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Slate Trumps Time: Publishes Response To Saletan On Race And IQ

Unlike Time, which blocked all responses to Joe Klein's factually challenged column on FISA, via Matt Yglesias, Slate has published a response by Stephen Metcalf to Will Saletan on race and IQ. The nuts:

Much of Saletan's précis of the rest of the research surveyed in "Thirty Years of Research Into Race Differences on Cognitive Abilities" is highly questionable. His takeaway regarding the "admixture" studies is precisely the opposite of what an American Psychological Association task force concluded the studies show—that more "European" blood in a black American does not make him smarter. Saletan points up the problems with a favorite study of the environmentalists, into the IQ outcomes of children fathered by foreign soldiers and raised by (white) German mothers. This study showed that kids with African fathers scored the same as those with white fathers. But, Saletan says, it suffers from a fatal flaw: Blacks in the military had been screened for IQ. Saletan concludes, "Even environmentalists (scholars who advocate nongenetic explanations) concede that this filter radically distorted the numbers." But this is flatly untrue. The two most prominent environmentalists, Richard Nisbett and James Flynn, have dismissed this very objection. Both have pointed out that white soldiers were also screened, and so had higher IQs than the general white population. James Flynn has argued extensively that the black-white gap in the military was the same as in the population at large.

In essence, Metcalf demonstrates that Saletan, like Joe Klein on FISA, simply did not know what he was writing about. It is to Slate's credit that it was willing to publish such a demolition of one of its regular writers. Score another one for honesty for Washington Post Company, which allowed Krauthammer to be demolished today.

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    Dignify (none / 0) (#1)
    by koshembos on Tue Dec 04, 2007 at 07:54:29 PM EST
    In a world of "on one hand" and "on the other" reacting to Salletan dignifies his racism, or stupidity, by making his opinion a equal party to a dispute.

    Long ago, I thought the attacking Joe Klein is a waste of time and space. Klein believes that he is right and nothing you say will convince him otherwise. Ignoring him, stopping to read him may have a much better result.

    These endless skirmishes distract us; we have no time to contemplate the merits of our supporters and end up missing opportunities.

    Good for Saletan. (none / 0) (#2)
    by Edger on Tue Dec 04, 2007 at 08:10:54 PM EST
    Now he has an out. And no excuse to not evolve.

    All he needs is more practice writing IQ tests and he'll be smart enough to figure it out for himself.

    Can he make the leap?

    Prepare for war (none / 0) (#3)
    by Bob In Pacifica on Tue Dec 04, 2007 at 09:44:27 PM EST
    Joe Klein is within ten years of having a nuclear bomb if he starts a nuclear weapons program tomorrow.