TGGP: Eliezer referenced the book (the wikipedia url on the "real" link, lookup for the phrase "Is Idang Alibi about to take a position on the real heart of the uproar?"). I thought everybody followed the links before commenting ;). Anyway I assume that if something is referenced its discussion is on topic.
Regarding their data, we can't just remove the data they fudged, we need to redo the analysis with the original data. We can't just discard data because it doesn't fit our conclusions. Using their raw data without fudging we are left with low correlation, many data points outside the curve.
Ditto for any other studies. I highly skeptical of sociologists or psychologist papers because they always (again IME) have use very bad statistics. Most assume a gaussian or poisson distribution without even proving that the process generating the data has the right properties. The measurement process is highly subjective and there's no analysis to assess the deviance of individual measures, so they don't properly find the actual stddev of their data. If one wants to aggregate studies, first one must prove that the measurement process for each study is the same (in the studies mentioned in your "predictive power" link this is false: at least two Lynn studies use population samples with different properties, also another couple use different IQ tests) otherwise we are mixing unrelated hypothesis.
I'm highly skeptical of IQ measurement, because it's too subjective. Measuring the same individual over and over on a long interval we get different results, but we shouldn't. A physicist wouldn't use a mass measurement process that depended on subjective factors (e.g. if the measured object is pretty or the time of measurement isn't jinxed), in a similar way we shouldn't use a measure of mental capacity that is highly dependent of stress (which has no objective measurement process) or emotional state. In this situation one of the best approaches would be using many different data measurements for each individual and aggregate the data with Monte Carlo analysis to find the probability of each results. We can't just fudge the data, discard sample we don't like and use a subjective methodology, otherwise it isn't science. When a physicist does a experiment he has a theory in mind, so he either already has an equation or ends up discovering one. The equation must account for all variables and the theory must prove why the other variables (e.g. speed of wind in Peking) doesn't matter. "IQ and the Wealth of Nations" fails to prove that any other factors influencing GDP are irrelevant to the IQ correlation, that alone discredits the results.
Correlation is the most overused statistical tool. It is useful to show patterns but unless you have a theory to explain the results and make actual predictions it's irrelevant as much as the scientific method is concerned. If we ignore this anything can be "proven".
Idang Alibi of Abuja, Nigeria writes on the James Watson affair:
An intriguing opening. Is Idang Alibi about to take a position on the real heart of the uproar?
Darn, it's just a lecture on personal and national responsibility. Of course, for African nationals, taking responsibility for their country's problems is the most productive attitude regardless. But it doesn't engage with the controversies that got Watson fired.
Later in the article came this:
This intrigued me for two reasons: First, I'm always on the lookout for yet another case of theology making a falsifiable experimental prediction. And second, the prediction follows obviously if God is just, but what does skin colour have to do with it at all?
A great deal has already been said about the Watson affair, and I suspect that in most respects I have little to contribute that has not been said before.
But why is it that the rest of the world seems to think that individual genetic differences are okay, whereas racial genetic differences in intelligence are not? Am I the only one who's every bit as horrified by the proposition that there's any way whatsoever to be screwed before you even start, whether it's genes or lead-based paint or Down's Syndrome? What difference does skin colour make? At all?
This is only half a rhetorical question. Race adds extra controversy to anything; in that sense, it's obvious what difference skin colour makes politically. However, just because this attitude is common, should not cause us to overlook its insanity. Some kind of different psychological processing is taking place around individually-unfair intelligence distributions, and group-unfair intelligence distributions.
So, in defiance of this psychological difference, and in defiance of politics, let me point out that a group injustice has no existence apart from injustice to individuals. It's individuals who have brains to experience suffering. It's individuals who deserve, and often don't get, a fair chance at life. If God has not given intelligence in equal measure to all his children, God stands convicted of a crime against humanity, period. Skin colour has nothing to do with it, nothing at all.
And I don't think there's any serious scholar of intelligence who disputes that God has been definitively shown to be most terribly unfair. Never mind the airtight case that intelligence has a hereditary genetic component among individuals; if you think that being born with Down's Syndrome doesn't impact life outcomes, then you are on crack. What about lead-based paint? Does it not count, because parents theoretically could have prevented it but didn't? In the beginning no one knew that it was damaging. How is it just for such a tiny mistake to have such huge, irrevocable consequences? And regardless, would not a just God damn us for only our own choices? Kids don't choose to live in apartments with lead-based paint.
So much for God being "just", unless you count the people whom God has just screwed over. Maybe that's part of the fuel in the burning controversy - that people do realize, on some level, the implications for religion. They can rationalize away the implications of a child born with no legs, but not a child born with no possibility of ever understanding calculus. But then this doesn't help explain the original observation, which is that people, for some odd reason, think that adding race makes it worse somehow.
And why is my own perspective, apparently, unusual? Perhaps because I also think that intelligence deficits will be fixable given sufficiently advanced technology, biotech or nanotech. When truly huge horrors are believed unfixable, the mind's eye tends to just skip over the hideous unfairness - for much the same reason you don't deliberately rest your hand on a hot stoveburner; it hurts.