The racism was more the guy having very strong opinions about black people's IQs and immigrants destroying western civilization on twitter (plus being against COVID vaccines and human rights and other stuff that suggest you are not a level-headed truth seeker).

Quote from your second, more respectable, link:

> Pallesen’s objections are strongly stated but they’re not new. Indeed, the authors of the original paper were pretty clear about its limitations.

When I read the original papers, like your second link, I find a level headed paper working with limited data they had available.

I would suggest that the annoyance is with pop science retelling at best, or just a quack selling anger online to fuel his weird obsessions at worst.