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Notes -
This Guardian article is a work of art as a culture war artifact.
The story: a Danish data scientist, Pallesen, who claimed that former Harvard president Gay had made "very basic" data errors in her PhD, a claim which was quoted by right wing activist Rufo.
But now the fearless investigators of the Guardian have uncovered that Pallensen also co-authored a paper called "Polygenic Scores Mediate the Jewish Phenotypic Advantage in Educational Attainment and Cognitive Ability Compared With Catholics and Lutherans" regarding the Ashkenazi, which was published by some people on the right fringe outside Respectable Academia. Some are into eugenics and "race science". Also they cited an 'antisemitic ' psychologist.
Of course, Pallesen promptly disavowed that paper when questioned by the Guardian.
Where to even start.
"Cite" in the title makes an especially bad verb in an academic context because you can generally not control who cites you. "Scientist who criticized Gay's thesis" would be more on point.
Then there is this whole five degrees of separation thing.
While both icky, there is an actual difference between eugenics and "race science" (or HBD or whatever). Eugenics is prescriptive and describes the belief that society should coordinate to affect their gene frequencies. This can go from "let's use CRISPR to fix hereditary diseases" to "kill all the kids with a disfavored eye color". This is completely separate from the claim that there are group differences between human subpopulations caused by genetic differences, which is trivially true for physical characteristics and icky for mental stuff.
My personal view is that most social science is unsound even when it is completely apolitical. If you add politics, be they woke or far-right, I fully expect the conclusions to be whatever the politics say they should be. In respected academia, genetic differences in intelligence are already a third rail. If you publish on racial genetic differences in intelligence, that will end your career faster than putting "I will increase grades for sexual favors" in your e-mail footer. The "fringe" researchers are of course also motivated by politics. So the Ashkenazi genetic intelligence hypothesis is probably undecideable in our society. (From what I remember of Scott's (who is Jewish and thus smarter than me) opinion, I would bet 75% on there being a significant (say, at least five IQ points average) genetic advantage for Ashkenazi.)
Also, I do not find the link between Ashkenazi intelligence and antisemitism all that plausible. The traditional antisemitic trope of Jews is them being shrewd manipulators, which is not exactly the same as being smart. Ask an antisemite why Jews are over-represented in the Ivy League, and they will probably say that it is because the Jews in academia collude to favor Jewish students over gentiles, helping them cheat and so on. If you convince them that the over-representation is due to raw honest brain power, that will conflict with the antisemitic trope.
Finally and foremost, the character of Mr. Pallesen is utterly irrelevant to his claims. He is not the only data scientist, so we don't have to -- and should not -- rely on his testimony exclusively. In the worlds where there is a problem with data science in Gay's PhD, I would not expect that someone who specializes in Intersectionality points it out, thereby -- in the Guardians words -- 'helping oust school’s first Black president'. In worlds where there is no such problem, I would expect that dozens of woke data scientists would jump at the chance to call bullshit on the claims.
Wait, I thought it was pretty well confirmed but not widely publicized that average group intelligences were
Ashkenazi
East Asian
Northern European
Southern European
And then others at much lower average IQ’s(yes, obviously with smaller groups like Tamil Brahmins and Maronites in there). I’ll buy that the magnitudes of the gaps aren’t fully solved but the Ashkenazi IQ advantage being controversial scientifically rather than just not spoken about in polite company is need to me.
If that's the case, why is Israel's GDP per capita way lower than USA's?
Most of said capita are either not Ashkenazi or economically unproductive Haredi.
USA is hardly a pure ethnostate of the most productive demographics. Cut 2 or 3 geographic regions or 2 or 3 ethnicities and it'd be similarly buoyed.
Add a rough neighborhood, minimal natural resources, a national language virtually unused outside its borders... I was only addressing the overstatement of its human capital.
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Israel's average IQ is 92, a score that would be roughly on par with the nicer parts of Latin America or most of the Balkans. The US average is 97. Not an enormous difference, but the large white majority(US whites score higher than whites elsewhere in the world IIRC, closer to the east Asian average) brings it up considering Israel has very large lower-IQ demographics in comparison.
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