Is what I'm about to do self-censorship? (read the description)

In somewhat more than a week, I'm planning to present my research in front of my university. It's gonna be a public lecture with many ppl attending, including the majority of the Uni's staff (including the president of the Uni) and some students. My "real" research is about a connection between variable (let's just call it Variable 3) and national Human Development Index (HDI) and national IQ. For my presentation (and the paper I'll hand out for that particular lecture) I plan to throw the national IQ variable out.

I wish to do so as to stop too much emphasis being put onto the national IQ part. To even say nations differ in their average IQ ( a finding thoroughly confirmed and replicated) is controversial and has brought up a lot of heat (i.e. "OMG, IT'S RACIST", or its somewhat more reasonable counterpart: "IQ TESTS ARE BIASED"). So, I don't want the lecture to be all about on national IQs, nor do I want that to be the part that ppl focus on. I want them to focus on the Variable 3. Moreover, national IQs and HDI correlate very strongly (so much the two are always associated with the same thing), so throwing one of them out virtually won't change the results, anyway.

Is this self-censorship?

I'm not throwing the national IQ part away because I worry of how ppl will treat me, or if they'll change their opinion on me. I'm not trying to gain social approval. I just want the lecture to be about what it's gotta be - Variable 3. I fear the national IQ may get too much undeserved attention. Does this constitute "self-censorship", or is it just being practical?

I would never want to self-censor. I'd open my mouth sooner or later.

kayoshin · 36-40, M

It seems like you are worrying about the wrong thing, it doesn't matter since you said yourself the IQ thing is irrelevant and even if you don't mention it if the correlation is so high someone else will bring it up. The issue is that if variable 3 is correlated to findings that are biased (and it definetely seems the case since cultural factors and variables like alimentation which is not constant every generation and the lack of a standardized is testing system accepted and applied widely in each country it can just bring random population samples which seems trivial) again if variable 3 sees correlation with a flawed and controversial research result wouldn't that be seen as a symptom of the same flawed methodology? I would worry more about that than anything else and wonder if you haven't asked yourself that along the way.