Stop Laughing, this is Science, Dammit!

Wednesday, 13 November 2002

A visit to my latest addition to the blog roll, Dissecting Leftism, led via a circuitous route involving a Google search to the Web Site of Richard Lynn, Professor Emeritus of the University of Ulster. Professor Lynn has done extensive research on the correlation between race and IQ - here is a brief excerpt from his own summary of his distinguished career of research in this area:

My major discovery is that the Oriental peoples of East Asia have higher average intelligence by about 5 IQs points than Europeans and peoples of European origin in the United States and elsewhere. I first published this finding in 1977 in a paper on the intelligence of the Japanese. In subsequent years the high Oriental IQ has been confirmed in numerous studies of Oriental peoples in Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, China, Singapore and the United States.

In 1991 I extended my work on race differences in intelligence to other races. I concluded that the average IQ of blacks in sub-Saharan Africa is approximately 70. It has long been known that the average IQ of blacks in the United States is approximately 85. The explanation for the higher IQ of American blacks is that they have about 25 per cent of Caucasian genes and a better environment.

Professor Lynn's books include Dygenics in which he "showed that the eugenicists were right in their belief that modern populations have been deteriorating genetically in respect of health, intelligence and the personality trait of conscientiousness" and two sequels - Eugenics "considers what measures could be taken to rectify this and discusses the genetic future of mankind" and IQ and the Wealth of Nations (with Tatu Vanhanen of the University of Helsinki) which "considers the problem of national differences in wealth and economic growth" and shows "that national IQs are strongly related to national incomes and rates of economic growth".

It's well known that a little learning is a dangerous thing - but what Professor Lynn has achieved with a lot of learning is something that makes anti-intellectualism almost respectable.