Seriously read it. The problem with going to wikipedia or whatever and reading about how controversial these authors are is that you literally cannot say "maybe there's a chance this group has lower iq genetically, we should look into it" in academia without being reviled as a racist or losing your job (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Summers).
eeeeyeah but that's a case of a guy saying maybe the reason there aren't so many women in science and math is because women are just naturally not as good at science and math.
Nobody questions that smart parents tend to have smart children
Sure they do.
Populations breed toward the norm. The children of capable parents are likely to have more opportunities than average, but that doesn't necessarily speak to an innate cognitive ability.
Basically, east asians on average are smarter than europeans, who are smarter than africans. IQ tests consistently show these results, across multiple different kinds of tests (including tests deliberately trying as hard as they can to be non-cultural)
Trying not to be non-culturally-biased isn't the same thing as succeeding, though.
When I see a test looking at IQ as the best way of determining intelligence, I get suspicious.
When I see a statistical analysis that looks at the mean instead of the median, that makes me suspicious too.
Other genetic things such as skull capacity and nearsightedness which have documented correlations with IQ also vary along the same lines between these groups, with the most incidence of myopia and highest cranial capacity in east asians, and lowest in africans.
...skull size? We're bordering on phrenology here.
Nearsightedness is a bit easier to swallow -- people who spend an inordinate amount of time reading are more likely to be nearsighted. And people who are farsighted, by definition, have a harder time reading books.
In studies of adopted children (adopted into white middle class homes), children with 2 black biological parents have an average IQ which is lower than those with 1, which is lower than children with 2 white biological parents, despite being raised in good as opposed to a bad environment. Similarly, east asian adopted children have average IQs significantly higher than the average for their white parents. This doesn't really make sense if race genetics play no part in IQ.
It does if there are different social stigmas faced by African-Americans than Asians. Peers, teachers, etc.
I'm not trying to pile on or be flippant or make anybody uncomfortable anything. But I really do think it's far more reasonable to ask about the tests and statistical analysis than to conclude that there is an actual 45-point cognitive difference in Asians and Africans.
EDIT TO ADD: It'll probably seem less like I'm being holier-than-thou if I actually contribute to the original purpose of the thread and say that yeah, course I've got the occasional racist moments too. Like most stressful things in my life, they occur mostly in traffic.
If I see a low-rider and hear it blasting bass, I assume African-American or Latino driver, probably young, probably native English speaker.
If I see a pickup full of tools, ESPECIALLY one towing a trailer full of landscaping equipment, I assume Latino, older, probably limited English.
In both cases I tend to assume the person is a bad driver. I am likely to give the latter more benefit of the doubt -- which plays into a different set of biases.
