[Slim Pickens]

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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.

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I don't necessarily see a problem either, but I am wondering aloud if the surveys (I'm not going so far as to call them controlled experiments since I don't know anything about how they were done) that claim to discover various genetic IQ differences between the races while removing enviromental factors really have the necessary sample size to resolve two wide peaks in close proximity. I'm hoping someone who knows the background better might be able to say something to that effect.