Before posting up Piffer’s paper, I sent it to a reviewer, someone who works in intelligence research. I explained that many geneticists were dismissive about Piffer’s work on group intelligence, and asked for a critical opinion. Here is that opinion, and Piffer’s replies. Piffer also includes responses to the main themes which came out of... Read More

The figure shows standardized polygenic scores by population for Education GWAS, in descending order (1000 Genomes Populations, EA MTAG, N= 3,257 SNPs). One function of a blog is to let people shoot down ideas. Conjectures have a short half-life. Refutations always snap at their heels. David Becker, whose latest version of country IQs received trenchant... Read More

In a new paper at the (conveniently open) journal The Winnower (h/t @whyvert), building on his earlier work, geneticist Davide Piffer has tried to calculate the genotypic IQs of various world populations, and how they compare to measured phenotypic IQ: Piffer, David - Estimating the genotypic intelligence of populations and assessing the impact of socioeconomic... Read More

My weekly posts are now appearing on The Unz Review( By accepting Ron's invitation, I hope to reach a bigger audience and bring myself closer to other writers in the area of human biodiversity. When people work together, or simply alongside each other, minor differences can be ironed out and major differences narrowed or at... Read More

PISA test documents at a German school (source: Theo Müller). PISA and IQ tests are informing us about differences in intellectual capacity by country. Meanwhile, genetic studies are informing us about genomic differences by country. Davide Piffer has been tapping into these two pools of data to explore the links between genes and intellectual capacity.... Read More

Eyed sewing needles from Ice Age Europe (17,000 to 10,000 BP). (source: Didier Descouens) As early modern humans spread farther north, they entered more challenging environments. This was particularly so when they left the boreal forests and entered the open steppe-tundra that covered much of northern Eurasia. Food was plentiful but largely took the form... Read More