James Watson has been known to say stupid things about women, but now he's added Africans -- apparently, he thinks there's no reason for them to be as smart as Caucasians. After all, tests have proven it!
Much as I generally don't agree with Stephen Jay Gould, just read The Mismeasure of Man. Tests don't measure IQ (or IQ doesn't measure intelligence, if you prefer). We have to acknowledge that cultural familiarity plays a role in both questions and answers. I'm sure that an African-created IQ test would show the same differences . . . in the opposite direction.
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I didn't find the comments about women in your link, but the racist comments were enough. Uncle Chris has said that in acedemia you tend to know more and more about less and less. I have so often seen scientists who have developed a notariety in a narrow area of expertise, make total fools of themselves as they attempt to pontificate in another area. Maybe the more total fools are those who assume that since they are smart in one area, they should know more than the rest of us in every area.
There is no test that measures "intelligence". Intelligence is an abstract concept that can never be perfectly measured. Within the field of psychological testing there are a number of types of validity for any given test - one of which is construct validity. Construct validity is how well a test measures what it says it measures. The problem is that how do we measure how well the test measures . . . etc. The construct that we are trying to measure is defined by humans who are fallible. In fact one theory that is getting some attention in the educational field that I know John is a fan of is the theory of multiple intelligences. IQs are useful. They predict some things - primarily one's level of success within western educational systems. Does that mean that they measure a race's cognitive capacity? Nope.
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