Dan MacArthur has started a big discussion on whether or not the relationship between IQ and race should be studied. Inspired by a pair of essays for and against the idea it has created a pretty healthy debate among the sciencebloggers including Razib with whom I will likely never agree on this issue. For the record, I’m on the side of those like Richard Nisbett (for a good review of his analysis of race and the black white divide see here PDF) that genetics are a poor explanation for the divide.
But this issue aside, why do I believe this is a still a bad idea to expend resources to evaluate the role of race and IQ? After all, that’s just what Nisbett has done in the paper cited above.
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