If my three-parter this week has excited any readers’ interest in the field of intelligence studies, there’s been a good knock-down debate about these matters over at Cato Unbound. These exchanges are the next level up in presentation from my posts, with some fairly technical bits, but I think accessible to anyone willing to do a bit of googling on the side.

The lead-off essay was by James “Flynn Effect” Flynn. This was followed by good reaction, and re-reaction, essays from developmental psychologist Stephen Ceci, behavioral geneticist Eric Turkheimer, and intelligence researcher Linda Gottfredson. I thought Linda’s piece was the best-argued; though it was also the most astringent, dumping collegiality overboard in places:

Moral opprobrium requires no mucking about hip-deep in data or the complications of analyzing it properly. It is accomplished most easily by simply evoking the specter of genocide…
The postings by Flynn, Turkheimer, and even Ceci are laced with aspersions on the characters of the researchers with whom they disagree and with efforts, explicit or not, to encourage moral panic in the service of suppressing unwelcome truths.
Proponents of the taboo on discussing race and IQ assume that the taboo is all for the common good, but whose good, exactly, is served? It is most certainly not individuals of below-average intelligence, who face a tremendous uphill battle in modern, literate societies where life becomes increasingly complex by the day.

That last point is an especially pertinent one. Modern society increasingly looks to me like a conspiracy of the more-smart against the less-smart. How on earth is a 90-IQ person supposed to cope well with an income-tax form, a college loan application, or the terms and consequences of a “sub-prime” mortgage?