Academics can say anything?

In a recent Science article the authors contend:

A growing body of research suggests that populations around the globe vary substantially along several important psychological dimensions and that people from societies characterized as Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) are particularly unusual. Often occupying the extremes of global distributions, Western Europeans and their cultural descendants in North America and Australia tend to be more individualistic, independent, analytically minded, and impersonally prosocial (e.g., trusting of strangers) while revealing less conformity, obedience, in-group loyalty, and nepotism. Although these patterns are now well documented, efforts to explain this variation from a cultural-evolutionary and historical perspective have just begun. In this study, we develop and test a cultural evolutionary theory that aims to explain a substantial portion of this psychological variation, both within and across nations.

Thus out the gate we Europeans associated with the Catholic Church, at least the Medieval version are Weird.  Furthermore they contend:

Recent research not only confirms the existence of substantial psychological variation around the globe but also highlights the peculiarity of many Western populations. We propose that part of this variation can be traced back to the action and diffusion of the Western Church, the branch of Christianity that evolved into the Roman Catholic Church. Specifically, we propose that the Western Church’s transformation of European kinship, by promoting small, nuclear households, weak family ties, and residential mobility, fostered greater individualism, less conformity, and more impersonal prosociality. By combining data on 24 psychological outcomes with historical measures of both Church exposure and kinship, we find support for these ideas in a comprehensive array of analyses across countries, among European regions, and among individuals from different cultural backgrounds.

 Now upon examination of the long but in my opinion confusing work we never get a definition of individualism or its related interpretations. I have written extensively on the topic and its emergence from Ockham and Marsilius of Padua in the 14th century. It arose as a societal opposition to the papacy not because of limitations of inter marriage,

They conclude:

This research suggests that contemporary psychological patterns, ranging from individualism and trust to conformity and analytical thinking, have been influenced by deep cultural evolutionary processes, including the Church’s peculiar incest taboos, family policies, and enduring kin-based institutions.

Now if one examines the approach  they seem in my opinion to posit the conclusion and then try to assert its validity with terms which are undefined and even undefinable and assertions which may or may not make any historical sense.

There is a long list of conditions which have led to many of the issues they assert. But individualism was in my opinion and based upon a wealth of historical studies a result not of the Church's mandates on intermarriage but on the development of political and Church conflict. 

This seems in my opinion to be just another academic contortion and unfortunately it takes up pages in Science which has in my opinion turned into a politically correct set of assertions lacking in fundamental scientific understanding. Another example of the Academy going wild.