brunel University, described it as a "dangerous ideology" with political aims and real-world consequences.

"Scientific racism has been used to argue against any policies that attempt to reduce inequalities between racial groups," she said. It was also deployed to "argue for more restrictive immigration policies, such as reducing immigration from supposedly 'low IQ' populations".