Because I Can

Jason Soon at Catallaxy Files posted a link to this "good introduction to the IQ and genetics debate by someone who works in the field and is familiar with the literature" last Wednesday. Try as I might, I can't make head or tail of it, although it does make some rather worrying claims about how researchers in the field of race & IQ feel that they must resort to various forms of subterfuge in order to get research grants out of politically correct academia. More puzzling is, that though the post argues (very strongly) for a link between genetics (and implicitly race) and IQ, the links that I've followed all lead to on-line articles about the relationship between genetics and physiology.

On the whole, I'm not inclined to take it too seriously, especially after reading this:

... when push comes to shove, suddenly the sophistry fails and it becomes all-important to find someone of the same ethnic background to donate blood.

Of course, my knowledge of immunology is about 20 years out of date, but I do remember something about there being about 4 major human blood groups, plus the rhesus factors. There was also a set of antigens known collectively as the "HLA complex" (and I've forgotten what HLA stood for) but, as a rule, you'd only worry about those if you were planning a kidney transplant or something. The blogosphere is a puzzling place sometimes.