Scientist's Study of Brain Genes Sparks a Backlash (2006)

Key quotes:

(1) Dr. Lahn had touched a raw nerve in science: race and intelligence....

(2) Dr. Lahn says he is moving away from the research. "It's getting too controversial," he says.

(3) Pilar Ossorio, a professor of law and medical ethics at the University of Wisconsin, criticizes Dr. Lahn for implying a conclusion similar to "The Bell Curve," a controversial 1994 bestseller by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray. The book argued that the lower average performance by African-Americans on IQ tests had a genetic component and wasn't solely the result of social factors. Referring to Dr. Lahn and his co-authors, Prof. Ossorio says: "It's exactly what they were getting at. There was a lot of hallway talk. People said he's doing damage to the whole field of genetics."

(4) Dr. Lahn ... says intellectual "police" in the U.S. make such questions difficult to pursue...

(5) "I think that Bruce doesn't understand political correctness," Dr. Harpending says.

(6) Dr. Wells says the project team might try to find evolutionary reasons for physical differences such as why Danes are taller than pygmies. But Dr. Wells says National Geographic won't study the brain. "I think there is very little evidence of IQ differences between races," he says...