The Cochran/Hardy/Harpending paper “Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence” is

causing quite a stir. This paper has been talked about for a year or so

among human-sciences buffs, but the authors had trouble getting anyone to publish it. When I wrote my column “The Swelling Wave” on this site last November, that paper was one of the topics in my conversation with the geneticist, as a couple of eagle-eyed and clued-in readers spotted from my inclusion of the word “sphingolipids.” An immense — and regrettable — amount of human science goes on “underground” like that for fear of the PC police.

It’s a remarkable thing that a topic so grossly un-PC could be aired in the New York Times and The Economist. The Times’s Nick Wade (i.e. science

editor) deserves credit here. Perhaps the dam is breaking; perhaps properly scientific discussions about human nature can now be conducted in public.

I’m not sure this will necessarily be so, though. The see-no-genes, hear-no-genes, speak-no genes Left isn’t going to take this lying down, and they still have great power, especially in the Academy. Remember what happened to The Bell Curve. (What happened? It’s OUT OF PRINT!)

The Cochran/Hardy/Harpending paper, at any rate, is solid science, and a credit to its authors. It offers a plausible hypothesis to describe observed facts. It suggests a procedure by which that hypothesis can be tested. I hope researchers will get busy doing the tests. If they pan out, we have a good theory. If not- back to the drawing board. That’s science, and the results are never guaranteed to be the one’s you’d have wished for. No wonder so many people hate it.