Some geneticists have published an open letter denouncing as “speculation” the chapters in A Troublesome Inheritance that author Nicholas Wade labeled as “much more speculative.”

Responses:

Ron Unz at the Unz Review: Race/IQ: Should Scientists Bother Reading the Books They Denounce?

Henry Harpending at West Hunter: At Least Erroneous in Faith

Geoffrey F. Miller in the comments at West Hunter:

The 144 letter signatories apparently couldn’t agree on _anything_ beyond ‘speculative Wade is speculative’, and that there’s a lack of good evidence on topics that have been intellectually taboo, career-destroying, and grant-unfundable for decades (surprise!).

If they really had the courage of their convictions, they would have outlined an empirical strategy for disproving Wade and protecting their Blank Slate doctrine, e.g. a large-sample, high-powered, multi-continent analysis of allele frequency differences on the thousands of loci that jointly predict cognitive and personality traits. It would only take a few tens of millions of dollars to find compelling evidence of negligible genetic differences across human groups in mental traits.

Yet the signatories show zero interest in advocating for research that might challenge their world-view. I wonder what proportion of these 144 know in their hearts that such a project would stand an all-too-high likelihood of finding what they most fear.