Pinker said he has argued that the concept of group selection has no useful role to play in psychology or social science.

True: Pinker's 2012 essay, or earlier writings by him, explicitly argues that group selection has no useful role in psychology or social science. Mostly true: he argued substantially this, with minor differences in scope or wording, for example limiting the claim to some uses of the concept. Mixed: he argued it only in part, or only for one of the two fields. Mostly false: his writings argue something materially weaker, such as group selection being of limited use, which the claim overstates. False: his writings do not make such an argument, or argue the opposite.

Set before the research began.

1. E1 Group selection - Wikipedia Scribd (copy of Wikipedia article)

   “The psychologist Steven Pinker states that "group selection has no useful role to play in psychology or social science", since in these domains it "is not a precise implementation of the theory of natural selection, as it is, say, in genetic algorithms or artificial life simulations.”

2. E2 Let’s get real about Selfish Genes, Group Selection and Altruism. Towards a less impoverished view of humanity. praxtime.com · 20 January 2014

   “Steven Pinker is a good example of the mainstream response to Nowak and E. O. Wilson’s paper. He wrote a widely commented on essay The False Allure of Group Selection, where he says “Group Selection has no useful role to play in psychology or social science.””

E3, an independent 2014 commentary, identifies Pinker's essay 'The False Allure of Group Selection' as stating that group selection has no useful role to play in psychology or social science. E2, a copy of the Wikipedia article, reports the same statement along with his reasoning: in these fields group selection is not a precise implementation of natural selection theory. The criteria accept the 2012 essay itself as the writing that makes the argument, and both sources show it does so explicitly for both fields.