Most of the research on cognitive biases and other psychological phenomena that we draw on here is based on samples of students at US universities. To what extent are we uncovering human universals, and to what extent facts about these WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) sample sources? A paper in press in Behavioural and Brain Sciences the evidence from studies that reach outside this group and highlights the many instances in which US students are outliers for many crucial studies in behavioural economics.
Epiphenom: How normal is WEIRD?
Henrich, J., Heine, S. J., & Norenzayan, A. (in press). The Weirdest people in the world? (PDF) Behavioral and Brain Sciences.
Broad claims about human psychology and behavior based on narrow samples from Western societies are regularly published in leading journals. Are such species-generalizing claims justified? This review suggests not only that substantial variability in experimental results emerges across populations in basic domains, but that standard subjects are in fact rather unusual compared with the rest of the species - frequent outliers. The domains reviewed include visual perception, fairness, categorization, spatial cognition, memory, moral reasoning and self‐concepts. This review (1) indicates caution in addressing questions of human nature based on this thin slice of humanity, and (2) suggests that understanding human psychology will require tapping broader subject pools. We close by proposing ways to address these challenges.
"Arthur Jensen Replies to Stephen Jay Gould : THE DEBUNKING OF SCIENTIFIC FOSSILS AND STRAW PERSONS " , http://www.debunker.com/texts/jensen.html , is a good place to start. It's a detailed criticism of Gould's "The Mismeasure of Man" by one of the best psychometricians around. It's got a good bibliography, but is rather dated being from 1982. No matter what you may think of his politics, Steve Sailer also has a lot of good, and more recent, information in his essays on IQ, especially on international comparisons, on his website, www.isteve.com . Richard Lynn's books are supposed to be very good also, but I haven't read them (too many interests, too little time and money).
The very title "debunking of scientific fossils and straw persons" makes it sound like it has limited use. Johnicholas asked for positive statements, but a debunking is purely negative. Just because Gould lied about X doesn't make his position wrong.
I suspected from your first comment that all you meant was that people who attempt to prove cultural bias in IQ tests have failed. That is certainly true, with some surprising findings, like that the American black-white gap is larger on questions that are, on the face of them, more culturally neutral... (read more)