Are there 'race' differences in intelligence? Evidence supposedly comes from 'national IQ' datasets, but when you look at the data...there's a problem:

‘National IQ’ datasets do not provide accurate, unbiased or comparable measures of cognitive ability psyarxiv.com/26vfb/ The first 'national IQ' dataset was put together in 2002; latest update 2019. The datasets use primary data sources to claim...average 'IQ' in sub-Saharan Africa is 70, on the verge of intellectual disability. As Ebbesen has pointed out, this is absurd psyarxiv.com/tzr8c

New paper out today on 'Demography, and the rise, apparent fall and resurgence in eugenics', which provides a reminder of how influential eugenic ideology was in the development of demography as a discipline 1/6 tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10… But also argues that demography's (apparent) rejection of eugenic ideology later in the 20th century, and its reluctance (along with many other social sciences) to engage with biological research may have partly facilitated the 21st century resurgence of eugenic ideology 2/6

So, for anyone who doesn't know what the demographic transition is, a 🧵

The demographic transition is the shift from high mortality, high fertility to low mortality, low fertility which has occurred, or is occurring, in countries worldwide over the last couple of centuries 1/n The @OurWorldInData website has excellent visualizations of the dramatic declines in mortality and fertility, for example: fertility 2/n ourworldindata.org/grapher/birth-…

Do 'national IQ' datasets present accurate and unbiased data on average IQs in nation-states worldwide?

A thread 👇

(Spoiler alert: NO)

1/n A recent paper, published in a peer-reviewed journal, which used such a dataset prompted me to examine the most recent version of the Lynn & Vanhanen 'national IQ' dataset, which purports to estimate average IQ for a large proportion of countries worldwide 2/n