I'm glad this new piece breaks down Saletan's terrible garbage. But there is a point missing which bothers me: If I told you that people who's phone numbers end in an odd digit have higher IQs than those with an even number you would ask how that could possibly be.

The traits we use to denote race -- skin color, eye shape, hair texture and nose shape -- have as little connection to anything that might be genetically significant in terms of IQ as the last digit of your phone number.

The genetic diversity of sub-saharan Africa is equal to the genetic diversity of the rest of the world combined. This finding, coming from mtDNA studies, helps to reinforce the "out-of-Africa" hypothesis for modern homo sapiens, that homo homo sapiens came out of Africa about 100,000 years ago and completely replaced existing species, that there was no mixing of genes. Because homo homo sapiens lived in Africa for maybe 100,000 years before leaving, you would expect this result.

Anyway, there is as much of a connection between an isolated village in Finland and an isolated village in Paupa New Guniea as between an isolated village in Senegal and one in Mozimbique. If you were to create a map of genetically related populations, the things we use to map race (skin, hair, nose, etc.) would have no overlap.

In short, genetically speaking, there is no more reason to think "black" people have anything in common in terms of intelligence or anything else, other than the things we see (hair, skin, etc.), than people with phone numbers that end in even numbers.

If the people in Toledo Ohio have higher IQ than people in Lansing Michigan, you might wonder what kind of possible genetic link there could be, since these groups do not breed with each other only and have not been isolated from each other for very long, or at all. They come from a wide diversity of old world ancestors... it just defies reason.

So to with "race" and IQ. Can't be. If you want to find a link between a population and a trait, you have to clarify the population a lot better than this. Race is not a population.

It's really frustrating to have this discussion again. I want this over, no more Bell Curves, no more Saletans, no more proto-racist Neaderthals writing about this crap. It ain't so. It' can't be so.