Race Differences in Intelligence


 * This page is about a book. For general discussion see Race and intelligence.



Race Differences in Intelligence: An Evolutionary Analysis is a 2006 book by Richard Lynn claiming to represent the largest collection and review of the global cognitive ability data, by nine global regions, surveying 620 published studies from around the world, with a total of 813,778 tested individuals.

Lynn's meta-analysis lists East Asians (105+), Europeans (99), Inuit (91), Southeast Asians and Amerindians (87 each), Pacific Islanders (85), Middle Easterners (including South Asians and North Africans) (84), sub-Saharan Africans (67), and Australian Aborigines (62). Ashkenazi Jews score significantly higher than other groups (107-115) in the U.S. and Britain, but estimates of the average IQ of Ashkenazim in Israel may be somewhat closer to the European mean.

Like much research regarding race and intelligence, Lynn's work has been controversial. When taken as national averages, the data available, particularly regarding the developing world, is speculative due to limited sampling, year of testing, and varying type of cognitive ability test used. Lynn's survey is an expansion by nearly four times of the data collected in his 2002 IQ and the Wealth of Nations with Tatu Vanhanen, which dealt with the relationship between IQ and economic development. IQ and the Wealth of Nations was criticized for error, alleged bias, and racism, but the book has also been used as a source of IQ data and hypotheses in several peer-reviewed studies. Lynn argues the surveyed studies have high reliability in the sense that different studies give similar results, and high validity in the sense that they correlate highly with performance in international studies of achievement in mathematics and science and with national economic development.

Some of Lynn's research has been funded by the Pioneer Fund. The book was not published by an academic publisher but by a private publisher run by an editorial board member of the Occidental Quarterly. It has also reprinted "'classic' Aryan and eugenic tracts including a homily to the antisemitic philosopher Count de Gobineau as a pioneer of genetics."

Overview
Lynn devotes a chapter to the data on each of the nine genetic clusters or population groups identified in previous genetic cluster analysis, which Lynn regards as races. The book subsequently defends the reliability and validity of the measures, concluding that, though additional evidence may be required to confirm some of the racial IQ estimates, that they correlate highly with performance in international studies of achievement in mathematics and science and with national economic development.

Book reviews
Three reviews of Race Differences in Intelligence have been published in the scholarly literature. At least two of these are written by persons who, like Lynn, are connected to the Pioneer Fund.

Criticism
An article in Searchlight, a British anti-fascist magazine, notes that Lynn is a grantee of the Pioneer Fund, which has been criticized as supporting racism. It also writes that the book's publisher, Washington Summit Publishers, "reprints 'classic' Aryan and eugenic tracts including a homily to the antisemitic philosopher Count de Gobineau as a pioneer of genetics."

Some of the criticisms regarding IQ and the Wealth of Nations may also apply.