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In all cases, the variation within groups is greater than the variation between groups.

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I claim this statement from the Charles Murray article makes the whole dicussion fairly pointless. It also makes me wonder about the statistical merit of a lot of studies.

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I confess I don't necessarily see the problem. Roughly speaking, I can put two fat bell curves next to each other, with the centers of the distribution separated by less than the standard deviation of the curves. That doesn't mean that the averages can't be different.

I think this thread illustrates ChrisV's original point - namely, that it's pretty much impossible to have any discussion about race without it getting pretty contentious quite quickly. I think it would be helpful if this weren't as strongly the case, but I don't see that happening any time soon.