Given the power of the studies that you reference, what are reasonable bounds on the possible mean differences in IQ between various racial groups (taking care to avoid polyphyletic-like groups like “black”, but instead insisting on monophyletic-like groups to the extent possible (-like appended because without reproductive isolation, which there isn’t since Homo sapiens is a single species, there is significant interbreeding across geographically separated populations))?

If we actually care about the question, and we actually care about science, shouldn’t this be the bottom line?

“We tried to measure whether X was different than Y, but we messed up and didn’t learn much of anything, so who knows,” is a very different statement than “we tried to measure whether X was different than Y and found that if they are different at all it is by no more than 0.3%, while the distribution of values within X and Y had a coefficient of variation of 15%”.

(I recall the number being pretty small, but I haven’t kept track of the literature, nor do I remember precisely. But let’s at least report the relevant number(s), okay?)

Also, race isn’t real, biologically, kinda; but neither is genus, family, order, class, phylum, or kingdom. They’re labels we put on things to help us group real similarities; but exactly which similarities we care to name are often determined by what is useful to us more than by any intrinsic property. Noting that the categories are sometimes kinda muddled biologically doesn’t tell us that there are no differences between any of the categories! It just tells us that we were sloppy.

Anyway, let’s suppose that some group is pretty unambiguously ~10 IQ points higher than everyone else. (Hint: this appears to be true. Do you know which group? It’s pretty small.) Does that mean that people of that group should get much better (or worse?) treatment than everyone else, regardless of any other factors (e.g. like their actual IQ)? Does it matter whether the difference is cultural or genetic? Or do we try to be kind and strive to fulfill the potential of every individual, regardless of the distribution of traits displayed by people of the same ancestry as them?

There’s a significant problem in medical research right now in that Caucasians are dramatically over-represented in very many studies. It turns out that there are substantially different distributions of disease alleles (and disease propensities in cases where the genetic factors, if any, aren’t known) between different groups. We want hospitals to be able to treat everyone; we shouldn’t righteously discriminate against certain groups because they’re more likely to, say, get cystic fibrosis than other groups.

That this is unambiguously true should alert us that there may be differences in population means of either large-scale (IQ) or smaller-scale (propensity to ADHD in a modern school environment) cognitive traits of people from different ethnic groups. We should ask which these are, if any; if any changes are big enough to be worth doing something about it; and at the end of it all, empower people and treat them with respect, whatever their gifts and challenges may be.

Right?

So I’m not sure why there’s such a fuss about this topic.